Off Topic The Christmas Thread
- Thread starter Chazz Rheinhold
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Now that's known as "Cold Turkey" if your (?) earlier post (# 39 on "Shaving" thread) is owt to go by ?
Hmmm, what noise do Turkey's make?
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I hope you can make it here some COVID-free time in the near future, especially Fort Worth. Many first-time visitors to the US don't make it past NYC, DC, or California, and those places are vastly different from the rest of the US in a cultural sense. I used to work with a fellow from Portsmouth who was living in the San Jose, CA area on a green card. He'd never ventured outside of Silicon Valley. I arranged to bring him to a customer site in Texas on a Monday so he could spend the weekend sight-seeing in Texas. I showed him around Dallas, which is really just a big modern city, and I could tell he wasn't having a good time. I then took him to Fort Worth and the stockyards and he lit up like a Christmas tree. He saw the sheriff riding a brahma bull, drank a beer at an authentic old west saloon, and ate a steak bigger than he was. He still talks about it. Thankfully he wasn't there on a NASCAR weekend.
My husband's first visit to Dallas was completely unscheduled as early one Sunday morning he missed a flight from Chicago to St Louis where he was to meet a Whirlpool representative who was to take him round their huge refrigeration plant the following day. The only way to reach St Louis then was to fly to Dallas, arriving about 2 pm, and then leave about 6 pm for St Louis to meet the rep. So what to do for 4 hours in Dallas on a Sunday afternoon? If only I had known at that time my cousin lived in Fort Worth! He did not leave the airport and spent his time in the bar watching sport and endlessly riding the monorail around the airport.
On a subsequent business trip a couple of years later he arranged to meet my dad's younger sister in New Orleans and she arranged for him to meet my cousin in Fort Worth.
My dad's younger brother was a bit of a recluse and lived in the US and Canada having one son. Last known to be living in Vancouver but the whereabouts of his son is a complete mystery to my relations in North America
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It's always fun to be able to squeeze in some opportunistic sight-seeing on layovers. He probably did the right thing by just staying in the airport as DFW is huge and a long way from anything fun. Reminds me of my first trip to the UK in 1997. I flew from DFW to Glasgow (one of my sisters was living in St. Andrews at the time), but had a long connection at London-Gatwick. I threw my carry-ons into a locker and took a train into the heart of London. I had little less than an hour to walk around before having to catch the train back to the airport, but it was worth the trouble.
Stayed with a mate and his family in Lewisville some where near Dallas with my wife and kids about 20 years ago. Went to Fort Worth and had the biggest beef ribs I had ever seen. Did a rodeo and visited 6 Flags theme park. I didn't know turkeys had such big legs!! The bull run in Stockyards was great with some massive long horn bulls just wandering down the main street.
When he came home he said how amazed and impressed he was with the completely automatic driver less Monorail at the airport. Just about that time my company (TNT) was looking at options with the NSW State government for a Sydney inner city transport system to be completed for the Aus Bi-Centennial commemoration in 1988. A competitive light rail tram system was favoured but required assisted government funding. We suggested that an elevated driver less Monorail would be a more spectacular sight in the city and we would totally fund it. My company won the contract and built the Monorail which ran around central Sydney from 1988-2013. We did not get the lucrative route we wanted nor it being run driver less even though it was fully automatic. Consequently it was only ever marginally profitable to the time I left TNT in 1994.