Tailgating fun

I should have written this earlier in the week as I can’t remember what we did yesterday let alone last weekend, however at least I do have my photos to remind me :)

We took John, our neighbour who had been left home alone by the family, to go and see Pink Floyd at the Miller Outdoor Theatre. It wasn’t really The Pink Floyd but a group playing their ‘Dark side of the moon’ album. It was great as it free and you bring a rug with your picnic, that Stuart kindly put together, including drinks, and just sit and listen. It was really busy, well much more so than when I went to watch a Shakespeare play last year! We got our spot on the hill and enjoyed the performance and Karen and Dave joined us on our rug. It was pretty good however since I am not very familiar with Pink Floyd I couldn’t really tell you how similar they were to the real thing. In one song the lady vocalist had to sing a long loud note for about 5 minutes and she was really good – I was impressed! It was all over by about 9:30pm so we then went off to the Gingerman to allow Andy his weekly beers, he was also at the concert but we didn’t find him in the crowds. Stuart was over the moon when Karen produced his bag of goodies from the UK – 2 large jars of marmite! Poor Karen’s parent had been used as drug mulls, but that was not Stuart's only import of marmite over the weekend as he also used Emily P!

I finally managed to extract John and Stuart from the bar near midnight - a late night since I was not running until 7am!!

The morning run was mean to be part of another larger group however when we turned up there was no one there! I have only discovered today that none of us had looked at the date and the run was actually on the Sunday morning not the Saturday. That being said we ran the 6 mile route we were going to be doing. Dorte joined us as well but with Amy away were still only a small group of four :)

After a relatively quick turnaround we were back out to go tailgating! Tailgating is an American tradition, if that is the right word. You basically go to a game (in this case American football) early, park up and drop the ‘tailgate’ of your truck and from there you have a BBQ, fryer or anything you can bring really. Some peoples tailgate parties are bigger and better than others. Since Cecelia and Eric and friends are veteran tailgaters ours was pretty cool. They pick a good location in the car park so we had enough room to put out chairs, the grill and the fryer. Eric’s truck was then used as the table for all the food, and let me tell you by the end there was still a lot of food. Cooking started at about 11:30am and the game was not until at least 2:30pm. Everybody brings something to cook and since it was the first time we have had a fryer to cook with, Stuart decided to treat everyone to batter deep fried haggis balls! So he used one of our tins of haggis from the other week, rolled them into balls and covered them in a batter mix. It was as simple as that. They were then lowered into the fryer and in about 5 minutes were done. Also done on the fryer included a whole chicken, which was really good, mozzarella sticks, corn dogs and about anything you can stick in a fryer and cook. The BBQ/grill was seriously underutilised it had to be said. The funny thing is the owner of the fryer is a Dutchman! After we had our fill and more of food we walked across to the football stadium. It was Rice University versus the University of Houston. The stadium was huge but apparently it was built for an event about 20 years ago and since then it has never been filled to capacity. So much so that inside they actually cover the seats behind the goal posts with a large tarpaulin with the Rice Owls logo as they do not require those seats. It was actually really hot by this point in the day, having started off the morning running in long sleeves; it was now in the 30’s with relatively low humidity. We all sat on the bleachers in the sun and watched the game. Even with someone explaining the rules I could not quite get it. There was lots of starting and stopping and each 15 minute quarter took at least 30-45 minutes. The teams each have about 60 players making up the team so they had heaps of substitutes on the side-lines. In the breaks there were the cheerleaders dancing around and standing on each other’s shoulders.

You can see how much I enjoyed it!

Cecelia said lets go after about an hour and a half and I was out of there like a flash! It was an experience and I wanted to go to a game, however, I have done it and next time I will stay in the car park tailgating!! Rugby and even football (soccer) are better in my books.

Sunday morning was also pretty chilly (or maybe that was because of the sunburn from the previous day tailgating), and once again I had to wear long sleeves to go cycling with the boys. I should say I now class chilly as 18 degC or less!! John and I raced off to leaving Bill and Stuart chatting in the back. A while ago Stuart bought Bill a kid’s bike bell, actually a girls bike bell that is light blue with a pink flower. He loves it and all you hear on our ride now is him ting-a-ling along!

In the afternoon we had a visit from the Patton family that were out visiting friends in Houston for a couple of weeks. It was lovely to see them all. We had a BBQ while they went swimming. I say they went swimming as the pool is far too cold of us Houstonians! I think they all had fun and I know the boys also enjoyed playing darts – although the fence behind the board also got a bit of a battering! Once they found the cowboy hats in the house they wanted to become Texan cowboys!!