Old Decathlon Olympics Journal

Oct. 16th entry LATE: People are more important

Saturday, October 16th, 2004

Beautiful weather, clear sailing, and not one stop along the way contributed to my making it to Jessiebelle house in record time. The fact that each of us had a cell phone allowed Jessiebelle to verbally direct me to ever-necessary turn in the road. As I carefully navigated along the residential street that lead to her absolutely gorgeous house, in an obviously up-scale neighborhood, I finally got my very first, live and in person, glimpse of her standing in a very neatly groomed front yard. I pulled my suburban into Jessiebelle’s double driveway at approximately 3:30 Friday afternoon.

Jessiebelle looks exactly like her smiling picture that is in the signature of all of her e-mails and posts on Writing.Com, and since we have been having telephone conversations for well over a year, it felt amazingly like just seeing a friend that I had not seen for a very long time. Of course I still physically felt like I was still traveling at the 70 to 80 miles per hour that I had spent the last six-hours driving along to get there.

Her daughter is beautiful and just days away from getting her real driver’s license, so with my arrival we almost immediately got into Jessiebelle van with her daughter driving to go to Starbucks for coffee. And as any typical teenager who just wants to drive we headed off to Starbucks, not the nearest Starbucks, but a Starbucks just the same. Jessiebelle daughter is an excellent driver, and this would be just the first of many trips we’d take with her at the wheel this weekend.

There is not a Starbucks in Houma, Louisiana that I am aware of, so I was delighted to go. Coffee is always good, and of course being a smoker, our designated seats were outside. The weather was beautiful, the coffee was good, and I was still bouncing and vibrating from my drive to Houston. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the potholes in the roads. Bush being President and from Texas it was too obvious that fact had been of no benefit for road repair and maintenance. I am happy to report that Louisiana is no longer, I repeat, IS NO LONGER the only state in the Union with potholes and road repair issues.

Jessiebelle and her daughter soon noticed that I changed topics of conversation almost every minute; topics jumped around so sporadically that I sounded like a radio that someone had pushed the scan button trying to chose a channel. My excitement of actually sitting and having coffee with Jessiebelle live and in person was more than obvious. We finished our coffee, and Jessiebelle’s daughter drove us on one of the many scenic routes back to their lovely home.

I have not been in Houston since the early 1980’s, and as far as I am concerned it could be six separate cities. It is just HUGE.

I followed Jessiebelle to the hotel, got checked in, and we left my vehicle, and we were on the road again. Amazing as it sounds, where Jessiebelle lives is like a separate city from Houston proper.

Later that evening, Jessiebelle’s son and daughter actually wanted McDonalds for dinner, and Jessiebelle and I went out to eat Mexican food. There is no good Mexican food in Houma, Louisiana, but I assure everyone that there is in Houston, and I attempted to eat way more than one person should at one meal. I am delighted to say that Jessiebelle has a hearty appetite too, so I did not feel like the Lone Ranger.