We did, with a bit of last minute juggling, make it to dinner at the one place I really wanted to eat, and that was the Big Texas Steak Ranch.
Think of it as Disneyland for Big Eaters.
There's a giant steer outside the restaurant - I took a cute picture of Elise standing between its forelegs - and they also have a hotel where the rooms are done up like store fronts, saloons and mercantile and the lock-up, etc. They also have a free limo service, I kid you not, with older cadillac limos that will come and pick you up if you're staying at any of the local hotels. Elise LOVED the horns, a fact that I am coming to regret. She took one look at them, decked out with the ubiquitous steer horns on the hoods, and decided that Inny needs cow horns. (I'm in real trouble - several days later she's still saying it, which means she WON'T FORGET!) Everybody promise you'll still admit to knowing me if I show up at your house with cow horns on the front of my shitkicker truck!
Anyway, the Big Texas Steak Ranch is also home to the proudly proclaimed "free 72-oz steak". Here's the deal: you sit down on a stage (well, if you're insane enough to attempt this, anyway) at the front of the restaurant where everybody can see you. They give you the steak (my sister and I worked out that it has to be just shy of five pounds of beef), a shrimp cocktail, a salad and a dinner roll. You get to take a bite to be sure it's done the way you like, and then you're off, and you have one hour to finish the whole thing. I asked the waitress how many people actually accomplish this feat, and she said about one out of five, so it's a challenge even for the big boys of Texas.
So you finish this gut buster - the important qualification here is "without throwing up", and yes, they have plastic lined bins handy - and it's free, you're famous, you get cheered, blah blah blah. Some guy actually sat down to try while we were there, and Elise and I cheered him on, but we had to leave before he finished. I still wonder if he made it.
They also had a bluegrass trio, two older guys and an older gal, who wandered around the tables taking requests - it was really nice. I asked for and got a song about Amarillo, but I can't tell you what it was called since I didn't catch the title. Purty, though. Restful.
So the sky was turning black with clouds as we climbed back into the truck to head back to the hotel. We even saw a bit of lightning. Earlier that afternoon, George from the dealership said, ominously, that he was glad we would be going the next day, since there was "some pretty interesting weather forecast for the weekend." Keep in mind the Panhandle area is tornado country.
Come to think of it, I'M glad we're on our way tomorrow. I don't think I want to experience the kind of weather a Texan calls "interesting".
Addendum - 3am by my internal clock, 5am Amarillo time, June 10th, 2005
Don't know why I do this but I often wake up at this point in the night and find myself unable to sleep for three hours. Which is going to suck because that's just about the point when we should be getting up. Oh well.
Right now I'm thinking about my writing. I don't believe I'm scholar material, though I do enjoy history. I've just been going over my last final and thinking about the fact that, with that one professor, I just can't seem to rise above a "B".
A close friend studying at a certain prestigious university recently found themselves in the utterly unenviable position of rethinking their entire life after being told by a panel of examining professors that they had falied their midway exams so badly that the panel didn't even think they warranted a second chance. Which just goes so far out the other side of harsh that I am STILL filled with outrage on my friend's behalf, but my friend told me that they had already been having doubts as to whether or not this was what they wanted to do with the rest of their life anyway...
I think I have reached my own "panel of examining professors", and they have pointed out to me, through the medium of my last literature final, that I do not possess the kind of thinking (and consequently, the true desire) to distinguish myself in academia. That's really okay - I actually feel very freed by that, because what I'm doing right at this minute is so much more satisfying to me than writing research papers.
What am I doing right now? I'm writing to you, of course. I'm traveling and writing down my experiences and laughing at the astounding stuff I've encountered and mostly, I'm wanting to share Don the Bullrider and the guy who thought he could eat five pounds of steak in a sitting, and to show you the awesome blackness of a West Texas sky as Elise and I saw this last evening. I want you to see, as we did, enormous sheets of rain falling away to the north, and to know with us the entirely human desire to flee before that storm, towards the shelter of our hotel room.
'Nuff said...
The Big Texan Steak Ranch! http://www.bigtexan.com/index2.html
(NOTE: from this point on, I'm actually writing days later, from the comfort of my little office in our house. After that 3am/5am discourse, things got a bit weird, and there really was no time to write as we went.)
Tomorrow, the weather and other variables!
No comments:
Post a Comment