Saturday Wheel Rolling In Gateway Park Before Town Talking Texas Grapefruit

For the first time in a long time I was back at my favorite Saturday photo op location in Gateway Park, prior to a visit to Town Talk.

Damage from a windstorm way back in late September, or was it early October, was the start of a long Gateway Park bike riding drought.

I saw the remains of a lot of chainsawed fallen trees today.

And the carpet of fallen leaves obliterated the trail in multiple locations, making the wheel rolling a bit more challenging than it is on a leaf free trail.

Post Thanksgiving Saturday at Town Talk was the most un-busy I've ever seen Town Talk on a Saturday.

Today's Town Talk Treasure Hunting yielded 6 cases of yogurt, 2 bags of Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit, extra sharp white cheddar cheese, 8 bags of beans, tofu, onions, carrots and bacon.

One thing I learned today was it is not an easy task to handle 6 cases of yogurt. That and I prefer my bike trails to be free of leaves.

Yesterday I Found A Long Lost Treasure Of Texas Bashing

Recently, if I remember right, I made mention of the fact that Google in the past few days has caused me to open every webpage that exists inside my durangotexas.com domain.

I did not realize, or remember, that some of those webpages are well over a decade old, with me having little memory of making them.

One of those webpages is titled Texas Bashing.

I do not remember how or by what means, but somehow I solicited comments bashing and counter-bashing Texas. Why would anyone have found this webpage bashing Texas and then react with comments?

Even stranger, apparently at some point the Texas Bashing website was used by another website, called plastic.com, in an article about bashing Texas. People then reacted with comments to the plastic.com article, which I then added to the Texas Bashing webpage. Clicking on plastic.com I found that website no longer exists, and so I did not turn it into an active link.

Below are a few examples of comments on the Texas Bashing webpage. On the Texas Bashing webpage I add my own comment to each comment. I can tell by my counter comments that early on in my adjustment to the culture shock of Texas I was much harsher in my opinionating than I am nowadays, well over a decade later...

I've lived in Texas (Austin, arguably "not really Texas") for six years. In Texas, you can buy Texas-shaped pasta, Texas-shaped tortilla chips, and Texas-shaped cheese in any grocery store. If you market beer or trucks in Texas, chances are your jingles appeal to Texas pride and have the word "Texas" in it at least five times. I don't know of any other state that's so insular and into itself. As somewhat of an outsider, I find it fascinating. Can you buy food products that come in the shape of your state? (Colorado and Wyoming, you don't count.) This is not a rhetorical question, I really want to know.

And.....

Where I grew up (Oklahoma), Texas-bashing was a favorite pastime. Why do people like to insult Texas? Because the average Texan will happily tell everyone they meet that "we're the only state that was once a separate country". Like that's something to be proud of? We also didn't appreciate being considered 'North Texas' by a lot of people (especially Texans).

Plus what may be my favorite comment...

Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Heaven, God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel found him, resting on the seventh day. He inquired of God, "Where have you been?" God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, "Look, Michael, look what I've made." Archangel Michael looked puzzled and said, "What is it?" "It's a planet," replied God," and I've put Life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a great place of balance." "Balance?", inquired Michael, still confused. God explained,  pointing to different parts of earth, "For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth while southern Europe is going to be poor; the Middle East over there will be a hot spot. Over there I've placed a continent of white people and over there is a continent of black people." God continued, pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely hot and arid." The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a large land mass and said, "What's that one?" "Ah," said God. "That's Texas, the most glorious place on Earth. There are beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, sunsets and rolling plains. The people from Texas are going to be modest, intelligent, and humorous and they are going to be found traveling the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, and high-achieving, and they will be known all throughout the world as diplomats and carriers of peace," Michael gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed, "what about balance, God? You said there would be balance!" God replied wisely, "Wait until you see the crazy bunch I'm putting next to them in Louisiana.

A Late In The Day Tandy Hills Hike Has Me Pondering Why Downtown Fort Worth Is A Ghost Town Today

An observant person might look at the photo you see here and deduce, due to the long shadow, that the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Thin Man had himself a late in the afternoon Black Friday hill hike today.

