44 Hours in Dallas

One of the little perks of Melanie's job is that she gets to give speeches from time to time in different cities, and once in a while I get to tag along ("cadillacking"). This May found us in Dallas, Texas for a long/working weekend. We made the most of our short trip.

The trip almost didn't happen for me. To get a realistic fare I had to book a flight on Delta around the same time Melanie and co-presenter Ken had a flight on American - no big deal, the flights were about a half hour apart - but at 6:50AM my flight's been cancelled, along with a few other Dallas-bound planes later in the day. Not good - American's booked for the rest of the day, and it looks like I'll be spending some time in Atlanta on the way to Texas. Bah - that gets me to DFW in mid-afternoon, which is a sizable chunk of time out of a less-than-two-day trip. Melanie thinks that if we go to the American gate there's a chance I can get on standby. I see no chance - there's a long line at the gate and all these flights have been cancelled so forget it - we're too late. Melanie hears something in the gate agent's voice which indicates a glimmer of a chance... they'll put me on the list but I have an e-ticket, and they need a printed ticket to switch me over. I demur. No way is this going to work. Melanie insists. I storm off with my luggage, back past security to the Delta counter, to a confused ticket agent who can't fathom what I'm trying to do and attempts to put me on an overbooked flight through Cincinnati. I don't care - I'll get my money back if this doesn't work out. I shuffle half-heartedly back to the gate listening to the final boarding call, and see a semi-circle of expectant travellers surrounding the counter. No way. I'll be damned. They call me and I'm the last one on. Melanie wins.

Earlier in the week we agonized over getting a rental car vs. cabbing it, and decided to go with the rental car as we value our freedom. Dallas/Fort Worth International is about the size of New Hampshire, and it's proud of its new centralized rental car facility, which is about the size of Manchester, NH's own airport and is situated most of the way to Fort Worth. That's fine; it's not quite noon on a hot Saturday and our rooms probably aren't ready anyway, but I'd hate to be in a hurry either coming or going here. The hotel is maybe five miles from the airport, and we wonder if a cab might have been the better choice. I miss the exit to 114 and we meander through trim neighborhoods of brick ramblers past a golf course and back over 114 into Las Colinas, a business development that seems to be built for the types of conferences Melanie's attending. There's a planned lake with a little canal and what looks to be a monorail track on concrete posts. A handful of tall offices and hotels but otherwise flat. I make a wrong turn and we circle the entire complex in about five minutes, arriving at the Omni Mandalay a little after noon.

Texas Bar and Grill It's a decent business hotel, brutally air-conditioned and staffed by kids. The service is a little bit... confused. Nobody knows if there's a waiter in the lounge, or if they're even serving food on a Saturday. We walk across the street to the Texas Bar & Grill, and have a hearty Tex-Mex meal of (real) chalupas and taco salad. The generous portions Texas is known for. We stroll along the little canal, noting that the water taxi service has been discontinued, and wonder how well this little development is doing.

The hotel has a few creaky bicycles for our enjoyment, and we wobble off to see Las Colinas. I haven't been on an actual bicycle in about ten years, and I'd almost forgotten how. My shoulders are still sore from all that balancing. There's a conference center around the lake (by twist of fate the one building Melanie's ever been to in Texas... long story), and the promenade features the Mustangs of Las Colinas, a wonderful sculpture celebrating the freedom of the West and billed as the largest equestrian sculpture in the world.

We negotiate the surprisingly busy roads to a bike path along the muddy river. We agonize over the evening's agenda - the Orioles are playing in Arlington tonight and ace Mike Mussina is pitching, but that's most of the way to Fort Worth and I've heard good things about the Deep Ellum section of Dallas... and Ken's probably not going to want to go to the baseball game anyway, so what are we going to do?

Wiffle ball home run We do it all. Melanie and I hop in the car and head West on 30 to Arlington, stopping just long enough to scalp a few five dollar seats (okay for ten dollars) on the ramp leading to the stadium. Good thing we did - the game's sold out, a perfect night for baseball. The stadium feels a lot bigger than Camden Yards back in Baltimore, even though it shares some of the old-school architecture. This is one of those places that sets off fireworks for home runs - which we find out the hard way as ex-Oriole Rafael Palmeiro belts one over the wall. Mike pitches well but ends up on the short end of a 2-1 decision, typical of his season. We hear the end of the game from Route 30, eager to avoid the exit crowd (hey we're on a schedule). We get to hear a lot more radio, as an accident up ahead has shut down two of three lanes, and we get more and more fatigued as the minutes drag on. Dallas winks at us about fifteen miles away, all concrete and glass and light bulbs straight ahead on the horizon.

