Dallas'd Out

Having spent the last 5 days at the Solar Show in Dallas, I am pretty whipped.  Although it may sound like fun, standing in a booth for 8 hours answering the same questions, heading back to the hotel, meeting your business contacts before going to dinner, finding a good place to eat, then having a nightcap with them before retiring to your hotel room, answering e-mails till 1:00, then getting up at 6:00 to do the same thing the next day wears a guy out.  Dallas is an interesting town and about 30 degrees warmer than here in Minnesota.  When we arrived on Monday my good friend Joe Stanfield picked up Lyle, Welly and myself from DFW.  Driving us back into downtown Dallas Joe and I dropped off Lyle and Welly to set up the booth and we went back out to to airport to pick up a couple more colleagues.  Between airline flights we were able to sneak into Bass Pro Shop and look around.  Not having a lot of time I did find something interesting, Dynamite Redneck Fishing Lure, a red tube meant to look like a stick of dynamite with deep fried pork rinds and Tabasco Sauce inside.  My friend Jeff King has a bundle of dynamite in his guide boat  using it as a prop against the possibility that if they didn't catch fish, he always had a backup plan!  These reminded of me of Jeff so I bought 3 of them to use for the same purpose.  I am curious what the pork rinds taste like. 

The Dallas Convention Center was located about 5 blocks from our downtown hotel.  On the way is one of the first cemeteries in Dallas with some of it's occupants being born in the late 1700's.  Many of the stones are tipped over, missing, or unreadable however the intact ones tell an interesting story.  There are early government officials, civil war casualties, but the most striking are the family plots where many of the young children were laid to rest.  Born 1839, Died 1841 there are so many that only lived a few years of their life.  Obviously living in Texas in the middle of the 1800's was not easy.  At the cemetery location is a sculpture monument(s) dedicated to the old Longhorn Cattle Drives of the time.  There must be at least 50 true to life bronze sculptures of what it must have been like to drive these animals across the plains.  Each sculpture was unique, complete with it's own Brand, tattered ears and skin flaps caused by their horns hitting each other.  The Longhorns were depicted as lean, probably signifying their ability to exist in the driest conditions.  It is an amazing piece of work and if you are ever in downtown Dallas, it's worth a stop.  Although we did not go through the Book Depository Building were Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shot, killing President Kennedy in 1963, my friend Joe stated that at that time they were acquaintances with the owner of the building.  Joe said that the owner removed the original window that was used, denied that he knew anything about it, and when he died his son returned it to the now museum.  Pretty cool.

Last weekend was too windy to fish!  Bill called me on Saturday and said that I should stay home, the lake was just a churning with 35 mph winds.  I took the opportunity to pick the rest of my apples, made some more cider, and tried getting more stuff done before deer hunting.  I am hoping to be able to use the predicted warm weather to get the boat prepped for winter.  A few bottles of Sea Foam in the gas and get it through the engine, I can always change oil and the lower unit grease later.  I have some nice pictures of the the wine my neighbor Lory is making that I will publish later, the work never ends!