That observant person would have deduced correctly.

The Tandy Hills looks different late in the day than it looks under the more direct noon day sun. I rather liked seeing the sun so low on the horizon, creating dark shadows where usually I see no shadows.

During my regular hiking time today I was busy doing my Black Friday shopping. It took me about 15 minutes to complete this year's Christmas shopping.

Speaking of Christmas shopping, and who isn't, when the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth came in to view I stopped to snap the picture you see below.

Last year, on the day after Thanksgiving, I drove to downtown Fort Worth to document the least busy big city downtown in America on the busiest shopping day of the year. I doubt there were any more shoppers in downtown Fort Worth today, since there still are no big stores in downtown Fort Worth. Let alone any vertical malls.

Yesterday Google caused me to happen to look at the Green With Envy webpage I long ago made, documenting numerous instances of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram claiming some totally ordinary thing about Fort Worth was making the rest of the world green with envy, or the envy of other towns far and wide.

It had been so long since I'd looked at the Green With Envy webpage that I'd forgotten how many instances of that bizarre propaganda I'd seen. And I'd totally forgotten about all the amusing comments from people equally perplexed.

Near as I can tell the Star-Telegram never fesses up to any of its tom foolery of the propaganda sort. Whether it's a big headline announcing the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, with the headline saying this would turn Fort Worth into the Vancouver of the South.

No, you reading this who have actually been to Vancouver, I am not making this up.

Or the Star-Telegram's bizarre claim that a lame little development called the Santa Fe Rail Market was the first public market in Texas, and that it was modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market and public markets in Europe. I knew when I read it that this lame development was not the first public market in Texas, having been to the Dallas Farmers Market, but then I was appalled to learn that this lame development was not even the first public market in Fort Worth.

Any mea culpa apology from the Star-Telegram?

Nope.

And then there was the Cabela's Boondoggle. The Star-Telegram trumpeted over and over again that this sporting goods store would be the #1 tourist attraction in Texas. A short time later another Cabela's opened, in Buda, by Austin. And now the Fort Worth Cabela's is not even the only Cabela's in the D/FW Metroplex.

Any mea culpa apology from the Star-Telegram?

Nope.

Lately the Star-Telegram has been going along with the local propagandists' touting that due to some totally bogus "award" that Fort Worth has the TOP Downtown in America. It did not take much digging to find the award submission that was submitted by the Fort Worth propagandists was full of absurd claims, ridiculous lies, such as claiming that downtown Fort Worth's new little plaza attracts millions of visitors a year. Sort of like the imaginary millions attracted to that #1 sporting goods store tourist attraction.

Today is the day which renders this TOP Downtown in America nonsense totally absurd. Like I have already said, on the busiest shopping day of the year downtown Fort Worth is a ghost town. How can the Top Downtown in America have zero department stores, few places to shop?

The town I lived in before moving to Texas, Mount Vernon, has a downtown about the same size as Fort Worth's. With a much bigger river. Mount Vernon's population is around 30,000. Fort Worth's is around 800,000.

When I was growing up, in Burlington, across the river, north of Mount Vernon, Mount Vernon was the Big City in the valley. Downtown Mount Vernon had a Penney's, a Sears, a Woolworth's and a Montgomery Wards, along with multiple other stores. And a couple grocery stores.

In the 1990s all of downtown Mount Vernon's department stores headed north, to Burlington. My old hometown became the retail hub of the Skagit Valley, with a mall, outlet center, Costco, K-mart,  Fred Meyer, Target, new grocery stores. Even a Krispy Kreme.

Is this what happened to downtown Fort Worth? I know there used to be a department store in downtown Fort Worth called Leonard's.

Would it not be a more appropriate behavior if the Star-Telegram, rather than touting absurd claims that just are not true, instead editorialized reality based ideas about Fort Worth? Such as what could Fort Worth do to actually turn its downtown into one of the Top Downtown's in America?

Things like fix the Heritage Park Eyesore. Things like making it appealing to live in downtown Fort Worth. Things like figuring out why downtown Fort Worth has no department stores. Or grocery stores. Things like figuring out why downtown Fort Worth is a ghost town on the busiest shopping day of the year....

