All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

I've been doing a lot of car shopping since the accident, but I've been too busy with work stuff to do enough looking. It's been about a month, car rental from insurance only lasted about 2 weeks I think, & the rest of the time I've borrowed a car or stolen car rides... I had been doing some car shopping prior to the accident, but it didn't turn into a top priority until after the car wreck... I was still a couple of months away from having the money I wanted.

Part of the problem in finding a car was finding 1 that I wanted, with low miles, and fit inside my cash budget. The last was the hardest part. Most of the cars that I was interested in around here were near $20k and my cash budget was nearer $10k... Considering it took another month (and 2 paychecks) I had a little more to play with, but not much. I finally ended up taking out a loan from USAA for about $8,900 - most of which will be paid back as soon as all the checks I've recently deposited finish clearing (including the check from insurance)... Leaving me with a remainder that I can pay off in about 2 months (yay for car loans with 0 penalty for early payoff).

Anyways, I got a plane ticket last week to get me down to San Antonio on Saturday. I had to get up at 5am to make my flight in Kansas City, flew in to Dallas' Love Field (DAL), and caught a connecting flight to San Antonio... Where I arrived about 12:45... it took me a bit to figure out which direction I needed to go to get out of the building and then I wasn't sure if I needed the top deck or the lower deck for the dealership to come by and pick me up. I ended up calling the dealership and shortly thereafter I saw the silver, black striped, mini cooper pull up and I waved him down.

My initial plans were to visit The Alamo before leaving San Antonio and then drive over to Houston and visit cousins, but due to surgery and medication, along with preparation for an annual SEC audit, and turmoil due to the damage on their office building from Hurricane Ike... Visiting cousins didn't seem as good of a plan. I also wanted to drive down and see the Gulf as I've not seen the ocean in a number of years and it's been even longer since I've seen the ocean on that side of the States. Last time I definitely remember being off the coast of the Gulf was on my senior trip in '93 when we went to Corpus Christi. From my cousins' place I would have headed down to Galveston, but... Galveston is still rebuilding after Ike and they're not wanting visitors...

Time to look at other ideas... Google maps told me it'd be only 2 hours from San Antonio to Corpus Christi vs the 4 hours to Houston. Thanks to my local AAA office being closed when I went by on Friday, and the San Antonio AAA office being closed before I even left the airport, I had no maps of Texas except a large regional map (not useful for cities). Considering I barely had an idea as to where The Alamo was located anyways (somewhere downtown?) I figured I'd end up spending so much time getting lost and then trying to figure out where I had gotten lost at that the park would be closed and those few hours would be wasted.

I figured Corpus Christi was easy to get to - once I got out of San Antonio... I headed down I-37 to Corpus Christi and then took the exit for South Padre Island, followed highway 358 as it island hopped it's way over to South Padre Island, and it eventually merged into State Highway Park Road 22. I followed that all the way out to the park and figured I had gone far enough. I also realized I should have been taking pictures.

Unfortunately all I had with me to take pictures is my Verizon Samsung camera phone. So yes, I realize the quality sucks. The other problem is there's a delay between the time I hit OK and the time it actually takes the picture. Most of the pictures where taken with the sun in my eyes, while I was driving down a highway or interstate at high speeds, or both - yes, my finger is in a couple of the shots while driving down the road, I'm sorry.

Only 3 complaints on the Mini Cooper so far - the cosmetic cap on the hand brake (holds the leather cover in place, not the release) has come off, the suspension is really hard (slabbed interstate was really bumpy), and the bugs really like the windshield.

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