Tag Archives: Destinations

Texas Toasted

This past weekend the Husbear and I headed to Dallas for TBRU.

I won’t say I had a bad time. But I don’t know that I had a great time. Overall I just had a “meh” time. Which seems to be par for the course for me at events like this.

I did get to see friends. Which is always great. But I didn’t get to see or spend time with all the friends I wanted to. Which is “meh”.

Add to that I didn’t feel great the entire time. I still don’t. I’m sure the alcohol I ingested didn’t help matters much either. I probably should have avoided that. But it helps me deal with crowds. Again with the “meh”.

I did realize one thing: I think my camera sucks. My iPhone camera, that is. Most of the pictures I took ended up being crap. Maybe not total crap. But crappy enough that it makes me look like I took them with schmutz on the lens. Which there could have possibly been.

Anyway, I leave you with a photo review of the weekend!

Thursday Night:
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Friday Bear Dance:
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Saturday Hospitality:
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Sunday Brunch:
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Monday Journeys:
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Until next time...
Erik

How I spent my four-day weekend…

I would have posted this sooner, but my first day back at the tattoo studio yesterday kicked my butt.

If you were following my Tweets or Facebook updates, you could have potentially seen that this past Thursday the Husbear and I (and about 1,500 other men…) headed down to Dallas for TBRU 16 .

This post contains links back to images I posted in real time in my “adlibbed” category while on this trip. You’ll enjoy those pictures, I swear.

Of course, as soon as we got there we met up with our friends Tory and Dwayne who live on the opposite side of the state from us. Here’s Dwayne:

His partner Tory, like my Husbear, is rather stealthy and hard to capture on camera.

I also had my first beverage of the weekend.

We headed out for a full night at the Round-Up Saloon and the Dallas Eagle .

After that wonderful evening, I made my way back to the hotel room on the public transportation provided by the TBRU crew. Only to find we had some plumbing issues. The hotel was kind enough to move us to a new room. At which point *I* moved all our stuff to the new room. At 3 AM. And “slightly” intoxicated.

Friday was filled with food, then socializing around the hotel until the Big D Bear Dance with BLOWOFF! Musicians/DJs Bob Mould & Rich Morel. I had an incredible time. It was a well-done production. So many people, many dancing, and many socializing in the various areas of Station 4 .

While I was there, I ran into a certain web-development person I recognized from my early years in designing websites. Some of you might even remember his whole “Sucky to Savvy” thing? I speak none-other than (the quite adorable!) Jeff Glover:

I even wore my utility kilt that night.

Saturday there was a Bear Pool party. The smell of chlorine was… strong. And then came a full evening for me at the Round-Up again. I got to meet up with Thomas and his partner there that night as well. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of them this visit.

Sunday was the final day of TBRU. The Husbear was exhausted by this point, no doubt due to his social activities. We all went to “church” at the Hidden Door , which was packed.

It was also Dwayne’s birthday. There were a lot of hot men there. Speaking of, I got to meet up with Jim of “Jim’s Stuff“:

He had just gotten back from a ren event and was looking dashing in his kilt.

I spent most of the day there, then wandered over to the Eagle to find the Husbear. After that, it was back to the hotel quite early at 10:30 PM at which point I totally crashed out until the next morning.

We then drove an “alternate” route home, because we like to do that. Somehow, the Husbear’s directions included driving on a single-lane dirt road through a swamp in Oklahoma.

I’m not sure how we survived.

Thank you TBRU, and to the City of Dallas, for a great time and awesome hospitality.

Until next time...
Erik

Back Roads and Banjo Music Tour

The great pilgrimage has begun.

The Husbear and I are on our way to New Orleans for Southern Decadence. Where we spend a week spending money in a city that, 5 years after Katrina, still needs assistance in many places.

We’re taking the long, leisurely drive from where we live in NW Arkansas to the Big Easy, via the scenic route. We should really call it the “Back Roads and Banjo Music Tour”. I will admit: the scenery off the beaten path is nice. But I wouldn’t care to break down anywhere out here.

We drove about 9 hours today, which put us in Alexandria, Louisiana for the night.

Tomorrow, we’ll be getting up and heading down to the Lake Charles area, where some of the Husbear’s family is from, and then we’ll drive across over to NOLA following the coastline as we can.

And I leave you with this picture the Husbear took of me tonight. He was attempting to be sneaky.

Until next time...
Erik

Back to normal…

… but what is “normal”?

The Husbear and I wandered over to Oklahoma City this weekend. He mainly wanted to go for “fun”. I managed to talk him to taking a break from said “fun” and head over to Myriad Botanical Gardens and Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory. We had been there four years ago with some friends (who moved away and that we miss dearly!) and I wanted to go back and see it again.
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There were some gorgeous plants on display from several different climatic zones.
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This one looks like a bunch of cocks with extremely decorative cock rings:
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And then there was this surprising find:
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I won’t bore you with all 147 pictures here, but if you want to take a look, you are more than welcome to over at my flickr set.

Now the Husbear wants to build our own “Tropical Conservatory”… *sigh*. I guess I’ll add that to the next giant project list I’ll get wrangled into “assisting” with.

Until next time...
Erik