Today's Totally Tacky Look At Texas Will Not Include A Visit To Black Friday's Loneliest Downtown In America

The past few days Google has had me motivated to do something I have not done in years. As in open all the webpages that exist under my durangotexas.com domain.

We are talking hundreds upon hundreds of webpages. Some of which were initially made late in the previous century, as in early on in my Exile in Texas.

One of the webpages that I had not looked at in years is titled Totally Tacky Texas.

Apparently before I found myself adjusted to the Texas culture shock I found a lot of things that I came across to be a bit tacky. This all seems quaint to me now, like I was operating out of my naive innocence, or something like that.

One of the tacky things I made note of is still being tacky all these years later, that being the long abandoned eyesore in the Fort Worth Stockyards called the New Isis Theater.

The blurb I wrote about the New Isis Theater sort of sounds like the type stuff I am still saying, all these years later....

The example of Texas Tacky to your left is in Fort Worth's Stockyards. There is an abandoned theater on Main Street in the heart of the Stockyard's 'Historical District' called, ironically, the 'New Isis'. This theater appears to have long been abandoned, broken windows covered with plywood as per the Fort Worth standard for abandoned buildings. To add to the tackiness semi-current messages are put on the marquee. On one side the sign says 'Welcome to the Historic Fort Worth Stockyards', while the other side announces 'Christmas in the Stockyards', which would be fine, except this sign still says this, on the first day of spring, 2002, well after Christmas. It is difficult to understand how a major city would allow such an eyesore to exist in the heart of its main claim to tourist fame. Particularly an eyesore with such renovation possibilities. Where is the civic pride? Perhaps a city government group could be sent to other towns to see how they manage to fix such problems. Any of the tourist towns in Washington state would suffice, or any of the tourist towns on Highway 49 in California. Or any of the tourist towns in Colorado, Utah, Arizona or New Mexico. Or just stay in Texas and find out how the town of Archer City managed to renovate their town's famous theater.

If I were to update Totally Tacky Texas in 2014 I would need to add the eyesore that Fort Worth's Heritage Park has become. Along with some of that which the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle has wrought, like the shoddy looking Cowtown Wakepark, the also shoddy looking Coyote Drive-In, and let's not forget that also shoddy location where The Boondoggle has its Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats, with its outhouses and over all junky looking layout.

I think I'd also add Arlington's Dallas Cowboy Stadium to a 2014 update of Totally Tacky Texas. Sticking a stadium at that location, with urban blight on two of its four sides, across the street  from a Super Walmart, not to mention the outrageously tacky abuse of eminent domain which was used to take the land upon which the stadium sprouted, is all very tacky.

Well, all this tacky talk has brought me to the time of day where I am off to do something tacky, as in participate in the Black Friday mayhem. But I won't be Having Fun Looking For Black Friday Shoppers Today In Downtown Fort Worth like I did a year ago today....

Have Yourself A Very Merry Warm Thanksgiving

No, that is not me cross country skiing, enjoying the slippery results of today's Thanksgiving Weekend Ice Storm.

No Thanksgiving Weekend Ice Storm has arrived at my location in North Texas, yet.

That is me cross country skiing several years ago when I lived in a far north Fort Worth suburb, the hamlet of Haslet.

The house was in Haslet, the mailbox was across the street in Fort Worth.

From this location the puny skyline of downtown Fort Worth could be seen, looking like little sticks sticking up on the horizon.

I recollect finding it odd that Fort Worth sprawled so far out in the country. This was one of the first Fort Worth things to strike me as odd. Little did I know, way back then, how long that list of odd Fort Worth things would become.

If I remember right the last time I slid on my cross country skis was a few years back, sliding down the hills in Arlington's Veterans Park.

Recently I discovered my cross country skis had partly delaminated, rendering them likely useless, though I've not had the snowy opportunity to test that potential uselessness. I had stored the skis in a storage area which was not climate controlled. I'm assuming the HEAT of summer caused the delamination.

On Tuesday I was unable to find any turkey smaller than 20 pounds. I don't recollect roasting a bird that big before. It barely fit in the roasting pan. I started the former gobbler roasting at 7 this morning, shoving it in the oven before going swimming in the hot tub.

