Going 3D With Real Texas Cowboys
Texas is truly like a whole other country. It's more than a slogan, it's a fact of life. I had suspected it in my previous work-related trips to Texas, but since I had never leisured in the place before, I was in for a big shock.
When I decided to go to the National Stereoscopic Association convention in Irving this summer (OK, it was more like an obligation, after having missed the one in Portland the year before), I really didn't know what to do when I went. I mean, the convention two years before in Charleston has been a great photo-op (go check out my Charleston webpage if you don't believe me). But Dallas?
I've been down to Dallas twice to go to Parkland and I flew in once more to drive down to Waco. But the area always struck me as huge, and confusingly laid out. It is a great place to get lost. And what on earth was there to do in Dallas? Go see where Kennedy was shot?*
B O R I N G. So, I had a lot of thinking to do to figure out some plans.
[*OK, I admit that Dave and I did have a cool plan of staging the whole Zapruder film in 3D with me making a guest appearance from behind the grassy knoll, but we thought better of it....]
I took Thursday off from work and decided that I would take a mid-day flight to DFW. It was a bit strange to be flying again and not to be doing it for work. I guess that the whole experience of flying weekly for Epic is always going to stick with me a bit.
For some reason, it took us forever to take off from Minneapolis, so we were late getting to Dallas, by which time I had a message on my phone from Dave (my partner in crime from Charleston) letting me know that I was about 20 minutes late for a bus for the evening field trip.
A short digression on the NSA this year: They didn't really plan a lot. There wasn't much stereo theater and there weren't many activities. And the activities they did plan were on Wednesday and Thursdays. Since showing up for those events would mean missing even more days of work (and I've just started a new job), it just wasn't going to happen this year. The end result is I missed the IMAX 3-D on Wednesday and the field trip to the DeGolyer library at SMU. But anyway…
So, when I landed, I got my car, called Dave (and left a message), drove to my hotel room and checked in (having trouble with getting checked in and then finding my room with bad instructions), called Dave again (did not leave message), drove over to the Harvey where the convention was being held, looked for people (but all the rooms were closed up), called Dave again (left message), drove back to my hotel and decided I should find some dinner so I went over to Taco Bell, went back to my room and ate dinner, called Dave and finally got through to him. He talked me in to coming back to the Harvey again. The trouble with my first attempt was that I'd hit the place when everyone was at the SSA reception or on the field trip, or at dinner.
He was right, of course, so I went back over and started my room hopping, starting at the top floor and working my way down. I dropped in on the Kamins and a few other rooms. And I managed to find a few things and almost spent my allowance for the day. The highlight of the evening was actually when I was at a room and a guest from the room next door dropped in to see what we were all about. He turned out to be a Marine and couldn't quite figure out what in the heck we were.
So, a few notes about my first day (or evening, as it were): if I'm going to do room hopping on Thursday, I really need to get there earlier. And if there are activities on Thursday night, I really should go to those. In the end, I'm not sure that room hopping was all that necessary. I could easily have hit everyone on the weekend. And only a few people were only selling out of their rooms. If I am going to go out and eat on Thursday, I need to make that my sushi night. It's the only night I'm likely to be truly on my own, so it's a good night for that sort of thing.
And a few other fine points: the organizers did an excellent job finding a hotel that was not only close to the airport, it was also close to the planes....
Friday turned out to be my big shopping day. I start early by having breakfast with Dave at the Denny's across the street from the Harvey. Nothing like getting fortified with a substantial breakfast to start the day! Then I started out at the Stereo Theater. While some people open their rooms early, I figure my best chance of catching people is to give them as much time as possible. So I went to the Stereo Theater with Dave and watched “The Strange Case of Dr Addison and the Crosswell Twins,” which was a fun modern piece made to look like authentic period stereography, complete with ghost images. A good piece, but enough of that – it was time to start the serious shopping!
I don't get the sense that there were a lot of dealers this year and it makes me fear that eBay may be interfering with number of people willing to sell face to face. It was in fact a bit disappointing. I don't mind eBay for some things, but it is not a place I like to frequent anymore. But the organizers of the convention had a great plan to make dealers easier to find this year. They put out little cones on the floor of the hallway in front of each dealer's room. That way, when I hit a floor, I just had to look down the hallway for cones. If I hit a floor with no cones, then I knew it wasn't a good place for me to stop and I just moved on.
