The Family Sideways: Tubing weekend.

Tubing weekend. 6/12/2006 07:50:00 AM

This weekend we escaped Houston for the penultimate (I love that word) time to visit my friend Greg and his wife Meghan and their two adorable girls in New Braunfels, TX, a nice little town right between Austin and San Antonio.

We arrived Friday night, had a few beers and caught up, the big plan being a lazy day of tubing down the river on Saturday. Woke up Saturday and played with the girls, Anna and Kate, until it was time to head to the river. We bought 2 18-packs of Coors Light, planning on two floats down the river (of about 2 hours each). Some of us loaded up with sunscreen, we inflated the tubes, and we were off.

I was pretty surprised at just how many people there were floating down the river. At some points (more the case during our second float then our first) the river was so crowded with people in tubes one had to literally squeeze through just to keep moving. I felt like I was at Spring Break or something, and the peoplewatching was excellent.

After the first time down the river I realized just how sunburned I was going to be and slathered on some more sunscreen, but when the Texas sun gets it in its mind to burn you, burn it does. I'm a lobster-man.

We came home after the second float (thanks for driving and otherwise being responsible, Meghan), relieved the babysitter for a while, and Meghan and I played with the girls while Dana and Greg slept it off a little. Showers and the reappearance of the babysitter meant it was again time to go, and we headed to a great restaurant in Gruene, TX, for a quick beer at the Hoity-Toit, a highlight of my last visit to Greg and Meghan (about 6 years ago), and back home.

Sunday was a lazy day with more playtime (somehow Greg worked up the stamina to head out for another float on Sunday), and D and I packed up and left, leaving the girls (with mom) in the backyard with the inflatable pool and swingset to keep them company.

Dana and I couldn't stop saying how glad we were that we got out of town one last time, and how we should have taken the time earlier in the year to go visit. But better late than never!

We got home and I crashed on the bed for a while, woke up and did some work installing dotNetNuke locally to get a feel for the program, and started to configure it. It was a LOT easier than I thought it would be, actually, so once I get a little more comfortable I'll do my best to get it up and running at my private host so Dana and I can escape the confines of blogger once and for all.

Dana packed a box or two last night but I let the responsibility of packing escape me for one last weekend before the big push this coming weekend. Truthfully we're doing very well, and since we're having guests for dinner sometime this week I have an excuse to not pack up the kitchen (though a good amount of our kitchen stuff is already packed up).

More later. Back to work.

Thanks again to Greg and Meghan for the great weekend. I'll get that info on Steamboat's "kids fly free" program, if they're still doing it.

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