Fair Play to You, Dallas

Greetings from Fairfield, TX. It was a great day. For the record, Texas seems fun so far and the people are bend-over-backwards nice. Maybe we were wrong...

I'll try to break with tradition to do two things: (1) keep it short, and (2) actually finish one day's blog entry before experiencing the next day. I don't believe for a second that I'll accomplish either of those goals.


We landed in Dallas-Fort Worth Airport a bit after noon. It is a huge airport. Assisted by the iPhone, Ed selected an appropriate lunch location in nearby Arlington:

We agreed that it was only average to slightly above average BBQ. Ed keenly noted that even average BBQ is pretty damn good. At lunch we realized that we'd have several hours to kill before the 7:05 PM game time. (Dude, I thought it was your turn to plan the trip...) On-the-spot Plan A was to check out the Cowboys new stadium and go see the UT-Arlington campus. Plan A took about 10 minutes. On-the-spot Plan B was to go to downtown Dallas and find something to do.

Fortunately, we never even needed Plan C, which was to go hang out at Barnes & Noble. We arrived in Big D and headed to the Historic district by chance. There was a JFK memorial, some interesting architecture, a fountain or two, and the occasional shady respite from the hot, hot sun. I was particularly infatuated with the tall, shiny building which shall remain nameless until I get around to looking it up. Ed patiently endured my "Hey look! It's the same shiny building again!" comments and the endless barrage of photos. I'll show you one and spare you the rest.

There was one more stop before the game. (You didn't really think I'd keep this short, did you?) We decided to check out the Dallas World Aquarium and were very glad we did. It turned out to be awesome. Even Ed said so, and he's actually into fish and birds and other animals and stuff. We were barely inside the front door (in a temporal sense; we didn't eat too much BBQ) when Ed became very excited. Turns out the very first creature we saw was a stork, the specific type of which shall go unnamed. Ed can tell you what it was. I didn't get a good photo anyway. I'll spare you further pictures and details. You'll have to take my word for it; the aquarium was very well done. Ok, fine. Here's a photo of the very stately-looking jaguar we met.

Finally, we went to the ballpark. Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, to be specific. We saw the visiting Oakland Athletics take on the hometown team and struggled (initially) to name more than one or two players on either team. (Upon hearing the starting lineups, we realized we knew more than we thought.) We took photos. We watched (most of) the game. We ate some food. Ed corrected the locals on to whom errors should be assigned. I remarked on the universality of many common baseball stadium experiences, then got a kick out of the crowd doing the "clap-clap-clap-clap" thing during every refrain of "Deep in the Heart of Texas." (I'm not kidding you; this was one of the highlights for me.) The threat of thunderstorms never materialized and good fun was had by all. Here's a token picture. (Ed also took photos with his nicer camera, so you should remind him to post some photos, too.)

Man, I am a sucker for panoramas like Ed is for baseball caps. By the way, Cliff Lee pitched a great game for the Rangers.

I'd tell you how it turned out but we left with the game tied 1-1 in the 9th. I think that tells you everything you need to know about our priorities on this so-called 'baseball' roadtrip.