On Thursday night, I had worked from the top floor down. On Friday, I started from the bottom and worked up. The irony of the day was the place where I spent my most money was also my most unpleasant dealer experience. The guy was just plain ornery and kept hollering at his wife and putting her down. If it hadn't been for the fact that he had a lot of cards that I hadn't seen before, I probably would have moved on. Most of my room hopping experiences were more pleasant. I had a nice chat with a woman who was watching soap operas and shared my penchant for stereos of kids (hence she had a bunch of stuff I wanted). And I even had a nice chat with Bill Moll, who is running next year's convention in Miami (and who tried his best to recruit me to serve on staff). I didn't break any records and I can't say that I picked up anything truly incredible, but I found a few good things and picked up a lot more that were OK.
The movies at the Stereo Theater ended surprisingly early (in the early afternoon). I'm told this is because they restricted the formats that they agreed to show. But the result was that were no evening programs to watch. There was the auction, but I didn't find that any big thrill in Charleston and didn't see much reason to go. So, by mid-afternoon, I was basically out of stuff to do. And so was Dave, so we had agreed that we would get together in the late afternoon and do some sight seeing.
We decided that we would start with a tour of historic Irving and then go over to the Fort Worth Stockyards and see the sights and grab a nice dinner. I had filled up on a so-so burger at the hotel for lunch so wasn't terribly hungry, so we figured we would do a late dinner, making it possible to maximize daylight time on sightseeing.
We started off by visiting the horse statues of Las Colinas (see picture to right). Really quite impressive and slightly larger than life size statues of horses stampeding through a fountain. The signs by the statues warn that professional photographers must get a permit before taking pictures. Hopefully, Dave and I don't qualify as pros!
From there, we found our way down to historic Irving. Not an awful lot to see there, except a downtown that is on a decline from the malls and suburban sprawl. Somewhere along the line, a bright lightbulb got an idea to take all the old buildings of Irving on this downtown area and rename “historic” and create a tour guide to allow people to explore the history of the place. The trouble is that “historic Irving” just isn't that old. Some of the buildings date back to only the 1920s, which, as Dave pointed out, is about the age of his parents' house!
It was also threatening to storm, as you can see in these pictures, so it wasn't really a good day to take pictures. Once the wind kicked up, we decided to bail and set out for the Stockyards of Fort Worth.
Now, on paper, getting to Fort Worth should not have been a big deal. Looks to be about 20 miles away and we were heading into downtown on a Friday night when most of the traffic should have been heading out. The trouble is that the DFW area doesn't really have normal traffic flows. With two large cities so close together, traffic flows both directions during rush hour, as people go from the wrong city to the right one. And we got caught in the midst of it. So, instead of a quick trip, we got bogged down in a long slow crawl to Fort Worth. I was pretty darned beat by the time we made it to the Stockyards.
The Stockyards themselves just reek of tourist trap. There's a big rodeo there (although we had decided that we would do the rodeo on Saturday night – see below) and lots of shops. There's a mechanical bucking bull for foolhardy tourists and testosterone-filled teens to ride. There are lots and lots of bars. And by dusk, the place starts to look a bit rough for out-of-towners like us. But Dave did manage to buy himself a license plate with something about rednecks on it (I'm way too Yankee to do that!) and we got in a few photo ops.
Then it was time to find a place to have dinner. My problem was that I was still stuffed from Lunch. So, while I wouldn't have minded going to have a juicy Texas steak, I really didn't feel like eating much. If I hadn't had to drive afterwards, I might have gone for a liquid dinner though. So, anyway, the challenge of finding something to eat set in. Lots of big hefty saloon-type fare around but nothing light. We ended up at a cramped and so-so Italian place called Giovanni's that was stuck in an old empty building. It's primary selling point was that it is located “next to Billy Bob's Texas!” I probably offended the local branch of the Family by only ordering a salad, but I was tired, not hungry, and a bit cranky. Dave captured a picture of me dining in 3-D. I'm sure I looked thrilled.
After dinner, I drove Dave back to the Harvey and turned in early. All in all, I did some buying in the morning and we got some pictures in the afternoon, but it was a bit of a dud of a day.
Some more scenes from the Stockyards....
What I didn't know on Friday night, but probably could have suspected, was that I was getting sick. I woke up in the middle of the night with a burning throat and a terrible cough (that cough, in fact, would stick with me until nearly a month later).
Having no major breakfast dates, I had breakfast at the hotel I was staying at. It was hidden away in a small studio room and turned out to be pretty nasty, but taking it back to my room made it OK. And after breakfast, I read for a while. All to kill time until the trade fair opened for general admission at 9:30.
I had early on decided that I wasn't going to pay extra just to get into the trade fair early. I probably didn't need to go at all. I'd seen just about everyone during room hopping. As a result, I ended up mostly just doing second rounds that morning. In the first round, I had decided that I would not buy anything that cost more than $10, unless it absolutely positively looked like something I had to have. For the second round, I lifted that restriction a bit. After all, I had hit up everyone and still had lots of money left over, so now it was time to get extravagant. The real problem though, is that it gets a bit dull, and it is expensive to buy expensive cards. And again, my big spending destination was the guy-who-is-mean-to-his-wife. In the end, he probably scored about $650 of business from me – I guess I don't have serious scruples.
