The nation’s economic recovery seems to be slowing down, but not travel plans to enjoy the last days of summer.

Some 34.4 million Americans are making trips this Labor Day weekend, according to an AAA survey, up 9.9 percent from last year’s dismal showing.

Vacationers will also spend more this year, the survey shows. Median spending is expected to be $697, up nearly $50.

Travelers are expected to pay more for airfares, 9 percent higher; car rentals, up 7 percent; and hotels.

But one thing they won’t be spending more on is gas. Regular unleaded, now averaging $2.68 a gallon, is down almost 20 cents from the spring, an AAA report says. Texas prices are averaging $2.51.

Meanwhile, nine out of 10 people are traveling by car this holiday weekend.

Polikarpov I-16 at the CAF museum, Midland, Texas

Rolling forward on my 2010 resolution to get out of San Antonio more, I took a three day trip to Midland and Odessa, two cities, indeed a region of Texas, I had not visited before in the nineteen years I have called the Lone State home.  I set out on the last Thursday in July, which proved to be a very good time to go.

For whatever reason, HWY 87, the route I decided to take on the outward bound leg, was essentially empty north of Fredericksburg.  Even when I drove into San Angelo just after 5:00 PM, traffic on the road was very light.  It just seemed odd to traverse handsome county seats like Mason and only see one or two other moving vehicles.

Following a stroll around Fort Concho which closed just before I got there, I continued on towards Big Spring before getting onto I 20 heading west to Midland.  Traveling by myself, with just an ipod for company, the landscape became flatter and the wind grew stronger.  A veritable forest of massive electricity generating wind turbines dotted the landscape, harvesting the enormous amount of free energy that just about knocked me over when got out of the car for a moment.

The hotel I chose was inexpensive in every way, but you get what you pay for, so I have no complaints.  I spent the whole of Friday, which happened to be my birthday, driving around the sights of Midland and Odessa.  My first port of call was the Commemorative Air Force museum.  To my surprise and delight I pretty much the whole place to myself during my 2 ½ hour visit.  As most CAF aircraft are dispersed around the country in different locations, like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain I hoped to fly in yesterday, which is based in Burnet, Texas, or the North American B-25 Mitchell located here in San Antonio, there were not all that many aircraft to actually see in Midland.  But I was thrilled to the core to find one of them was a Russian Polikarpov I 16.  As a youth, I used to make model airplanes – none to well, I must admit – and I loved the diminutive little plane, which, to my eyes, looks remarkably like the Brewster Buffalo.  Both were cutting edge designs when introduced in the early 1930s but were significantly obsolete by the time World War Two started.  With little else available, young men bravely continued to fight the good fight in these machines, sometimes achieving remarkable success despite the odds stacked against them.

I never dreamed I’d ever actually see one up close and personal.  It was absolutely the peak moment of my 800 mile journey and would have made the entire trip worthwhile in and of itself.  I also visited the oil industry museum, which was not laid out so well for those who know nothing about the industry, in my opinion.  I’d have done better with a guide, I think.  It’ an impressive place for sure but a little overwhelming and incomprehensible.  Rich in detail but somehow lacking in drama, of what odds and difficulties the individuals involved had to face.

Also a little disappointing was the crater site west of Odessa, mainly because the original vast hole dug by a meteorite the size of a Suburban yet weighing a thousand tons is all but filled 50,000 years later.  I enjoyed rolling around Odessa, and got to visit a remarkably well restored railroad depot, originally located in a tiny town called Texon, now located about seven miles from the city, in someone’s backyard.  Acquired in an almost disintegrated state, the owner has poured money, time and effort into bringing it back to its former glory.

Midland is the more impressive of the two cities which are maybe fifteen miles apart by interstate.  The smell of hydrocarbons, or money, is quite pervasive wherever you go.  I’m certainly glad I finally took the time to go there but, a bit like Big Bend, I’m not itching to go back any time soon.  Bleak landscapes don’t work for me.  I couldn’t stand to live in a place where if I traveled fifty miles I’d still essentially be in the same place.