I am expecting the turkey to be golden brown and ready for consumption approximately five hours after the oven insertion time.

Every year I say I am not going to go through the bother of cooking a turkey. This year I was sure I was going to bake a couple of the new style family size Marie Callender turkey pot pies for Thanksgiving. But, that plan went awry when I saw all the turkeys in Walmart waiting to be brought home by someone.

Anyway, I hope everyone has themselves a might fine Thanksgiving today....

Spencer Jack's Walk Across The Skagit River Has Me Freshly Pondering Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggle

This morning due to photo evidence I found on Facebook I thought Spencer Jack was in Eastern Washington, east of the mountains in Washington lingo, in the themed tourist town of Leavenworth.

I blogged about this this morning on one of my other blogs in a blogging titled Spencer Jack Taking His Snowy Thanksgiving Turkey To Leavenworth.

And now, late this afternoon, incoming email from Spencer Jack's dad, my favorite nephew, Jason, seems to indicate that Spencer Jack is back in Mount Vernon, with the primary evidence of that being the picture you see above.

The email contained no explanatory text.

Above Spencer Jack is standing on the Skagit River bridge which connects Downtown Mount Vernon to West Mount Vernon. As you can see, the Skagit River at this location is a big river. A big, free flowing river. The size of the river you see here is not the result of any type of dam.

This particular Skagit River bridge was built in less than four years. Built over water. A lot of water. All of the Skagit River bridges were built over water, in less than four years.

I really think it might behoove Fort Worth to send out some sort of task force to more advanced parts of America, like Mount Vernon, to see how those more advanced parts of America manage to build things, like bridges, far faster than Fort Worth's dawdling Three Bridges Over Nothing and their four years til completion before an un-needed flood diversion channel finally can be dug so that water can be added under the bridges.

In the second picture Spencer Jack is still on the Skagit River Bridge. In this view we are looking south at part of the Skagit River Vision's completed riverside walkway. In the picture you can not see the plaza, which is in the distance to the south.

It only took Mount Vernon a couple years to see its Skagit River Vision. Fort Worth began dawdling on its hard to see vision early in this century. Well over a decade later there really is not much to see of Fort Worth's fuzzy vision.

Well, there is the traffic mess being caused by those Three Bridges Over Nothing finally being under construction. I have not experienced the traffic mess. I read about it in Fort Worth Weekly. Apparently drivers who have noted how dangerously bad the detours are have tried to get the city and J.D. Granger to fix the problem.

To no avail.

I recollect J.D. Granger saying words to the effect that he had used his advanced engineering skills to engineer a project which would cause motorists no woes.

Will nothing short of the voters finally wising up and un-electing his mother get J.D. Granger fired from a job he is clearly not qualified to do, as evidenced by the ongoing displays of ineptness?

You can listen to J.D.'s traffic assurances in the YouTube video at the end of a blogging from a week or two ago titled A Big Boom Begins Boondoggle Bridge Construction Three Months Late.....

Confessions Of A Thanksgiving Party Pumpkin Pie Baker Gone Bad

On the left you are looking at a rare late afternoon look through the bars of my patio prison cell.

As you can see, I am not currently in the hot tub. Or pool.

I suspect when the sun leaves for the day I may find myself having a salubrious soak in the hot tub.

This blogging thing is such a burdensome responsibility. If I don't hit the publish button on a blogging by a certain time I start getting emails, text messages and phone calls inquiring about my well being.

Up til an hour or two ago my head was feeling like it might explode. This potential explosion was made more possible when I added to the head pressure by trying to fix some serious problems on the index page of my #1 website.

Apparently tablets and phones running Google's Android do not like webpages with table upon table nested inside tables.

By around noon I got the index page fixed and tablet worthy. I think. So, I decided to roll my wheels around my neighborhood. I thought that would fix the headache. Instead it made it worse.

