…is not allowed in these USofA. That limits one’s options.

Yesterday, I left the house at 7 to pick up a couple friends/co-workers. We were heading for Corpus Christi, to greet other co-workers, who participated in the Valero MS 150 – Bike to the Beach Multiple Sclerosis Fundraising Event. This is an annual 2-day, 150 miles bike trip. Folks from all over (as far as Houston) leave San Antonio Saturday morning and arrive in Corpus on Sunday.

I was driving my car, and we drove with the top down all the way (of course). It was a little chilly in the morning, only in the 60s, but by the time we pulled in around 10:30, it was well into the 80s and very nice. We had at least a couple of hours, before our riders would roll in, so we had lunch first – I was pretty hungry since I had not had breakfast. That’s how I found the worst restaurant I’d ever been to: Pier 99.

It looks nice enough – right by the ocean, very comfortable, and now that I’ve read the reviews, which were mostly very favorable, I figure I must have been there at their cook’s worst day ever.

This is the restaurant – and us – and the broccoli they served me:

First, the Diet Pepsi Darlene and I ordered wasn’t drinkable – don’t know what went wrong, but it tasted nasty. For lunch, I ordered their steak and shrimp – and I like my steaks medium rare. What I got was well-overdone and as tough as if I had cooked it myself. I complained and sent it back – and what they brought me instead was barely warm on the inside. I do like my steaks rare, but at least warm. I made them take the Pepsi off my ticket – I didn’t drink it, I wasn’t paying for that nasty stuff. I still tipped the waitress, it wasn’t her fault – and I left a comment about the food on the ticket. Maybe somebody will read it.

Then we browsed gift-shops and waited for our bikers to arrive. They had lost a couple people along the route – one gave up after day one, one crashed day one and couldn’t ride the next day, and another came within miles of the finish, but had to give in when his knee gave out, but 3 of them made it. So we cheered their arrival, and headed back to the car, via the ocean. It would be just wrong to go to the beach and not at least put a foot in the water. And since this was not a swimming trip, I had no bathing suit. But Grace, one of our bikers, jumped in with her biking clothes – and the water looked so good and felt so right – so what the heck:

It felt so good, and by the time I got back home, most of me was dry again. And the lesson I learned is to NEVER EVER go to the beach without an emergency pack of bathing suit and a couple towels – just in case.

And to think – at first, I didn’t even want to go on this trip. I am so glad I changed my mind. I would have missed out on a fun day – and the first time ever (as far as I remember) that I went swimming with my clothes on