Dallas & Fort Worth: In need of an umbrella...

(ELLA, ELLA, EH, EH...ok, I'll stop. But the point is, yesterday I was in severe need of an umbrella.)

After taking Monday "off" to be a pedestrian, walking about Irving (where the hotel is located), doing laundry, I got a rental car to get around Dallas. Unfortunately the system is about as reliable as the pre-VIVA bus system in York Region (Read: It blows.)

On my first full day with my rental car "Jose" (hey, the name was on the post it left in my car...I just went with it), I drove downtown to take bus tour of Dallas with Grayline. I set up the GPS system and hopped on the highway no problem. It was a pretty good drive and I even kept the speed of the car on par with the speed limit which is quite an accomplishment!

I met the bus tour guide at the corner of Elm and Houston - the site of the assassination of JFK. Frank, the guide, was the epitome of what I thought I Texas man would be - big, burly, extra polite and and spoke with a thick Texan drawl (which he apologized for at the end of the tour 'which I never really understood. My favorite word he said was 'theatre' or 'the-A-ter'..but I digress...again...). We started off going up to the 6th Floor Museum at the corner of Elm & Houston. It was the site of where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. I only really know bits and pieces of that period of time so I was quite interested about through the exhibit.

Once we were done, Frank took us to the grassy noll where people waited for JFK and set up the assassination scene quite well. You could tell he knew his stuff where the JFK assasination was concerned because he had an answer for every question the tour group had...even questions regarding the numerous conspiracy theories. (I should also point out that the tour group consisted of myself, an older woman and her granddaughter who was around my age or a bit younger. The granddaughter and I did very little question asking.)

What I gathered from my entire tour from that point forward was that Dallas is known really only for two things outside of Texas - the show Dallas and being the site of the assassination. There were a lot of churches, mostly Christian, a few cool looking buildings and a few museums but I wasn't "Wowed" like I was with San Antonio and Austin. They had a certain personality you could sense whereas I found Dallas didn't. It could have been Anytown, Texas to me. Maybe when I comeback to visit during the Mavs season and get to see the vibe of the city then, that'll change.

Anyhow, my highlight of my morning tour of Dallas has to be my lunch. I went to the historic district of Dallas and ate a New Orleans-food place called Landry's. The food was really good (Creole = yum!) and the staff were absolutely fantastic. My waiter was really cool (not as cool as Angelo but he was definitely straight!)...he looked like a younger Terrence Howard (Crash, Hustle & Flow) with a Mr. T haircut. He had the eyes and everything...very cute!

After lunch, I went to a touristy store across the street I was told was the best place to get trinkets in town - yah, I wasn't too impressed...and I like getting random stuff (I did buy a rubber duckie today...but that's for the next blog entry...). This only added to my disappointment of Dallas as a tourist place...

Yah...so...Fort Worth...the next part of my day. Let's just say it wasn't the best travel day for me. Now on a good day, Fort Worth is about a 45 min drive. I was well on my way to hitting that benchmark until I hit a couple of roadblocks; both were unavoidable.

The first one was a truck's cargo caught fire and/or blew up the back half of the storage trailer. It was actually kind of cool to look at, like a train wreck, but it backed up the highway a fair bit. The second one was rain. I'm not sure if any of you have been following up on Texas weather but they've been experiencing flash floods and torrential rain as of late...and yesterday I experienced at the worst possible time.

I set the GPS system to take me straight to the historical stockyards of Fort Worth and I was almost ready to exit the highway when the rain started coming down hard. I was very difficult to see and the highway exit system in Texas if difficult to navigate if you're not used to it. I was hoping the GPS system would help direct me but it didn't. It simply said, "In 0.2 miles turn..." then it shut off. The blood piece of crap run out of batteries and I just got it the day before!

In my head I was thinking, "Turn where? Turn WHERE?! Sh*********t!" and I exited at the first exit I saw and pulled into a gas station and tried to get it to charge but it didn't work so I picked a random street and found myself downtown where it was still pissing hard rain. I did a couple of circles and pulled into a parking garage and took refuge in a Barnes & Noble to complain to Avis about the shiteous GPS they gave me.

So I didn't quite make it to the Stockyards as I had planned but I did venture there eventually later that evening with my uncle. (I have an uncle on my mom's side that lives in Fort Worth so I had dinner with him and his daughter I've never met before) It definitely looked like a place I would have had fun tooling around as a tourist but alas, the stupid rain. They even had a cowboy karaoke bar...oh the possibilities with that one...