More Craziness: Saturday Night Music, Sunday Morning Ride

I took a nap yesterday afternoon so I could make the drive last evening from Corpus to McCoy.

For a long time, the only thing McCoy I could tell you would have been the "Hatfields and the McCoys" and Neal McCoy, the country singer from Jacksonville, Texas.

But McCoy, Texas is the home of the Wildcat Grill & Saloon - and it is where my good friend Rodney Hayden was recording a live acoustic album (or CD, in reality) last evening.

I got there right at 8 p.m., saw Rodney, talked a little bit with Jason Allen (who could pass for Vince Gill), met Rodney's dad, Richard, and sat with him, Rodney's sister, Rodney's wife and other folks that they know. (Their hometown of Pleasanton is not too far from McCoy.)

A local band from Pleasanton - the Most Wanted Band - played for about an hour or so. They were pretty good. They feature a chiropractor (Dr. Jimmy Zuniga), a county judge (Joe Vickers), the newly elected county commissioner and two other members.

They were followed up by Hallyanna Finley - a college-aged girl from San Marcos - who had a pretty good voice, but didn't seem to be able to win over the crowd that was there probably more to just hang out on a Saturday night than even to see Rodney. Plus the Cowboys collapse was in the making on the big screen TV while she played.

Then Rodney played for a little more than an hour. He wasn't at the top of his game I don't think. They had some equipment issues. His guitar was popping and he had to use Finley's for the entire set. I had to leave at about 12:30 a.m., but he was playing his next to last song - the song that he wrote about his Mom who passed away last fall - as I was headed for the truck.

I drove back to Corpus, through some thick fog, and got in to bed at about 2:30 a.m. There are times where I'm really glad that I don't drink.

I was up at 7 a.m. and on my way back to downtown Corpus Christi, close to where we started the half marathon yesterday to get in a bike ride.

It was a little bit of a tour of Corpus. I thought that I might be able to go up the shoreline to the north, but you couldn't go any farther north than the Harbor Bridge. Then I just started to go where the road was as good as I could find and the traffic was light.

I would rate Corpus as a bike-friendly town. Wide streets. And on a Sunday morning, it is great because pretty much everyone is still asleep. I suspect that this is because - and I don't like to stereotype - the area is predominantly Catholic with its Hispanic population and many attend Saturday evening Mass. I went by a number of churches and there just wasn't a lot of activity for early morning Sunday services anywhere.

I started at 7:43 a.m. and by the time 9:18 a.m. rolled up on my watch, I couldn't have been happier to see my truck.

I was heading south on Ocean Drive and an hour had just passed. The wind coming in from the Gulf was getting pretty strong. I thought about going as far as I could - all the way towards the Naval Air Station - and then turning back around. I went for about five minutes and then made an executive decision to head back towards where the truck was.

It was a pain in the butt figuratively to get back without getting blown off my bike. The winds were that strong! Most of the time a crosswind, but sometimes a headwind.

The headwinds didn't bother me so much, but the gusty crosswinds started to blow the bike over. I tried once to find a parallel street where the houses could break some of the wind, but that didn't work too well.

So the last four miles that I ran in yesterday's half marathon might have been tougher biking it today because of fighting the gusty winds.

I'd guess that I did 13-14 in the first hour. I don't know that I was working as hard as I did when I did the Tour de Donut with Manny and Cassie, but I wasn't sloughing off either. The last half hour, I probably was lucky to have covered 5 miles with all of the winds.

Oh, and the temperature was 57 degrees when I started and had dipped to 51 degrees when I got back. Nice. Glad I had brought a pair of gloves with me or there wouldn't have been any ride whatsoever.

So it looks as I might now do the Guaranty Tour de Houston (70 miles) on Sunday, March 22 and The Space Race (80 miles) two weeks later on Sunday, April 5 -- which is two weeks before MS150.

There you have it. Back from breakfast, need to get a shower and head north back to Houston. Two days in Jackson, fly home Wednesday morning and start a vacation until Monday, January 5th.