I came back via lesser roads, again wonderfully empty of other vehicles, aiming first for Ozona and then the Caverns of Sonora Located off of IH 10 some two hundred miles west of San Antonio, this natural wonder is most definitely worth a visit.  The tour lasts just under two hours.  It was a nice finish to a trip that seemed, to quote Joni Mitchell, to be all about the land and the sky.

 The aircraft is flown to a lot of air shows.  I saw it and met the crew in Hondo earlier this year.  Since then the shiny silver plane has been to any number of events, including the annual air extravaganza in Oshkosh.  I’m really looking forward to making the flight, which costs $125.00 per person, a heck of a deal if you ask me.  The C-47 is the military version of the Douglas DC3, the twin radial engined aircraft that finally enabled airlines to fly profitably.  Its role as a military transport was so impressive that General Dwight Eisenhower said it was one of the four tools that ensured the allied victory.

UPDATE: The “Bluebonnet Belle” developed an engine problem during the return flight from Oshkosh.  It has yet to be determined how long it will take to make the needed repairs.  Then we will have to find a mutually acceptable date for all the people involved, including the aircrew and the original group of five.  If seats remain available I will post an invite on this blog.

 If you are interested in flying with us, post a reply right here on the blog and I’ll get in contact with you.  In the mean time, here is a link to the Highland Lakes Squadron web site, where you can find out more about the “Bluebonnet Belle” plus get the details of where they are located.

 http://www.highlandlakessquadron.com/HLS1/AircraftC47.html

Larry Walsh and the Austin MetroRail

My friend, Larry Walsh, and I finally found the time last Tuesday, July 27, to make a visit to Austin’s new commuter rail line, Capital MetroRail.  This is what is hoped to be the first thirty miles of a city wide system.  This first section runs from the city center at 4th and Trinity to Leander, a commuter colony way to the north of Austin itself.

Larry is, to put it mildly, an avid passenger rail enthusiast.  Now in his eighties, this has been his passion for every bit as long.  He served on boards pushing for the extension of passenger service across the north east of the country.  He can expound, at length, on the unlikely success of commuter rail in Los Angeles.  He sees a myriad of opportunities for it here in San Antonio, if only nay-sayers like me would only look beyond our road bound perspective and see the entire picture.  In fact he and I once traded barbs in the op-ed and letter pages on the San Antonio Express News regarding the proposed passenger service between San Antonio and Austin.

While we continue to disagree on that propoal, I actually have a fondness for the type of service which is now in its infancy in Austin.  Anyone who has used urban light rail in other cities will have a good sense of how successful they can be from any number of points of view.  My personal favorite is the Dublin Area Rapid Transit System in Ireland which runs on elevated track.

In Austin, the system mainly runs on track acquired by the City of Austin from the Southern Pacific when it was announced the line as far as Llano was to be abandoned.  While it continues to move a considerable amount of freight, it has been best known by the public, up till now, as the line used by the Hill Country Flyer, between Cedar Park and Burnet.  Ironically, Cedar Park has yet to acquire a MetroRail Stop so its residents can only watch the new service pass through on its way to Leander but may decide to opt in if the rail commuter service becomes popular.

As things stand, there are only six stops along the thirty mile stretch.  From the newly laid tracks on 4^th Street the train head due east under IH 35 until it makes contact with the pre-existing Southern Pacific built line.  It then heads north a while before crossing under the interstate again on its way to Leander.  Rather than give you a blow by blow account of every stop, I think it would be better  to simply give you a link to the MetroRail web site, which is:

 http://allsystemsgo.capmetro.org/capital-metrorail.shtml

 What I can more profitably do however, is provide a consumer’s point of view of what riding the train is like.  First of all, because they are only getting started, the number of trains available is limited only to weekday mornings and evenings.  Because Larry and I were essentially tourists out for a joy ride, we found there was only one train in the evening that would allow us to both ride form downtown and return.  For most commuters this would not be an issue as, presumably, most are coming in from the suburbs in the morning and returning in the evening.  Larry tells me the train ticket is good also for the buses which feed people to and from the rail service.

