Day Sixteen: Thunderstorms, Texas, And A Warm Welcome

I had an early Greyhound bus booked to Houston so I quickly got ready and got a lift to the station.  It was sad to be leaving New Orleans. A wonderful city with some great people (Tim, Mitch, Josh, Jesse, Lily, and Sidsel). As nearly all of the were travelling East, I will not be likely to see them again. I did also manage to get some contact details so I could at least keep track of what they were doing on their travels. I could not get rid of Tim however, as he was also travelling to Houston!

For the first few hours of our trip we travelled through some tremendous thunderstorms. A few of the car parks we pulled into to take a break were well and truly flooded. After a few hours of crossing into the Lone Star state however, the storms were overtaken by beautiful weather and blue skies. We got into Houston at about 4pm and Tim and I said our goodbyes (it wasn't the last I would see him however) and I went to find the family who were kind enough to host me for my time in the city.

Back in 1979, my mother and father were living in London and shared an apartment with a number of other people. One of those people was Tim Gusey. He had recently got back in touch with my mother via Facebook and had heard I was in the Houston area and offered to take me in. The opportunity had come at a great time as I really needed some home comforts and I couldn't have been looked after better by Tim and his wife Cherie. After saying our hellos, they took me into the centre of town to a wonderful couple of bars.  The first was the Okra charity bar which was a non-profit bar where you would vote for the charity the money went to. With a great few local beers and some wonderful pickled and pickled-fried okra (served by an exceptionally vivacious and beautiful barmaid) we started to get to know each other. We hit it off immediately and straight away I felt like I was one of the family.  The next bar we headed to was staffed by a friend of Tim and Cherie's- Amada. She was a wonderful person and straight away offered me the number and address of her daughter in San Francisco who she assured me would love to show me around the city.  I was also fortunate to meet Amada's husband, Bill, who was a unique character- funny, witty, and with a demeanour that was very open and friendly but in an odd-reserved way (I know that is contradictory but he is hard to describe).

Just before we left I got the chance to see a 9/11 memorial funded for by the father of a woman who had died in the 4th plane in Shanksville, PA. it is hard not to feel the emotion, especially after the heroic acts of those on United 93.

Tim and Cherie live about 30 mins outside Houston in a small town called Alvin. I was very thankful for their ability to drive me around as Houston was most definitely not a walkers/public transport user friendly place. We stopped off at a lovely little Mexican restaurant where for the first time in a long time, I could not finish my whole meal! Great food, just a lot of it. We arrived at their home fairly late in the evening and after briefly meeting their two wonderful dogs, Black Dog, and Odie I retired to a huge double bed and settled down for an much needed rest.