Tuesday morning in Houston. It's raining, and so the view isn't so great this morning. Through the rain-haze, headlights and taillights snake slowly along the expressways that I can see from my room on the 17th floor. I head off to SFO this morning, so I'm packed and ready to go. I'll just finish this and then head off to the airport. With this rain it could take longer than usual to get out there.
So I head down for breakfast this morning. No, back up a step. On the way in from the airport on Sunday night, I pass the "Welcome to Houston" sign. On the digital display under the welcome sign - "Home of the the 2008 National Truck Driving Championships". Right there I'm tickled. Truck Driving Championships. Who knew?
There, in the breakfast restaurant, was living proof of the 2008 National Truck Driving Championships. Grey tee-shirts, with stylised truck on the front, and the full details of the convention on the back. Very official looking lanyards. Husbands, wives. Even the kids! It really was a spectacle. And there's me. No grey tee-shirt. No Lanyard. And the maitre-d' (do they do breakfasts?) asks me, the only charlie in the room who doen't look like a truckie, "so, you're not with the convention...?".
About a million wise-crack answers flash through my mind. I mean, really. But I swallow my wit, say no, and go swimming in a sea of grey-marle to find a space to sit. Breakfast with champions.
Houston, the little I saw of it in the day and a half I was they, is a nice place. Quiet. I think it's a work-town, like Jo'burg or Canberra. Not a whole bunch seems to happen there, or if it does, it doesn't happen where I was. Apart from conventions that look like they should be covered on the Discovery Channel.
Nice weather though. Hot and humid like Singapore. Like it.
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