The train we caught, the 3:45 PM, the first one out, was not at all busy.  Presumably the following five trains would be, assuming most folks don’t get out from work so early.  The last one leaves at 6:40 PM.  Built in Switzerland, the “train” consists of two back to back cars with each having all its seats facing either forward or backwards.  The seats are not really very comfortable.  The padding is thin.  Also the leg space, at least in the seats we chose for an optimal view, was cramped.  The other 52 seats did not look a whole lot better.  But the view was good,  the engine noise level superb, especially for diesel powered rail cars, and the ride very smooth, including station stops and starts.

One of the unexpected benefits of ipods and other MP3 devices is that, unlike boomboxes of the previous generation which used to plague rail cars, the new devices do not cause much, if any, noise pollution.  Smoking is banned on the train and, just to make you feel even more comfortable, a uniformed police officer rides each train.  These also perform crossing guard duties in the event of signal failures but, fortunately, this did not happen on our ride.

A couple of people brought their bicycles on board and utilized some clever hooks to vertically stow them out of the way.  There were only two available with an obvious opportunity for two more to be installed later on if needed.  I don’t know if dogs are allowed.  I forgot to ask and it isn’t mentioned on the official web site.  The trains appear to be ADA compliant, with good ramp access from outside and almost no gap between the platform and the cars, plus set aside space within them.

My most serious complaint about the service is not about the trains at all.  It is about the lack of seating while waiting for the train down town and, far worse, no public restrooms at the large park & ride facilities.  It so happened we encountered a MetroRail board member on our way back, who seemed phased when I asked him why.  While most people will not be riding there and back in one go, as we did, the outbound trip to Leander lasts an hour and who wants to get into a car with a full bladder or worse?

All in all, I impressed with the service.  It was done with an eye to containing costs, by using existing rail lines which may not run through the most heavily populated areas of the city.  Expansion will most likely occur along the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas right of way which is fully abandoned.  Even so, bringing this into service will be cheap in comparison with establishing and building new rights of way if the system is to fully cover the entire city.

The same situation would apply in San Antonio except there are no city owned or abandoned lines available.  The Union Pacific is running profitable freight service to the quarry just outside Loop 1604 near Camp Bullis and delivering millions of tons of coal to the electrical power stations at Elmendorf.  These are the only two remotely possible stub lines.  All the other trackage is Union Pacific owned and operated mainline which carries well in excess of seventy fully loaded, highly profitable, unsubsidized freight trains all day every day.  It is not legal to operate light and heavy trains on the same track at the same time and “bumping” freight service to night hours only is not even remotely possible.  The cost to upgrade existing tracks to passenger standards, complete with signaling and other amenities would be enormous, not to mention the cost of constructing stations and massive parking lots.

The difference between theory and practice is often where Larry and I diverge on this issue.  Wishful thinking is one thing, but as the old army saying goes, amateurs argue about tactics while professionals discuss logistics.  When all is said and down, we could flood the ciy with buses and subsidize the service almost to the point of providing it free for what it would cost to create passenger rail in San Antonio.  There are other “social benefits” that rail brings with it that bus service does not.  However while it’s important to consider more than immediate economics in regards to commuter rail, it’s equally important that we don’t just ignore the numbers in the belief that social engineering, which is what passenger rail proponents principally rely on to make their case, is worth all the money we can throw at it.

            Recently I became involved in an upcoming PBS documentary on the perhaps unlikely subject of the resurgence of olive cultivation in the old “winter garden” areas between Carrizo Springs and Del Rio.  The story is, however, ripe with fascinating perspectives, including the “eat locally produced food” movement, and the original need for a means to transport the crops being grown in the area, which is where I come in, as the only person around who has spent time researching the history of railroads in the area, which has resulted in voluminous amounts of information on the Texas Transportation Museum web site and two locally published books.

