A Texas riot

DAY 13 MAY 14, 2009

Shortly after 10 am, we headed to Will Rogers Airport to say goodbye to our new France friend David. His tour drew to a close and needed to fly back home. He was a pleasure to have along and he wants to come back next year.

We headed to Chickasha, OK to have a hearty buffet for lunch at Western Sizzlin Steakhouse. Okay so it has steakhouse in the name, what great plains restaurant doesn't? After that Ron checked out the models. The air was unstable so he was hoping for a nighttime storm to pop up somewhere near the Oklahoma/Texas border. However, the sky was overcast and I never did like overcast days.

We headed southwest on I44, made a quick stop in Lawton, then continued west on hwy 62 towards Altus. Along the way, Ron saw something unusual. An old armchair was near the road. So what does a chaser do waiting for the cap to break? Ron checked out the chair for any little critters and snakes, grabbed an old storm chaser handbook, his coffee and a roll of toilet paper and sat down in the chair looking pretty relaxed. We took some pics of him with the Witchita Mountains in behind. We then continued towards Altus and made another stop near the Altus Air Force Base to get some shots of the jets flying in.

We crossed the Texas border and stopped so that David, Louise and Michelle could get their picture taken by the state sign, while the rest of us took pictures of beautiful Texas wildflowers and little critters. We headed to Vernon and stopped by the train tracks because Jack enjoys trains, aside from storms. Sandra almost stepped in a fire ant mound. These buggers were almost everywhere, so I went back to the van since I was paranoid about getting a "love bite" LOL. After, we headed to Wichita Falls and booked our rooms. We then went to the Olive Garden for dinner. I helped myself to some stuffed mushrooms and a glass of wine. Before long, ice cubes started flying past me. Leave it up to Pam to stir up a riot! Soon, Sandra and Rita started throwing ice cubes. One made it down Sandra's shirt. Is this another hail simulation exercise? I know we need some wicked storms, but I didn't think the SDS was this bad! LOL! I decided to toss one at Pam and it somehow made it down her shirt. Bullseye! Luckily, the manager and server were in good spirits. Afterall, cleaning up ice is much easier than cleaning up messy food. Just thank goodness we were practically the only customers around. We headed back to the motel to wait for any storms to develop along a boundary. Unfortunately it was getting late, and nothing ever did fire up in the area.