BORING!!

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Had a good sleep and breakfast at Country Inns & Suites in Amarillo, TX. Inspected the van and other than a broken licence plate cover and some tumbleweed stickies everything appeared okay.

I have to say that everything may be big in Texas, but that also includes Big Boring!! Between our trip through South Texas and now our trip through the panhandle, I think that all the population must live in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Amarillo and maybe Austin. I’m guessing that there are less than 1000 people living outside these boundaries! Nothing but friggin’vacuum!! No wonder the ranches are so big! There’s nothin’ on them!! Most boring drives I’ve ever had (other than Tumbleweed storms!).

We drove for more boring miles through the balance of Texas and then into boring Oklahoma and stopped at our first Bass Pro of the Day in Oklahoma City. Holy cow!! Boring!!

Today is the first day of the Fishing Classic down here, the busiest time of the year for a Bass Pro. Back in our Toronto store you sometimes have 5-10 people waiting to ask you something. It’s a gong show, but a fun gong show. Look at this next shot!! This is around 1:00 pm on the first Saturday of the Fishing Classic! Can you say “Recession”!!

I got a squashed penny, but didn’t even bother getting a T-Shirt. Time to get back on the road and head for Broken Arrow, on the outskirts of Tulsa for my next store. It was colder than we’ve been used to and Chris took a great “crooked” picture as she rushed to get out of the cold.

I walk in the store and who are sitting at a booth just behind the entrance?????

Holy Mackinaw!! Its Guido and Dion Hibdon and there are only about 3 or 4 people standing around the booth talking to them. I quickly scramble over and grab a shirt and get them to autograph it for me.

Now let me put this into perspective for any of you knobs that don’t know who I’m talking about. This would be like meeting Bobby and Brett Hull or Gordie and Mark Howe except BIGGER!!!

Before you stop laughing, Guido is a Hall of Famer and it was one of his tubes that put me on my 6Lb. 3 oz. Largemouth that is hanging on my wall at home. These guys have made over $1,000,000 on the Bass Tournament Trail, not including endorsements. Still Laughing???

I still can’t believe they were standing there without any hullabaloo!! One of the big highlights of this trip!

We moved onward towards Branson and started seeing this stuff! I haven’t seen any of this since January 9!!

It was another tough drive. The speed limit was 75mph, but people had wisely slowed down to 65!!!!

We got to Big Cedar Lodge about 8:30 freezing our butts off (temps were down to the low 20’s brrrrrrrrr, this is cold!!