My Trip to Houston May 8 to June 9 2007

My Trip to Houston May 8 to June 9 2007

First things first, Brenda and I ready for Numbers the Friday after I arrive, we do polar opposites in fashion

mother's day and Sarah's birthday

Sarah having a little pampering

a few shots from my jewelry party

a power substation down the street from my hotel exploded, no one injured but no electricity for hours

Jason, Brie, Mel and I go to see Dave Seaman, excellent show

Mike arrives and we have a road trip to Austin to visit Alex, do a gym jam for parkour training and visit David and Debbie, it's such a beautiful drive. Texas really is a pretty place.

we arrive in Austin at Brenda's apartment and enjoy a nice double apple shisha hookah with the kids, there is shisha in Delhi in most of the resto-bars but Nick mixed the smoothest pipe ever. Shisha is a mild flavoured tobacco most commonly apple, mint, strawberry but you can get a range of wild flavours as well. I enjoy it rarely as tobacco plus asthma is not a healthy thing regularly. I really wanted to try it in Kuwait as they had guys carrying around swinging pots of hot coals for the shisha pipes at every table. No one else wanted to though and it's definitely a communal thing. They should take some lessons from Nick.

we brought Alex a Smaug t-shirt from the Hobbit Cafe

then we went to the Hula Hut for dinner and a couple of drinks, Nick got his drink in a fishbowl

Matt joins us

after dinner we get ready to head to 6th street, the Jackelope and then Elysium

Ryan naps up before going outI'm apparently going out with a large orange hat

Brenda gets readyMike is ready already...er

breakfast the next morning

Later off to the Parkour training with Alex....fun...small injury...but fun

Alex explains things. I'd like to say here that as I've told Alex many times over the years, he should consider directing his education towards teaching. If you can teach family you can teach anyone I think as it's least easy to be patient with family and he was very patient with me and very easy to understand. I think he'd make a great teacher.

Alex starts me on the basics. He starts with rolls which he says are important, I think I mastered those pretty well

and then vaults

the low vault is where I hurt my thumb, doing exactly what Alex said not to do, trying to vault on my fingertips

regular thumbinjured thumb, and what a weird injury, it bruised at the joint by the hand, the center joint and in the soft tissue between the thumb and forefinger, my hand swelled to the center of the top of the hand and was discolored - Alex said there was no whining in parkour but that was just until I got there

still having fun though

then underbars

pop vaults - got some extra tips on these from another guy, in fact there was input from several people on most things, people seemed pretty willing to help

then gap jumping

Alex can jump an impressive distance

then there was a game of tag and grappling neither of which I participated in

Alex does a flip into the foam pit, very stinky in theresome of these guys are really flexible

another person ices an injury

The gym jam over we head to David and Debbie's at Canyon Lake, I love that house but they are selling it so it may be the last time we get to enjoy the beauty there