Partly to kill time and drag out the shopping experience, I decided that I needed to make up for the lack-of-sushi so far on the trip. So I left the show at lunchtime and went out to a Japanese restaurant that advertised sushi buffet for a fairly reasonable price. The buffet though turned out to be pretty pedestrian and I ended up ordering off the menu. The prices weren't bad but only the ami-ebi was all that memorable. So I was more than a bit disappointed. The service was pretty bad and there was an odd moment where two African American women walked in and were patently ignored by the staff. I've heard legends of how racist Japanese can be, but I never would have expected quite the show of it that unfolded in front of me. Anyway, a total bust on the Japanese front.
When I got back to the fair, I quickly surveyed the rest of the tables and realized that I was pretty much out of cash. It really was time to stop. And anyways, they were closing the room…
So, with nothing more to spend (and very little left to buy), I slipped over to the Stereo Theater to see what there was. Dave had told me the night before about some pretty spectacular shows, including a 3D fireworks video shot by a guy in Japan who hadn't waited for an event – he'd just staged his own fireworks and then filmed them (a real fireworks show!). I missed anything quite that spectacular, but I did walk in on a presentation on microscopic crystallography in 3D that was quite pretty, albeit a bit repetitive, and a somewhat more fascinating slideshow of canyoneering in the Colorado river. It was at the theater that I caught up with Dave for round two of sightseeing.
Before I had headed down to Dallas, I had been talking at work about the trip and soliciting advice for what to do when I was in Dallas. The best suggestion I had received was that I should go to the rodeo. Having never been to a rodeo, this seemed like a really good idea. And Dave had pretty much had the same idea. We had thought of going on Friday with the Kamins (who ended up not going anyway) but decided it would be more fun on Saturday. So our big plan for the evening was the Mesquite Championship Rodeo in the Resistol Arena. Yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhooooooooooo!!
But I get ahead of myself.
We drove down to Mesquite and bought our tickets using a buy-one-get-one-free coupon that meant that we each paid $5, and then we thought about dinner. There were snacks to be had at the rodeo itself, but we had two hours before the show and so we went over to Trail Dust Steakhouse to get ourselves some steaks.
Now, there is definitely nothing more authentic than having a mesquite-grilled steak in Mesquite TX. Not any way possible to get more Texan than that! Except perhaps at the Trail Dust.
There was live music (both kinds – Country and Western!) and nice long tables that people ate from. But the coolest part (if you were a kid), was the two story giant slide that landed at the dance floor. I didn't ask, but I rather suspect that a grown man would not have been welcome, but oh what fun that would have been! The place obviously had lots of regulars and it had lots of gimmicks too. At some appointed time, the signal was given and all the folks who were wearing ties came forward (and most of them were wearing T-shirts and REALLY ugly ties, so it looked a bit planned on their part!) and had their ties cut off. At least I now understood the artwork on their sign.
Anyway, the food was good and plentiful and pretty darned authentic tasting. Of course, since I was being sick, my appetite just wasn't there but I did my best to suck in the culture.
It took us a while to get the check (I guess folks just don't like to leave a place like that) and head back to the rodeo for the show.
I'm afraid that I didn't get many decent shots of the show, although I certainly did try. But maybe that was just as well, as I finally read the warning on the back of my ticket that says that I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures in the first place.
Let me start of by saying that I realized that the rodeo was going to be heavily patronized by the type of people who don't like my kind of people. But as a lil' ol' northern boy from a blue state, I hadn't quite realized just how die hard serious folks would be about their politics and their beliefs. And while I have no problems living amongst people with differing views, I hadn't quite expected the fervent true believers I would be confronted with.
Let's sum it up with how it all started out. After all the participants had rode out and introduced themselves, a lone cowboy (a real TEXAS cowboy, it was proclaimed – although I think she was a cowgirl if you ask my opinion) carried the flag out. But before we could get to our God-ordained duty of honoring the flag, we were all duly informed that this wasn't any ordinary piece of fabric. No, sirree, this was an authentic Uunitedstatesofmerica flag. This flag had:
And here I thought it was just a flag. I wanted to chuckle. I wanted to laugh. The whole thing sounded like so much hooey and patriotic balderdash, like something that Barnum would have come up with. But the audience ate up every word with tears in their eyes.