            Over the last five years I have made numerous trips to Uvalde which has, over the past 127 years had the services of no less than four different railroads – the Southern Pacific, the Crystal City & Uvalde which was renamed the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf, the Asphalt Belt and the Uvalde & Northern..  Each time I visit the town I learn something new.  When I was there on Friday, the day after the trip by train to Del Rio, I found out exactly how the old SAU&G connected with the SP mainline, plus the exact location of both the SP and SAU&G depots.

            My delight in being invited to be an on camera participant in the documentary should have motivated me to at least try to find out about the railroad in Del Rio as well.  You might be able to understand my discomfort when I could not say for sure exactly when the current masonry depot,  now with a well made, compatible, bus station attached to it, was built.  I certainly knew it was not the original structure, which would have been of wooden construction.  I was in good company.  Representatives of the Del Rio city council, who supplied a bus for our group of eighteen to visit a local olive orchard and grape vinyard, did not know either.  A PBS executive from KLRU in Austin used her iphone to look it up on the web, only to find an absurd site that said not only was the depot the original structure, it was also built in 1876, seven years before the first train arrived.  A city transportation employee, who used to come down to the depot as a girl, and who was able to tell me about the original interior layout of the depot, was able to find a couple of old pictures.  One showed the original depot and the other showed the current structure when it just been completed.  Using the automobiles as a reference, it would appear to have been built in the mid to late 1920s, which is about the same time the entire downtown area was rebuilt, replacing frontier structures with pleasant looking “modern” buildings, to reflect the city’s growing wealth and importance.

            Not wanting to make the same mistake when I go with the film crew to Crystal City, Carrizo Springs and Asherton, I decided to visit these places the following day.  Accompanied by my good friend and avid railroad enthusiast, Fred Bock, the trip was most successful.  Having spent some time in Uvalde itself, we headed south on Highway 83.  Regrettably there did not seem to be anywhere worth stopping to seek information in La Pryor, the first community created by the Crystal City & Uvalde in 1909, but, contrary to the “warnings” given to me in Uvalde, Crystal City was another story.  Following a pleasant tour of the city, where the railroad once ran bold as brass right down the main street, we went to the city library, followed by the immediately adjacent town hall and county court house.  Every community, I have found, has a keeper of the flame, an individual noted for his or her knowledge of local history.  On this occasion, on a late Friday afternoon, the owner of an abstract company was unavailable.  His mother had passed on an unparallelled collection of early local photographs.  Many are on his office walls and even more are on the walls of the local bank.

            By the time we arrived in Carrizo Springs it was raining cats and dogs.  It was also after 5:00 PM and the library was closed.  Nonetheless, we were able to get the measure of the place for a future visit.  In my experience you hardly ever get much on a first visit, but you do get to sow seeds that usually bear handsome fruit on subsequent trips.  The rain let up while we took a break and a snack in the local Dairy Queen, but the sky looked so ominous we decided to forgo a visit to Asherton and, instead, follow the route of the “Sausage,” the nickname given to the SAU&G, eastward towards Pleasanton.  Because the tracks from the main Missouri Pacific line that still run alongside IH 35 were only pulled up in the 1990s, their evidence is still fairly obvious.  The same cannot be said for some of the communities that sprouted briefly along the line.  Some, like Los Angles, were nothing but a motley collection of dilapidated houses and farm buildings.  Others, such as Hindes, were reduced to a mere sign post.  On the other side of the freeway, towards Charlotte and Pleasanton, finding even a trace of the tracks is all but impossible.  They were removed in the early 1950s, some sixty years ago.  Railroads in general are very benign to the environment and the impact of the right of way is easily erased from the landscape.

