Day four was another massive travel day, this time from Boerne to Houston…

We left Boerne at around 10 AM (CST), after having had a breakfast and parting photographs (apparently a thing that has to be done before visiting parties have departed…)  We had our first wrong turn of the whole trip immediately after leaving the parental driveway, but that was nothing – especially since it led to a dead end.  We tanked up in down town Boerne ($1.99/gallon for gas!) and headed out of town.

Our first stop along the route to Houston was at the Craker Barrell on the outer edge of San Antonio, but that was a quick stop so Ken could take care of the effects of breakfast beverages and Jerry could do some quick shopping.  We then hopped back on the road and made our wa out to the Buc-ee’s truck stop – with the cleanest restorrms in Texas (they were indeed clean, with hand sanitizer at every toilet stall.)  This was around noon, so it was our lunch stop as well – so we picked up sandwiches, drinks and snacks, ate our lunhes and headed back on the road.

About fifty miles outside of Houston we hit rain.  Hard rain.  Hard, sideways, you ain’t driving fast, can’t hardly see in front of you rain.  While it may have seemed like a long time that we were in this weather, it wasn’t a huge distance, and we meneged to get back up to speed in sunlight in no time.  At lease we weren’t that Jeep driver, who didn’t realize that the dark clouds ahead were going to be wet, and had to pull over to put his flimsy roof up (hope he had a bucket too…)

We arrived at our hotel in Houston (the InterContenental [Ballistic] Hotel) around 3 PM.  Not bad with the two stops and the major weather slow down – plus, the last mile or so had a backup on the freeway, but that only made the approach to our exit a little longer than it should have.  We parked with relative ease, made our way into the hotel and checked in.  Though Ken had originally made the reservation, we applied Jerry’s reward points to it online – which changed the reservers name to her’s.  Lukily we knew this going in, so there was absolutely no hassle at the front desk.

Our room, on the 15th floor, over looked the same freeway that we just got off of (and the accident was just being cleared up.)  It’s a little dissappointing on the storage front, but the king-size bed is nice and comfortable.  We got our stuff in, and immediately went out – Ken to register for the first conference of the week, and Jerry to hit the hotel gym.  We returned from our respective tasks to get cleaned up for the reception and dinner for the evening.

Being a PBS related conference, the reception and dinner were hosted by programs that are vieing for a place on your local PBS station.  The reception was hosted by the new Electric Company, and featured two of the performers from the revamped.  The dinner was hosted by the financial program MoneyTrack, which is in it’s third season.  The buffet style, while a nice idea, wasn’t very organized and resulted in bizarre queuing situation.  Dspite that, Ken managed to over eat and wasn’t feeling good when we returned to our room – where we watched Houston PBS’ presentations of Frontline and Independent Lens.