By the time we got to the National Anthem, there wasn't a soul in the place that wasn't ready to swear on their lives to be true to the Red White and Blue (except perhaps for the tourists from Japan or from Scotland, and maybe that Liberal from Wisconsin). Anyway, after we got done with the Anthem, we all bowed our heads in prayer for God to protect the Real Texas Cowboys taking part in tonight's rodeo.
Let the games begin!
Now, since I'd never been to a rodeo and I had no idea what to expect, I was so very glad to have Dave along for the guidance. He was able to explain the events and tell me what they were trying to do. And it was easy to get caught up in the excitement.
The part I found the most interesting was thinking about how all of this developed. Some of the games were probably fed a bit by testosterone poisoning and boredom, but there were some real games of skill here, many with strong vocational reasons for existing (being able to rope a steer, break a horse, etc.). Things were a bit rough and I felt a bit bad for some of the animals who got roughed up, but overall it was an educational experience.
The rodeo has, however, evolved a bit, and there is certainly an attempt to please the crowd with odd antics. One of the funniest was the sheep-riding competition, where young children were put onto a sheep and held on for dear life while the frightened animal tried to get them off. Dave hadn't seen this one either, so I'm thinking it might be particular to Mesquite. The man who was sitting next to us, showed off his boy to us who, it turned out, had been a champion rider of sheep himself the week before. The kid even had a pretty nifty belt buckle to show for it. I'll tell you one thing: I would have been all over my Dad for permission to do that when I was a kid!
Somewhat less amusing was their descent into more Coliseum-type entertainment – “cowboy poker.” In this game, four men sat at a table in the middle of the arena pretending to play cards, while a bull was let loose to charge at them. The last man sitting in his chair won. That night, one of the players (seated in black leather vest) had to be removed in a stretcher when the bull ran over him (the picture was taken a mere second or two before he got hit). It was the only major injury of the night. And was probably an unnecessary one. Despite all the dangers present that evening, the more traditional competitions seemed a whole lot safer and saner in comparison.
The real highlight came towards the end where a young upstart amateur cowboy competed for a $10,000. All he had to do was stay on a bull for a set period of time. Having seen more experienced cowboys fall off in a few seconds, it seemed like a really long shot, but with a great deal of excitement in the stands, he pulled it off and the crowd went wild for the young man done good.
All in all, the rodeo was truly the highlight of my trip. I might have come for the stereocards, but the rodeo gave me the true taste of Texas.
Sunday, in comparison, was a bit of a let down and an anti-climax. I was still feeling pretty bad (perhaps even worse) and the day started off bad. I went down to get breakfast and then found that my key wouldn't open the door to my building. I went and got a replacement and that wouldn't work either. So, getting tired of carrying my fast cooling-down eggs and warming-up juice, I just sat in the lobby and ate my breakfast. Then I got another key and when it didn't work, they just walked me over and let me into my building (the room key worked just fine, though).
I had the day to kill (my flight wasn't until 4pm) and not very much money left. In fact, I really was over my limit already, so it was time to stop. But there wasn't much else to do but shop. I did go to Walgreens and pick up some Airborne to fight my sore throat.
So, I went to the Trade Fair and worked my way around for a second or third round at the dealers. Mostly I tried to hold off on buying stuff, but I did make a few more purchases. I hung with Carol Kamin for a bit and told her about the rodeo. I told Charles about it and made him and his friend cringe. Basically I just tried to kill time until the Stereo Theater opened up at 1pm (did I mention that there really wasn't much to do at this year's convention?).
The plan on Sunday was to show the best of the show and I figured I could watch the shows until a little after 2pm and still make my flight. However, when the schedule came up (they didn't announce it until Noon), it turned out that the first hour was going to be the Crystals and the Canyons pieces I had already seen. Not seeing much reason to hang around for an encore, I decided I might as well just return the rental car and hang at the airport.
But before I did so, I made a stop for lunch at a Whataburger. Dave had assured me that Whataburgers were truly an outstanding thing and that it was part of the Texas experience. He proved to be very right. A few years back, the Texas legislature in one of its more modest acts, declared Whataburgers to be a “Texas treasure.” They truly were right.
So, despite inevitable flight delays on the way home and the usual assortment of travel annoyances, I left Texas with a good taste in my mouth.
So, was it a success? There are plenty of ways to measure success I suppose. I picked up 385 cards (including about six sailing ships for Kriss) and I spent about $2300 in all. That was slightly fewer cards than I had amassed in Charleston, but it is getting harder to find stuff I don't already have.
Dallas and environs were not nearly as picturesque as Charleston and the Charleston NSA was certainly a better run and more interesting program to attend. But this was also my second show and things weren't as news anymore. So, maybe that had a lot to do with it?
Will I go to Miami next year? Or will I skip a year and wait until Boise in 2007? Who knows? Stay tuned!!