L went back to work today from her maternity leave, which means that I take care of M during the day. The morning was no problem, but in the afternoon she did not want to go to sleep for more than an hour together, and cried and fussed whenever I tried to put her down and do something else, so I barely got any recruiters called in the short times when she was quiet.
Sunday evening we drove down to Galveston so L and T could go sailing Monday on Elissa, a three-masted sailing ship (barque) built in 1877, and owned and operated by the Galveston Historical Foundation and Texas Seaport Museum. Both of them work as volunteers there, which allows them to sail on her as guests or, if they go through the sail-training class, as crew. They’d started training for this season’s class last fall, but had to drop out in December because M was keeping L up at night so much it wasn’t safe for her to try driving down to class each Saturday. Therefore, they only got to go as guests this year, which means that they weren’t officially crew, but they still ended up working most of the day’s sail after all, since the bosun and the mast captains knew they knew what they were about. This morning T was very sore and stiff from hauling on lines much of the day, but she’ll still be back down there next workday. Both of them had a fine time, to hear the stories.
On the trip down we hit a traffic jam because of a wreck, just where Texas 71 crosses I-10 at Columbus, so we decided to go the long way round and back-road it to Galveston. We chased down 71 to Eagle Lake, cut across to Rosenberg and Richmond, dodged down to West Columbia, Brazoria, Lake Jackson, and Freeport, and then came back up the island-side road from Freeport to Galveston. It took us a couple of hours longer that way, what with having to stop to feed M a couple of times, but we still got to the hotel about 10:30 in the evening.
While L and T were at sea on Monday, M and I went to the Lone Star Flight Museum and the Moody Gardens. I’d been to the Gardens two years ago, but hadn’t seen its companion aquarium, and I’d never been to the flight museum at all.
The flight museum was a little disappointing, because the collection has almost nothing but US warplanes. They did have a few that I hadn’t seen elsewhere (places like the CAF)—a PB4Y-2 that’s under restoration, a beautiful F7F, an L-5 Stinson, a nice PBY, a replica Blériot XI, and an Navy N3N primary trainer. The two real surprises were an F3F that they said had been pieced together from three wrecks, and three Soviet Polikarpov fighters! The F3F Littlecat was the biplane ancestor to the better-known F4F Wildcat, and you can see the relationship in the shape of the fuselages. This one is said to be the only flyable example, and it was sure prettied up within an inch of its life, looking like the day it rolled out the factory door. The Polikarpov fighters (two I-16s and an I-153) were on loan from someplace—I don’t remember where, but I certainly never expected to see them, and doubt I’ll ever have the chance again. The I-16 is even uglier than most other stub-fuselage airframes; with its short wings and flat-front engine cowling, it looks as though someone has pushed its nose in. The I-153 isn’t much more handsome, although being a biplane rather than a monoplane helps the look of it, somehow. It doesn’t seem so out of proportion.
I wasnt bowled over by the aquarium either. What it had was all right, but there wasn’t anything particularly surprising or about it. The part that pleased me the best was a colony of king penguins they had, which are just as funny and preposterous to watch in life as they are in documentaries. The aquarium also had a better collection of crustacea than average, but again, it was lacking in Wow!-factor.
Of course, I knew what to expect from the rain forest garden, since I’d been there before, but it was still lots of fun to walk around and look at the hundreds of tropical plants. Several of them are ones I remember my father and grandmother growing as exotics in their own greenhouses, when I was young. I was particularly taken with the scarlet ibises, which are so red as to make them look almost fake. I also enjoyed looking at the exhibit of fruit bats, which were in a red-lit cave that let them be awake and active in the daylight. Even if I’d been blind I would have known I was around bats, because I got several whiffs of that distinctive bat-guano smell, despite the excellent ventilation system. For some reason, the staff had to cancel the butterfly release that happens at two each afternoon; I was sorry to miss that. I would have missed the actual release anyway, since I went in at ten after two, but it would have been nice to see so many butterflies flying around all at once.
After that I went back to the maritime museum, and got there just as the ship was pulling up to the dock. M was hungry and beginning to whimper and struggle, but I didn’t want to break out a new bottle of milk with L just about to come ashore, so I ended by letting M suck on the end of my thumb, which was about the right size and shape, and that kept her content until L and T got ashore. After that we went with one of L’s shipboard friends and had an early dinner at Mediterranean Chef, a nice little Greek place on the Strand. Maria (the friend) is an apprentice armorer and swordsmith, temporarily living at home while her master/teacher’s getting his business moved from Nova Scotia to Michigan (too many hassles with Canadian Immigration over visas and work permits). She got almost silly over holding M, talking and playing with her like the soppiest of relations. She says that she doesn’t normally take on over babies this way, but M certainly made a hit with her. The dinner conversation was lots of fun; I hope we can do that again some time, because I like Maria and see why L and T like her as well. After dinner we loaded up and came home, only stopping once to feed M, who was otherwise dead to the world.
Vlad Dracula must abduct the frenzied ginkgo from Atlantis. Fnord.
