We felt awkward arriving so late, but our new host, also named John, was very gracious. His home near the ferry was under three feet of water after Ike, but he’s already ripped out the flooring and replaced it, along with the sheetrock and other water damage.
He lost his job because of the downturn in the economy, and he’s taken a job in Houston temporarily. The commute is nearly two hours each way, on top of working a nine-hour day, so it doesn’t leave him much time to do the rest of the repairs. He’s also not wanting to stay in Galveston if he’s working in Houston, so he’s got his house up for sale.
He warned me in advance that there’s no furniture in the house, “not a stick of furniture” as he put it. I assured him we are self-supported and it wouldn’t a problem.
We’ve been here since late Friday night, and we’ll leave Tuesday morning. The house is definitely in transition; construction supplies clutter the floors and the kitchen countertops, but we have our own bathroom with a shower and our own bedroom with new carpeting. There’s no furniture except for three kitchen chairs, which he recently acquired.
In our introductory chat the first night we discovered that John is Czech (actually Slovak); he was born in Bratislava in the former Czechoslovakia, emigrating with his family to Canada during the “Prague Spring” in 1968. We haven’t had a chance to speak Czech with anyone is so many years we can hardly believe it, so we immediately had a great connection with John. We stayed up until far, far too late that first night, enjoying a brandy and Power Bar and talking about our memories of Czechoslovakia.
Afternoon downtown
After much-needed showers and some organization on Saturday, we headed off to the bike shop; we are trying to get a new kickstand as the bamboo tripods Rick made for us keep slipping loose and falling down. We hung out at the bike shop watching Joey tackle the challenge; we liked him instantly. His idea is to use an aluminum handlebar and somehow attach it to the front of the trailer.
He worked on it in between customers, giving us time to relax. We looked up at one point, and who should be walking in but Jason, our first Galveston couchsurfing host! Kristle is gone for the weekend, and Jason’s mom is here; they were out wandering around downtown. We loved seeing Jason again; it was like seeing a long-lost friend. After hugs and bit of chat, we repeated our assurances that we would see each other “down the road”.
Joey closed his shop at five, so we rode over to the Mod again, after agreeing to leave my trailer till Monday so Joey could work on it.
We had another awesome session at the Mod, but it was much harder to concentrate as downtown Galveston was holding an “Art Walk”. All the local art galleries were open, offering wine, punch, water, and hors d’oeuvres, and the downtown was quite busy with the festivities. We finally gave up and joined in, taking in all the sights.
We had agreed that we’d be back at the house by 8:30, as we really don’t like riding after dark. When we arrived home, John wasn’t here; the house was dark and all locked up. We sat in the deepening dusk for about a half hour, swatting mosquitoes, finally deciding to call John.
It turned out that he had taken a bus, but they had combined route schedules for the weekend, and he ended up going from one side of the island to the other before heading his direction. He said he could have made it faster walking.
Meanwhile, being eaten alive by mosquitoes, we headed off on our bikes to ride the neighborhood, hoping that the breeze would slow down the skeeters. We didn’t get in the house until 9:30.
We stayed up too late once again talking with John, but we had a great sleep-in today. We’ve spent the entire day on organizing our gear, making a list for tomorrow, finding directions between stores tomorrow, and writing blogs and doing photos.
Tomorrow we are heading into Houston with John. He’s dropping us off at a Whole Foods near his work, where we’ll get some things we need, then we have a thirty minute walk to Washington Mutual. We need new cards for our bank account; we were told we needed to appear in person, but the closest one for the last year has been in Houston, so we’re taking advantage of the nearness and we’ll finally get our cards.
We’ll also have to get to REI; we are finally trading in our camp chairs (they are awesomely uncomfortable) and getting a water filter. We’ll have a full day of errands and walking from one place to the next (it’s five miles between the bank and REI with no public transportation), so we’ll be whupped tomorrow night.
Chelsea is urging me to quit, as it’s almost 9 p.m., we still have to eat dinner, and we still have to get ready for a long day tomorrow.
Signing off from Galveston TX