San Antonio: Part I

ok I'm back. sorry this has taken me so long, but hey I'm not even really unpacket yet! how could I have blogged?! :) anyway, this is gonna have to be in two parts because I'm not really in the mood to type tonight... so here it is-- company vacation part 1!

March 17, 2005

woohooo it's St. Patrick's Day!!!! we meet at work at 5:30am to go to the airport, where we are met by our ride (aka my boss), who happened to have gone out last night and partied late. greeeeeat. yes, this just means he is even more rude than normal! just kidding. well, for the most part anyway :) ok aaaanyway. we get to San Antonio with no problems at all and not even a lot of airport pain. but THEN we go to the hotel.

well, the company booked us at the Microtel Inn & Suites, which is the host hotel for the show we're going to, so you'd figure it would be a nice place. hmmmm... yeah. so, we get there and find out that they had almost cancelled our rooms. why? well, they had tried to charge the card for the room before we even checked in. but, the rooms were on a generic card that got declined-- all the even people have their own cards that they actually pay for things with. still all fine, though. they saved the rooms and we got there fine, although the postage stamp-sized pool should have warned us against things to come. they also booked us smoking rooms. ick. so we go in, decide it's kinda gross looking, but whatever, it's a place to sleep. but THEN I decide to use the bathroom. I walk in to find DRIED URINE on the seat and urine still in the toilet itself! GROSS!!!!! so steph calls the manager right away, who instead of apologizing says we are lucky to even have the rooms b/c of the credit card issue. yeah so we decide to leave and end up finding find MUCH better rooms at the Quality Inn down the road. and CC even got a suite, so she was happy. ew.

now that we are sufficiently pissed off and it's too late to get any real setting up done, we decide to get pretty and go celebrate St. Patrick's Day downtown! woohoo! so we don our beads and head down. now, when people told me about River Walk, I thought it was going to be a river with some shops and maybe some bars by it, almost like how it is in Savannah. NOTHING prepared us for how incredibly cool River Walk really is!!!!! it is actually a whole other level under street level that goes on for miles where there's a little river (20 feet wide max?) with all sorts of trees and old hotels and one of a kind restaurants lining it. It is honestly one of the coolest places I've ever been. I put a pic below. After checking out the Alamo (pic also below), we settled in for dinner at a fun little place called Dick's. This place was so random-- when people asked for napkins, the waiters threw napkins at them screaming "is this enough for you?!" and they kept putting random hats on random people! the one Steph got that said "my thong has skid marks" has to be the funniest thing I've ever seen in a restuarant. the night overall, though, was fantastic. we hung out downtown all night, relaxed, had some drinks, and really just enjoyed ourselves. what a great first day.

on a last note, did you ever wonder what Jack in the Box would be in Spanish? well don't worry, because Steph figured it out: Jacko en el Boxo! :Þ

March 18, 2005

ah it's show day. and believe me you NEVER know what to expect when you're dealing with 25,000 bikers, so we had to make sure we were prepared. first thing after getting there and unpacking, we introduced ourselves to our neighbors. there was Kenny and the other guy (never quite learned his name) on one side and a bunch of guys running a clothing shop on the other. didn't think much about any of them until it came time to set up the tent. it says EZup but it is not all that easy if you've never done it before! so the three college-educated girls fiddled with the damn tent for a good 15 minutes, when we turned around for a sec and noticed that all four guys from the clothing booth were just standing there whispering and laughing while they watched us. seemed taking a break to laugh at us was much more fun than unpacking heavy leathers :) and, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. hahaha.

so we finally got the thing up and then headed off to get some more stuff. and guess what we found! SUPER TARGET!!!! now, I've seen Target Greatlands, but this was a whole new site: a Target just like a Super Wal-Mart with food and everything and even a Starbucks inside! pure heaven :) so we get back and carry on settting up (after lunch at Jacko en el Boxo) when we again see the guys cracking up at us! why? well, as Louis said, "didn't you guys notice you didn't have to duck under your tent anymore?" lol. yes, while we were gone, the boys took pity on us and raised our tent. hmm it had seemed higher... the only bad thing was that one of them could not remember our names! on separate occasions, Fernando called me, Steph, and CC all "Jennifer". god knows why. so, that's what we started calling him. and thus, our new friend Jennifer was born. we are nuts.

so after meeting plenty of characters at the show that night (the guy with the best shirt ever is below with CC and Steph-- let me know if you can't read it!!!), we decided we deserved some relaxation. and since we were right next to thr Spurs arena, we figured we might as well go!!! I had never been to an NBA game, and even though I'm not a huge basketball fan, live sports are always fun. the boys came too (well, Alex, Louis, and "Jenny" anyway), which made it even better. and after the game we even talked our way down to the court and took our picture with one of the players' dads :) and then after that, we decided we couldn't have a whole day without the river walk, so we headed down and grabbed some dinner. all in all, definitely a fantastic end to a fantastic first real day of the trip.

check out the pics below... i'll post some more later. gnight for now! :)