Day 1 (2018) - Leonardo Has Nothing On Barney

After four and a half years off, the Volk Clan is back on the road for a family road trip. Over the past 4 years life has gotten in the way of our ability to go on trips, and with the kids getting older and Ethan entering the real world next summer we figured this might be the last time to take a true road trip with just the Fab Five (Jive Five? Volk Folk? - haven't really come up with a cool nickname). This time we decided to resurrect an idea that we had considered in the past and are seeing all that Texas has to offer. Well, not all of Texas, as that would take way too long. But the plan that fit into the schedule has us starting out in San Antonio, heading to Houston (via a day in Austin) and then to the Dallas area. Before anyone says "But Austin is great, why aren't you spending more time there?" let me answer that. First, when planning trips I always look for things we can do during the day, so the fact that Austin has a great music scene put it behind the other cities. Plus, part of the trip revolved around going to the Rockets-Celtics game in Houston on Dec. 27, so there was only so much we could do in the week that we have.

With that background, on Saturday night we flew from NY to San Antonio to start the adventure. Piece of advice for anyone reading this. If you ever thought of traveling with Debbie consider either sitting someplace else on the plane or taking a different flight. This comment has nothing at all to do with Debbie, but EVERYTHING to do with the people that end up sitting next to her. When we fly together we generally sit 3+2, with the kids sitting together and Debbie and I taking the aisle and middle seats (me in the aisle, Debbie in the middle), with a random person in the window seat. Unfortunately, she has not had much luck with her flight neighbors. Not only was this neighbor a seat hog, leaning way too far over towards her and using all of the mutual armrest, but for at least the third time, her neighbor had the wonderful habit of biting her nails, non-stop. Now this wasn't just biting, this was basically chomping like the nails were chocolate brownies. It wasn't as bad as the passenger on another fight that proceeded to flick the gnawed nails when done, but it was still driving Debbie nuts. The four hours on the plane could not end fast enough.

Eventually, we landed in San Antonio, picked up the rental car and headed to the hotel. The hotel is only about 15 minutes from the airport, so we got there pretty quickly and we all would have gotten into our rooms and to bed fast (yes, first time we have two rooms - kids too big to squeeze into one room for so many nights) but when I pulled in and asked the valet to park the car was told that the lot was full and I would have to find my own place to park. I checked in and everyone else went up to the rooms, while I looked for a lot. Luckily there was one not too far away, so I parked the car and walked back to the hotel.

Sunday was our first full day in San Antonio, and it started the way many of our trips start - with lots of food! I made a reservation at a place called Mash'd, as it was listed on a couple of top brunch places in town. It did not disappoint.

Pick your poison

Basically egg flavored biscuits

I had plenty of help finishing this

WAY too healthy

I read the news today, oh boy

A new take on a classic

When we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves, I made a call to the "curator" of a unique museum I had read about in researching things to do in San Antonio. He said he would meet us at the museum at 1:00, but we had an activity planned for 1:30 that was due to take about 2 hours. So I rescheduled the activity so we could start it earlier, then called the "curator" to see if we could go to the museum at 2:00, which he said would work.

Words to live by

We headed back downtown from brunch, parked and went to the "home base" of the San Antonio Wacky Walk. This was a new activity for us, and it is basically an app-guided scavenger hunt, which very much excited Debbie. Once we were at the starting point, I texted our guide that we were ready and we all used the app to go from place to place around town, answer questions based on what we learned at each spot, then head to the next spot. Part of the game involves having a king or queen that is in charge, and at each spot you are supposed to perform some moderately embarrassing activity to determine who would take over as king or queen. Since the kids had no desire to embarrass themselves in front of all of their friends that were walking around San Antonio (sarcasm), Debbie was nominated as the permanent queen, and Debbie and I were the only ones to partake in any of the required activities.

The Wacky Walk was more Walk than Wacky as we went from location to location, generally reading plaques at each stop and answering questions about what we read in order to get points and being able to move to the next location. For all of its faults, evidently the Common Core training worked, as the kids were able to cut to the chase when trying to answer the questions based on the text on the plaques, while Debbie and I spent more time actually reading the text. We walked by The Alamo, the Riverwalk and other spots around downtown San Antonio, walking a total of about 2.5 miles over 1.5 hours.

When we were done it was time to head to the museum. I know you might be thinking - a museum is a museum is a museum. Well, you would be wrong. And calling the person that runs this museum a "curator" is nowhere close to an accurate description. See, this was Barney Smith's Toilet Museum. And the "curator" is Barney Smith, a 97-year old retired plumber.

When I called he told me, loudly and often, to make sure I went to the garage where the artifacts are, not to his front door. We arrived right at 2:00 as another family was leaving. Their comment was that Barney was in a bit of a grumpy mood, but we didn't find him grumpy. Just busy. He has made a deal to sell all of his toilet seats and other art to someone that will be moving it all to Dallas, so he is in the middle of packing everything up. You can imagine that packing up over 1,400 toilet seats and other items would be quite overwhelming for anyone, let alone a 97-year old.

Organized Chaos

Who Needs an IM Pei Entrance?

And as soon as we got into the garage, he must have smelled the corrugated blood in me and immediately put me to work creating a larger box out of two banana boxes. He was sitting on a chair with the two half boxes on the floor and a very large knife. He started to poke holes in the boxes but let me do it instead. The holes were so we could put wire through them and twist the wires to keep the two boxes together. Once we had secured the box he started directing me to find very specific items to put into the box. He knew exactly what he wanted, and where they were, and also showed us binders of all of the art that he had already packed. It was very organized, but all manual. He said he had someone helping him with this, but we didn't see anyone else. The art on the toilet seats is really amazing and so intricate.

Just some of the hundreds of exhibits:

Debbie found one with a NY toilet seat and saw that others had signed it and asked if we could as well, which he said was OK.

The Volks Were Here

He had us all busy, as we needed the boys to help get some things off of a wall, and had me up on a ladder with pliers untwisting wire holding some of the art. When I had trouble untwisting it, he basically yelled at me "You can't do it? Try again!" Thankfully, I finally got it untwisted and off the wall. Then we told him we had to go, took a photo with him, then kind of closed him up in the garage. I hope he had another door in the garage, or there might be a problem.

The Louvre of San Antonio

We ended up spending an hour there, which I believe is longer than I have spent at the Louvre in total, over three trips there. I mean, how long does it take to look at the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo?

After bidding Barney a farewell, we headed back downtown to go to an attraction called The Battle for Texas, which is a touristy type of thing where you learned a bit about the fight between Texas and Mexico, culminating in the siege at The Alamo. Before we went in though, everyone was getting a little hungry, so we channeled our old Graceland lunch from 2010 and had frozen yogurt for lunch. The boys knew a little more than the rest of us about The Alamo, but while pretty much overpriced, the exhibit did give us all a little more understanding of why The Alamo and the battle there was such a big deal. The plan is to go to The Alamo tomorrow.

The King of the Wild Frontier, with the Queen of the Wild Theater

After the Battle for Texas, we headed back to the hotel to rest (and for me to shower as I was schvitzy from working with Barney). Later on we headed to dinner at a Mexican restaurant called La Fonda on Main. The food was very good, and it was a good thing we did a lot of walking earlier.

Tomorrow we have a Segway Tour early in the morning, with The Alamo and other sightseeing planned. We might also go check on Barney to make sure he's not stuck in the garage.