In Corpus again, five years later
I'm in Corpus Christi again this week, five years after my last visit (which means five years since we graduated college!) Freaking crazy.
I rode down today on the team bus - we play a friendly against an amateur team at the baseball stadium here on Thursday night. I needed to download audio from our radio station so that our video crew could match them up with the video highlights from last Saturday, which had only been provided to us in Spanish.
Unfortunately, my wireless card - which intrepidly maintained some sort of signal almost the whole trip - was operating at super slow speeds through most of the nothingness that separates Houston and Corpus Christi. It was seriously an accomplishment to watch the download rate rise above 4 kb/second. At one point, I watched the download rate accelerate to 8 kbps and back down to its more normal 2 as we neared, reached, and then drove away from a broadcast tower of some sort.
I gave up at some point, when I realized we were closer to Corpus than the time remaining on the download. When we got here, I quickly downloaded the file and got in touch with my video guys. They said they had already downloaded it themselves and edited the highlights! Great news, but a lot of stress for nothing.
I've got to say, this city didn't really impress on the way in. A lot of depressed-looking coastal stuff. The stadium looked nice from the bridge, although I don't know that the soccer field is going to impress a lot of people.
I had some work to do in the hotel, then went out to dinner with the people from our staff down here working the game. There were 12 of us, so we had a whole table reserved at this place right near the ballpark. I ordered chicken-fried steak, but when it came it had gravy slathered all over it. I guess I should have expected that, but I didn't. Ate it anyway, but it was kind of a pain.
We went around the table playing the movie game - you have to name a movie, and the next person names a movie that begins with (a) the same letter if the previous movie was one word or (b) the last letter of the last word of the previous movie name. Then we made some permutations that using the letter twice (e.g. Wayne's World) would switch the order of play. Then if the movie title had four words or more, you got to pick the next player and the letter they were on. A little bizarre, but it was kind of fun. One guy lost a lot of man points for naming Sleepless in Seattle and Miss Congeniality, but I think I lost a few for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days ... I panicked!
Then we came back to the hotel and broke up into smaller groups. A few of us walked to this Irish pub, walking along the same street on which we wandered by the Banc so many years ago, and I could see the two-tier Whataburger looming in the distance. No Whataburger on this night, however - we watched the end of the Stanley Cup finals at the pub, then I walked one of the girls back so she felt safe and I went back to my room.
Game tomorrow, then a long ride back to Houston, then the World Cup in the morning, then RBG arrive at night, and US-England on Saturday. Heck of a week.
I rode down today on the team bus - we play a friendly against an amateur team at the baseball stadium here on Thursday night. I needed to download audio from our radio station so that our video crew could match them up with the video highlights from last Saturday, which had only been provided to us in Spanish.
Unfortunately, my wireless card - which intrepidly maintained some sort of signal almost the whole trip - was operating at super slow speeds through most of the nothingness that separates Houston and Corpus Christi. It was seriously an accomplishment to watch the download rate rise above 4 kb/second. At one point, I watched the download rate accelerate to 8 kbps and back down to its more normal 2 as we neared, reached, and then drove away from a broadcast tower of some sort.
I gave up at some point, when I realized we were closer to Corpus than the time remaining on the download. When we got here, I quickly downloaded the file and got in touch with my video guys. They said they had already downloaded it themselves and edited the highlights! Great news, but a lot of stress for nothing.
I've got to say, this city didn't really impress on the way in. A lot of depressed-looking coastal stuff. The stadium looked nice from the bridge, although I don't know that the soccer field is going to impress a lot of people.
I had some work to do in the hotel, then went out to dinner with the people from our staff down here working the game. There were 12 of us, so we had a whole table reserved at this place right near the ballpark. I ordered chicken-fried steak, but when it came it had gravy slathered all over it. I guess I should have expected that, but I didn't. Ate it anyway, but it was kind of a pain.
We went around the table playing the movie game - you have to name a movie, and the next person names a movie that begins with (a) the same letter if the previous movie was one word or (b) the last letter of the last word of the previous movie name. Then we made some permutations that using the letter twice (e.g. Wayne's World) would switch the order of play. Then if the movie title had four words or more, you got to pick the next player and the letter they were on. A little bizarre, but it was kind of fun. One guy lost a lot of man points for naming Sleepless in Seattle and Miss Congeniality, but I think I lost a few for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days ... I panicked!
Then we came back to the hotel and broke up into smaller groups. A few of us walked to this Irish pub, walking along the same street on which we wandered by the Banc so many years ago, and I could see the two-tier Whataburger looming in the distance. No Whataburger on this night, however - we watched the end of the Stanley Cup finals at the pub, then I walked one of the girls back so she felt safe and I went back to my room.
Game tomorrow, then a long ride back to Houston, then the World Cup in the morning, then RBG arrive at night, and US-England on Saturday. Heck of a week.
posted by Jon at
23:56
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