Some More texas: Houston, San Antonio, The Panhandle

Houston Natural History Museum: a lot about oil... A simulated trip down a borehole. Unfortunately, part of the 'realism' imvolves not enough light to take a good picture. Neat, anyway.

At the Houston Rodeo: Chief Touch-the-Clouds; I'd never heard of him before...And, the Houston Rodeo - there's a major-league rodeo circuit, and Houston is one of the big ones.

It turns out that now, Houston is all about oil - scarcely any cows at all. But cows and horses and the cowboy thing are more fun, I guess.

More about the horse culture: Different places illustrate different things. Here' it's cowboy boots.

There are often a lot of guys just riding around the arena. Some are officials, maybe they all are...
The Cutting competition: The idea is to cut one pony out of the herd, and keep him from rejoining it:

Here, he's seperated one out, and has to keep between it and the herd:As the calf goes one way, man and horse have to move just as fast as calf alone does
...and sometimes pretty fast:
Obviously, the horse himself must have to understand what's going on -

Bull riding: By that time the light was pretty dim - easier to watch the monitor than the actual bull. Out of about eight riders, only three even mamaged to stay on the minimum time - about 8 seconds. The bulls are really not very happy to have guys on their backs.
Rodeo Clowns - they distract the bull after he's thrown the rider...high art in its own right.

Some other stuff: they planned to have the chicks hatch on the same day:
The Houston Art Museum: Crab, by Alexander Calder

Then, on to San Antonio: The Alamo, of course. Basically a church and grounds - very bad place to try and defend, even against somebody as inept as General Santa Anna...
Beautiful grounds, though

San Antonio Botanical Garden

San Antonio Museum of Art

The famous Riverwalk - about a half-mile long park, right in the middle of the cityBoat along the 'WalkAt night
O Henry lived here for a couple of years, before he got to be famous

...in a rather modest houseHe worked for this weekly paper, perhaps as editor. Partly humorous. Didn't last; O. Henry went on to other things...
Fort Sam Houston: the Army Medical Depot (AMEDD) Museum: WWI medical wagon
Korean-era Bell H-13 Medevac helicopter: No cockpit lights, no radio, a battery so weak that sometimes it needed a boost from external equipment to start the motor. If they had to fly at night, they used a flashlight to look at the dials.
Poster about the Buffalo Soldiers - black US cavalry troops who served in the West right after the civil war. The Indians gave them the name. They saw a good bit of action.

A combination meat can/coffee cup: Imagine eating 4 days rations of meat out of this, then trying to drink meat-flavored coffee out of it, sort of sideways -

Up into the Panhandle...
Palo Duro State Park

Barb with her own personal-size mesa

Desert Crust: Fairly new wrinkle in ecology of the desert. It turns out that a whole lot of the life in the desert is concentrated in this crust, less than an inch thick; if you step on it at all, and break it, it dries out and dies. Life is complicated.

Lubbock, Texas: The Panhandle/Plains Historical Museum. Old Oil Rig

Prehistoric Mini-rhinocerous

A lot on oil exploration and drilling. It starts with prospecting: The Geologist - note Indiana Jones topper: Drilling Crew
Once the well is drilled, if there isn't enough yield, the Shooters lower dynamite down the well and explode it to fracture the formation.

Something I hadn't known: A lot of natural gas has so much gasoline in it that they have to refine the gas and remove the gasoline from it:
Back to the cowboys business: Charles Goodnight, namesake of a famous cattle trail, the Goodnight - Loving Trail

Various bits:

Various stirrups:

Spurs:

Some More Texas...Windmills, a Bullfight

The Windmill Museum, Lubbock, TX: Not to be confused with the new windmills, actually wind-generators: These are south of Houston.And are BIG

Thi9s is the hub/generator/controller
But this museum is for the old ones, which pumped water for the stock and irrigation. This is a Nichols Centennial Double-section. Note that while the wind generators have only three blades and arre thin - they are designed as airfoils and sort of fly thru the air, these old mills go much slower, against greater resistance, and are bascially pushed by the wind. They do still make them, but they were crucial in the past.

An Ellipse windmill. They do work, apparently, but are not common.

Aermotor tilting windmill: You could hinge it to bend over so that maintenance could be done on the ground, without climbing up the tower. Detractors called it 'the women's windmill.'

Unfortunately, when the works were tilted sideways, the oil tended to spill out. They were only made for about eight years.

A Dutch-windmill type...
Stinson #1, another popular brand - minus the mill itself.

A Wincharger electric generator - these typically were 6-12 volts, to recharge batteries

Some of the larger ones needed a specialized crew to repair them: a repair wagon.

See a bullfight! One of my bucket list items. Well, in America, they aren't allowed to actually kill the bull, which seems to take some of the popularity out of it. Nevertheless, there is this ring in Texas (Santa Maria is a really small town).

The ring was built by Fred Renk, a businessman and onetime bullfighter himself.
A poster for a previous fight:

The chapel - there's always one at every bullring
The bulls. There is a slight problem: These bulls have fought before. The problem doesn't arise if you kill the bulll the first time, but these, of course, weren't killed. They did, however, get an idea of what to expect, which makes things a bit awkward for the torero. The Torero, Enrique Delgado. This was a benefit for him; the reusing of the bulls was to save money. Delgado talking to Fred Renk, Jr, an accomplished torero himself.
Trying to get the bull to charge. He looks a little skeptical; he's seen this before---

But there we go:
Sometimes he decides to ignore the red cape and go after one of the assistants; There are these handy walls to hide behind. Persuading the bull to attack, againAnd, there we go. Notice the red flower on top of the neck...Instead of killing the bull, the torero reaches over the neck as he goes past, and pulls loose the flower. Not quite as dramatic; Couldnt get a picture of this actually happening.

Having made the 'kill', he was in this case awarded two ears (This is done, apparently, not by the judgement of the judges but by the applause of the onlookers. Being gringos and not appreciating the finer pooints, they were a bit more generous than an audience of real aficionados might have been; but then again, be had to fight experienced bulls)...