            I now feel as though I am in better shape to speak knowledgably about this line.  However, several more expeditions to the area, including one to follow the line of the Asherton & Gulf, which connected with the MOPAC mainline a little further south.  I’m keen to see not only Asherton but Caterina, which was developed by Charles Taft, the brother of then President William Taft.  The local hotel which I believe still exists, supposedly has oversize baths to accommodate the chief executive and, later, Supreme Court judge’s well known girth.

            While a lot of filming for the documentary, which will also include a lot of music, some of it played on instruments originally owned by the Richardson family and kept at their grand mansion in Asherton, has been completed, there is still a good amount still to be done.  Some will occur at the Texas Transportation Museum, where a recreation of thousands of people arriving by train during the heyday of land sales will be filmed in late August.  These land rushes were, in fact, one of the last and largest population migrations in US history, attracting would be farmers from all over America and even Europe to sub-divided ranches.  A group of 160 Mennonites came from Ohio in 1910, to settle in a community called Beachy.  Located near Brundage, itself now not much more than an empty crossroads, the land where the community, which was abndoned in 1914, once stood is now part of an oil field.  It is hard to even begin to put yourselves in their shoes, when both the artesian wells and then the rain dried up and their high hopes turned to dust.

            But hope springs eternal and the humble olive, originally cultivated a hundred years ago, is making a major comeback, bringing with it the possibility of a resurgence of sustainable cash crops that are climate and soil appropriate.  It may just turn out that Asher Richardson and other developers, such as Charles Simmons, who built the Artesian Belt RR which put Poteet, Jourdanton and Christine on the map, were just a century ahead of their time.

It’s been a long, long week.

And I can’t think of a better way to wrap it up than with a road trip west to see my favorite twins. This weekend will be especially fun because they’re celebrating their sixth birthday. It’s a pool party! 

Check out the video I put together from their fifth birthday party.

Well, gotta pack.

Live weather feed for San Antonio from the National Weather Service.

There’s plenty for would-be travelers to worry about.

A hole in the Gulf floor spews thousands of barrels a day of sticky oil. A European debt crisis shook up financial markets. Storms will soak much of Texas through the Fourth of July weekend. 

But as I sit on my porch sipping coffee, watching my lawn drink in what Hurricane Alex’s remnants have left to dump, 34.9 million Americans will be on vacation trips, a whopping 17 percent more than last year, AAA says. Nine out of 10 will go by car.

And why not? Most Gulf beaches remain clean and open. A U.S. economic recovery seems to be holding steady. Most Texas roads, though wet, are open.

Also, gas prices are under $3 a gallon.

So though travelers will spend a little less — on average, $50 less — than last year, the holiday looks much brighter than a year ago. 

Sources and links:

• Weather
• Statewide road conditions, or call (800) 452-9292
• Gas prices
• AAA report

Latest radar from National Weather Service.

Hurricane Alex is grinding into a Mexican coast, its tails whipping South Texas and spitting out tornadoes. Winds are blowing more than 100 mph.

Though the brunt of the storm wandered south, it was powerful enough to drive both Texans and Mexicans away from their homes to find safer shelter, the Associated Press reported. A slew of tornado, flooding and wind warnings are in place in South Texas, including a flood watch in Bexar County, the National Weather Service says.

Officials closed the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge in South Padre Island due to winds and State Highway 87 in Galveston because of flooding, the Texas Department of Transportation announced. More than 100 TxDOT workers and 200 pieces of equipment will move in tomorrow to open roads and fix traffic signals and signs.

Helpful links:

• National Weather Service
• Weather Channel
• Statewide road conditions, or call (800) 452-9292
• TxDOT hurricane page

Augusta Street bridge, San Antonio

My wife and I spent some five hours out and about on our bikes yesterday, heading downtown from our house near Red McCombs Ford outside Loop 410 to the King William district.  Altogether it came to a trip of 22.35 miles, mostly along San Antonio’s old main thoroughfares, San Pedro Avenue and Fredericksburg Road.  We set of around 8:00 AM, when it was only 80 degrees and got back just before 1:00 PM, when it was well over 90.