So, what caused this horrific pain that has now abated? Well, last night I found myself at a pumpkin pie baking party. At that party I was given various adult libations. Whilst I was drinking these adult libations it did not seem like a bad idea. By morning it became obvious I should not drink adult libations while helping bake pumpkin pies.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, and who isn't? I just got back from ALDI. I have never seen  ALDI so busy, nor ALDI's parking lot nearly full. When I left my abode I saw that I-820 was a stalled traffic jam heading north. When I left ALDI I had intended to return via westbound I-30. However when I got to the freeway entry I saw that I-30 was also a stalled traffic jam, as far as I could see in both directions.

Is this day before Thanksgiving bad traffic a prelude to traffic gridlock on Black Friday? Will the only means to escape the crowded roads and crowded stores be to take a Fort Worth bus to downtown Fort Worth, the least busy big city downtown in America on the busiest shopping day of the year?

I must go boil some cranberries now.....

Elsie Hotpepper's Bud Kennedy Cheerleading Turkey Nightmares Led Me To Why So Few Texans Vote

Last night Elsie Hotpepper sent me a disturbing text message informing me that she was unable to sleep due to the fact that she could not erase the disturbing image of Bud Kennedy in a pleated skirt, with ankle socks stuck in saddle shoes, wearing a Fort Worth logo-ed sweater doing cheerleader routines for Fort Worth's Godfather of the Good Ol' Boy Network, Ed Bass.

To which I texted back with a simple, 'HUH?"

To which Elsie texted that the nightmare image came from reading the 2014 Fort Worth Weekly Turkey Awards.

Since I had no idea what Elsie was talking about and since I had no memory of anything in the Turkey Awards having to do with Bud Kennedy wearing a skirt, I decided I must not have read the Fort Worth Weekly 2014 Turkey Awards with the attention level  they deserved.

And so I took a fresh look.

The first  thing I noticed that I'd not noticed before was that which I screencapped above, the text of which I will copy below...

The Big Bird Goes to: Non-Voters

This year’s dedication of the Big Bird, our sweepstakes Turkey, will be short and sour. It goes to the 83 percent of registered voters in Texas who stayed home on Nov. 4. Any organization — whether it’s the Democratic Party or the Republicans,  a church, a bunch of mega-corporations or the Mafia — that gathers too much power soon gets up to no good. At a time when this state is playing a major role in pollution and energy controversies that could affect the whole world via climate change, allowing so much power to concentrate in one party severely reduces the public debate on those and many other issues. And that’s what those who stayed home in November helped make happen.

Texas having the lowest voter turnout in the nation is a bit appalling, particularly when one looks at the result of the election. After the election I read an apropos blurb in, I think, the Washington Post, which may help explain the low voter turnout in Texas....

States where turnout is higher have a few things in common: Their populations are better educated, which correlates with higher turnout, and they have implemented rules that make it easier to vote, McDonald said. Maine, Wisconsin and Minnesota — all top turnout states — allow eligible citizens to register to vote on Election Day.

Well, there you go, quite simple, the Texas low voter turnout is yet one more bad result that comes about due to the population of Texas not being as well educated as those who received their educations in states with more progressive education standards.

And then I found that which gave the long suffering Elsie Hotpepper her nightmares....

Cheering a Big Land-Gobble

Bud Kennedy has been at this game long enough to get away with pretty much anything. And most of the time, the veteran Startlegram columnist comes from a good place. But when the civic discourse turned to the new arena at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in the Cultural District, Kennedy donned his saddle shoes, ankle socks, pleated skirt, and FW-emblazoned sweater and cheered on Ed Bass, the power broker behind the $450 million (and counting) monstrosity. In Kennedy’s July 18 remembrance of the Fort Worth Convention Center –– the structure that the 14,000-seat arena is supposedly replacing –– he managed to leave out a few pesky facts: that parking is at a premium in the jam-packed neighborhood and, much worse, that the public had little to no say about it, even though millions of taxpayer dollars had already been spent on infrastructure. On Nov. 4 voters easily approved the arena (including $225 million as the city’s share). Kennedy should have been calling bullshit on yet another sneaky, screw-the-little-people play. Did he uncharacteristically not do his homework, or was he kowtowing to his employer, which has a long record of kissing up to the power players?