Las Colinas is about fifteen minutes northwest of Dallas and a bit of a detour off of Route 30, but Ken's up for checking out the Saturday night scene so we stop by the hotel to pick him up. We pass by Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, and it looks pretty sad from the outside - it shows up much better on television than in person. We circle through the web of concrete expressways to the southeast of town before bailing out into the Deep Ellum section we've heard so much about. This is one of the most vibrant scenes I've seen in a while, about fifteen square blocks of hip music venues, rooftop deck parties and swanky clubs. A blues band is playing under an open tent in a corner parking lot. Harleys rumble by. I hand the doorman at Club Dada a twenty for the cover. "What time does the band go on?" "Where you from?" "Uh, Maryland." I pull my ID out. "Where in Maryland?" "Uh, Silver Spring." He slaps the twenty back in my hand. "I'm from Frederick. I'M STILL A NORTHERNER." We've made a new friend. The bar is large and dark - there's a lot of activity but it doesn't feel crowded, and we grab a booth. A good setup - the table's just wide enough for a couple of beers. The band has set up outside; in what would have been the alley between two blocks of businesses is a sprawling courtyard, complete with trees and benches. The trio is called Soul Hat, and they lay down a solid blend of blues, Hendrix and Pearl Jam. The night has cooled off just a little, it's a touch humid, and we stay out late.

Sunday morning finds us at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza - the Texas School Book Depository Building where Oswald assassinated Kennedy in 1963. No pictures allowed; I try to sneak a photo of the button panel in the elevator (two buttons, 1 and 6) but the exposure's all wrong and it doesn't come out. For an extra three bucks we go with the audio tour. Pretty much all of the information on the tape can be found on the murals that guide visitors through the cleared-out brick-lined sixth floor, and the collision of text and items and narration and video soundtracks seeping in get to be a bit too much after a while. The rise of JFK is chronicled over the first third of the exhibit, time slowing down on the eve of his fateful visit to Dallas. The second part of the exhibit sets the stage for the assassination, with a long sequence of frames from the Zapruder film set starkly on a black wall. The reaction and chaos surrounding that weekend hit like a tornado, from the yellowed UPI teletype with its GET OFF GET OFF (the operator trying to clear the lines for news of the shooting) to the film of Oswald taking his own slug. Walter Cronkite removes his glasses. We choke up. It's pretty depressing. The remainder of the exhibit covers the funeral, the investigation (including the cameras that took the famous images) and the conspiracy theories. It's a bit much by the end. Worth checking out, though.

Godzilla's Army Melanie and me among the bikes A family friend has moved to Dallas in the last year, and we meet up with him outside the museum. Bill Herman grew up in my neighborhood outside Buffalo and he's now doing facilities management at the hockey arena. Buffalo's got a spotty record against Dallas in the Big Games... if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We walk a few blocks in the hot sun to the West End Historic District for lunch and come across a tangle of police motorcycles. Cops from all over the U.S. and Mexico are here to show their stuff in a slalom competition.

Bill and Melanie We stroll over to Cadillac Bar for some more Tex Mex as we wait for things to get rolling at the competition. The chips are excellent but the margaritas could use a little more jet fuel... the food's pretty good but I'd have to give the nod to yesterday's lunch at Texas Bar & Grill.

Okay so maybe we're not bike people. These guys are good but it's pretty hot out here, and we split after the second contestant. We walk to the Conspiracy Museum, and the guys at the counter are really happy to see us, but we're all Kennedy'd out for one day and pass on the exhibit. I try to be a sport and buy a coffee mug. We wish Bill well and head back to the hotel to prepare for dinner.

The organization Melanie's speaking for likes to hold a dinner on the eve of each conference, so we dress up nice and head down to the hotel restaurant. The food is good and the conversation gets rolling, but a lot of the talk concerns revenue recognition and pooling and SEC people I don't know. I pretty much keep my mouth shut until the subject turns to travel, and then I go off about New Zealand.

Las Colinas, 6AM My work is done. It's 6AM on Monday and I've got to be at the airport in an hour and a half. I leave Melanie to her speech and place my bags in the care of Delta Air Lines, who promptly lose them. I'm at home by noon, in time for the air conditioning repair guy (another broken wire! yes!) and my evening guitar lesson. I pick up Melanie at the metro at 9PM. We get a phone call at 1AM the next morning - I let the machine pick up, figuring it's the airline. Our bags are wedged in the front storm door when we wake up.

Okay so it's not as funny as Australia. I like Dallas anyway.

Home