 The reality is I have all but given up cycling again.  It was not my idea in the first place.  And since, for my wife, cycling is so 2009, our nearly new expensive machines have become, more or less, garage junk.  During the first twelve months I rode just over 20 miles a week.  Most of these were round trips of 24 miles to and from my two jobs.  This year, for several reasons, I am not doing that any more.  Essentially I don’t have the time to extend my commutes from twenty minutes each way to an hour.  Who has two hours to give up just to get to work?  Plus my hours changed at Camp Bullis.  I now quit at 9:00 PM.  Riding at night in any major city is not particularly smart.

 It’s also even more boring than riding during the day.  That is my major issue, truth to tell.  Cycling is just dull hard work.  I’m not the kind of person who marvels at the changing scenery and architecture.  I’m not interested in “raising my performance” as all the bicycle literature is forever exhorting us to do.  Learning how to endure pain in order to go nowhere in particular fractionally faster is a fool’s errand if ever I heard one.

 I did enjoy owning a bike in Aberdeen Scotland.  In fact I did not learn to drive until I was around 26 years old.  But, once I got behind the wheel of an automobile, I found my ability to explore the Grampian countryside an eye opening experience and, before I knew it, my biking days were over.  It was almost a relief when my rather nice touring bike was stolen.

 So, why the trip yesterday?  I am working on adding several additional local transportation history “chapters” on the Texas Transportation Museum web site.  I wanted to take a whole bunch of snaps of roads and bridges to go with the voluminous amount of material I have amassed.  While I could have driven downtown, it occurred to me that going by bicycle would be a lot more convenient plus probably afford a far greater number of photo opportunities.

 I was right, for once.  I was delighted when my wife said she wanted to come along.  Between us we must have taken over four hundred snaps of things like the Augusta Street bridge near the main library and the Arsenal Street bridge in King William, where we encountered tourists on Segways and three wheel bicycles.  The major benefit to digital cameras is that it allows a person to adopt Stalin’s dictum that quantity has a quality all its own.  In other words if you take enough shots one or two are bound to be OK, if only by the law of averages.

 Despite the fact we were pretty wiped out by the time we got back to the house, I am beginning to think there might be a future in using or bicycles in this way in the future.  I can see us taking our bikes and cameras to other towns and just slowly roaming around, making frequent stops and taking a boat load of snaps.

 In conclusion, this was the first time I ever used a bicycle to perform work, as opposed to just getting there.  As an adjunct to spending time in libraries and going through musty records in obscure archives, it has a lot to be said for it.  You can be aware that at the intersection of Fredericksburg Road, and IH10 you have the old railroad to the Hill Country crossing the old main road to the same destination in the shadow of the interstate that has rendered both obsolete, but I don’t think you get to truly appreciate the labor involved any better than when you yourself are providing your own motivation.

Continuing on Hugh’s Corpus Christi theme from yesterday, my recent Memorial Day weekend vacay (actually it was a pre-Memorial Day weekend vacay) took me to Mustang Island.  To get there, we took SH 358, the main drag through Corpus Christi, also known as South Padre Island Drive.  However, “SPID”, as it’s known to locals, is a misnomer of sorts because it actually leads to North Padre Island, not South Padre Island, which is a good 120 or so miles south.

So then, why is it named South Padre Island Drive?

The road is actually just Padre Island Drive.  The “South” in South Padre Island Drive comes from the fact that there are two halves of Padre Island Drive (although they’re nowhere equal in length): the southern half and the northern half, just like there is North Staples St. and South Staples St.  According to Google Maps, it looks like Bear Lane is the dividing line for Padre Island Drive, so there actually is a short section of North Padre Island Drive between there and I-37.  The rest of 358 (which is by far the bulk of it) is South Padre Island Drive.

That said, given the possible confusion this could (and probably does) cause, I propose that city leaders in Corpus Christi consider changing the name to “Padre Island Drive South”, although I suppose that PIDS doesn’t have quite the ring to it that SPID does.