I really do not understand why so many people pick on good ol' Bud Kennedy. Some have even taken to calling him Dud, rather than Bud. Mr. Kennedy works for  the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Why would anyone expect him not to act as a propaganda purveyor when his bosses deem some local issue needs a cheerleading spin?

Bud Kennedy is an excellent food critic due to being a professional food consumer. He writes at a voluminous level of prolific-ness which is astounding, including finding the time to play hall monitor on his Facebook page.

Some suspect there may be more than one Bud Kennedy, due to instances such as thousands seeing him on a parade float at the same time he's posting a plate of food he's consuming in a Dallas eatery. That type thing, while also deleting inappropriate comments from his Facebook page.

I do have to agree with the Fort Worth Weekly Turkey Award awarders that it is a bit odd that Bud Kennedy went along with the Multi-Purpose Arena scheme, man of the people that he be, and what with that Arena being sold as a replacement for the Convention Center Arena, which the propagandists claimed could not hold enough ticket buyers to attract major acts, but somehow the new arena, which can hold an additional two thousand ticket buyers, will somehow attract those acts which previously avoided Fort Worth like the plague.

Has anyone considered the possibility that there may be other reasons than arena size why major acts opt not to appear in Fort Worth and choose instead other venues in Dallas and Arlington? Venues that can hold way more than the 14,000 Fort Worth's new arena may hold if it actually ever gets built....

Banana Hunting Instead Of Bike Riding Or Tandy Hill Hiking Today

I had intended to ride my bike on my neighborhood trails, well, roads, today, but by the time the noon rolling time rolled around the temperature was barely at the half century mark, with a slight wind blowing, and so I bailed on the biking and opted to walk to Albertsons on a banana hunt instead.

I doubt the Tandy Hills has dried out from this past weekend's deluge, so hill hiking did not cross my mind, that is until I checked in on Facebook and saw a post from the co-Godfather of the Tandy Hills, Philip Hennen.

Mr. Hennen posted three late in the day Tandy Hills photos along with a recommendation, saying "These sunny, late Fall days are perfect for getting lost at Tandy Hills Natural Area. I recommend late afternoon just before sundown which is about 5:30 P.M., these days."

I have hill hiked the Tandy Hills near the sundown time frame a time or two. I don't know when or why my regular Tandy Hills hike time became repetitively in the noon time frame.

That late in the afternoon light and shadows make for a much less harshly lit hiking experience than doing ones hill hiking under the glare of the noonday sun. That and the need for sunscreen is greatly lessened.

I am trying real hard to be less of a creature of repetitive habit, but I fear time shifting my hill hiking by several hours would be way too dire a change for my delicate sensibilities....

A Duck Walk With The Fosdick Lake Turtles Over Fosdick Falls

The duck population populating Fort Worth's Fosdick Lake in Oakland Lake Park seems to have soared since my last visit.

I assume ducks flying south for the winter use Fosdick Lake as a way station. Or is Fosdick Lake the duck's final destination?

There were plenty of duck feeders feeding the quackers today, including the trio you see here.

Yesterday's copious rain raised the water level in my pool, but not its temperature. The hot tub's water level, and temperature, seemed unaffected by yesterday's rain.

The water level of Fosdick Lake, like my swimming pool, was affected by yesterday's rain, raising the lake level to the point that water was roaring over Fort Worth's biggest waterfall, Fosdick Falls. You can witness Fosdick Falls falling in the video below.

But, before we get to the video, I was pleased to see the Fosdick turtles had come out of their cold hiding places and were back enjoying sunbathing on their favorite log in the balmy almost 70 degrees. I hope the turtles enjoy their sunny break while it lasts, before they get blasted by this afternoon's predicted gale force blow.

Last night, in the middle of the night, 3am to be precise, my phone made its incoming text message type noise. I woke up the phone expecting some dire message, but instead saw an Urgent Wind Warning from AccuWeather.

At 3am AccuWeather sent out a Wind Advisory for wind expected to blow hard 11 hours later. I can't be the only one who finds this annoying. And idiotic.

We are coming up now on one in the afternoon. A slight breeze is blowing. I may be un-installing the AccuWeather App from my phone....