1st impressions of Texas

Well, I've been here for just over a week and it's probably the right time to give my 1st impressions.  
After our less than wonderful flight to Texas we stayed in the Hotel Indigo in Galleria, Houston for the 1st 2 days to do some HR stuff and orientation.  On Tuesday we spent the day doing paperwork followed by dinner at Maggiano's Little Italy in Galleria which was superb, following that we were free to do as we chose so we sampled a few bars before heading off to catch up on some sleep.  Seeing as we left Houston on the Wednesday I don't feel qualified to put much about the place so I'll leave it until I've spent more time there.  Wednesday was another full day checking out of the hotel and travelling the 60 or so miles South West to Lake Jackson, checking into our apartments, sorting out a hire car and mobile phones. 

Home for the next 6 months is a gated community (not sure why they're called compounds in KSA and gated communities in the US) called The Residence at Lake Jackson where I'm sharing an apartment with Cockney John who's training to do the same job as me, there's a gym and a small outdoor pool and it's very comfortable but doesn't have anthing like the same amenities of Las Dunas.  I think we were spoiled a little bit there.   
What I've seen of Texas isn't what I'd imagined, I thought the landscape would be closer to that of Saudi in that it would be dry and barren but it's quite the opposite, it's more like the UK with lots of trees and greenery but flat, very very flat.  It's also huge, if I set off driving from here and head North West to the State Border just past Amarillo it would take about 20 hours, head west to El Paso which would take about 16 hours, heading East is something I plan to do as about 4 hours gets you to Louisiana and New Orleans.
Lake Jackson is quite strange in that it's classed as a city but only has a population of about 27,000 which is about same as a small town at home but it's spread over a massive area, nothing is close together.  Supermarkets and shops are in abundance and with the Brazos Mall there is everything you need.  Restaurants and eateries are plentiful and there's every type of food on offer except a curry shop, I miss a good curry.  It was a struggle to find a jar of curry sauce in the supermarket so I shouldn't have been surprised.  Another oddity is that there are very few bars, apart from The Wayside and Ricochets Billiards Bar where you can go for a beer and game of of pool there are no other pubs/bars , 2 bars in the whole town, and no taxi's!!!! 

Things I've noticed about Texas

• They love fishing, the fishing tackle sections in Walmart and the local sport store are massive.
• They love Pick-up trucks even more!!! I read somewhere a few years ago that the most popular vehicle in the world was the Ford P150 Pick-up, after being in Texas for a week I can say that it is without doubt the most popular vehicle, Pick-ups probably account for 30-40% of all the traffic!!
• You can go into the Sports Academy and buy shorts, t-shirt, trainers and a shot gun or an assualt rifle or a hand gun or a crossbow.  The right to bear arms is something most Americans protect fiercely.

Speaking of traffic it's nice to be back in a country where people drive sensibly and courteously, traffic signals and speed limits are obeyed and the sound of horns beeping is a distant memory, for now.

Apparently the next town from here, Clute, is the mosquito capital of the world, they even have a mosquito festival each year.  I can understand why there are so many as the land here is very flat with plenty of rivers, lakes & swamps for them to breed and the climate is ideal, mosquito season starts in about a month, I'll let you know how it goes. 

I've spent the last week doing induction exams, health & safety, permit to work, confined space entry and other site specific stuff as well as hurricane training which is a new one for me.  Had another medical which is my 4th in the last 6 months, all things that are required before I get my site pass onto the plant next week which is when my training really starts so that's something to look forward to.

Till the next time..........

Planes, pains and automobiles!!!!!!

For anyone who has just found this Blog it's part of a chronicle of my life from living and working in the UK to living and working in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) via a 6 month spell in Lake Jackson, Texas.  If you want to read the 10 weeks leading up to the start of this Blog you can find it at www.whoneedsbeer.blogspot.co.uk.

For those of you who have already read it this is the next step.

I'm finally here!! After a 10 week wait it's actually happened although the transition from KSA to the US was slightly more traumatic than the UK to KSA.  My flight was from Dammam to Houston via a 4 hour stop over in Frankfurt, if I knew what was in store I would have refused to get on the plane!  The schedule was 23:35 depart Dammam.  Arrive at Frankfurt 06:25 local time. Depart Frankfurt at 10:00 and arrive in Houston at 13:45 local time. A total travel time of 22 hours 50 minutes spanning 9 times zones. 

The reality was as follows......
We set off from Las Dunas in Khobar at 8pm on Sunday evening for the 40 minute ride to King Fahd Airport in Dammam, arrived in good time and checked in.  2 hours to kill meant lots of sitting around drinking coffee and eating peanut M&Ms (I can't help it, they're too nice).  The flight left on time for the short 45 minute hop to Kuwait City for refuelling and more passengers, we left Kuwait at around 01:30 for an uneventful 6 hour flight to Frankfurt.  Found the gate at Frankfurt airport, which is massive by the way, for our connecting flight and found a bar for a well deserved beer and some breakfast.  The flight boarded at about 09:30 and took off on time for the 10 hours 30 minutes to Houston, so far so good.  This jetset lifestyle is easy although I don't think I've ever been so bored in my life, until I started this life journey the longest I'd been on a plane for was 5 hours to Egypt so 8, 9 and 10 hour flights were uncharted territory.  The flight should have landed at about 13:45 but seeing as we still had 400 miles to go at that time we reckoned on maybe a 45 minute delay, after doing a 360 degree loop about 300 miles away we started our final decent although with about 220 miles to go the plane did another 360 degree loop, not to worry we thought, the airport must be busy.  As I was watching the TV monitor that tracked our GPS position during the decent we got about 140 miles from Houston and the plane started to climb and turn to the left again, surely not another loop round, we were already 1 hour behind schedule!!! 
It is at this point that it all went pear shaped although just how pear shaped we couldn't have possibly imagined.
The Captain then announced that due to severe weather at Houston we were unable to land and due to a fuel shortage we couldn't continue to wait for the weather to improve so we would have to divert to Dallas and wait there.  At around 3pm we landed at Dallas-Fort Worth where we taxi'd to a refueling point and waited.......and waited........and waited.  At 6pm the Captain announced that the we still couldn't land at Houston and the Aviation Authorities wouldn't extend his flying time so we would have to disembark.  Another issue that then arose was that Dallas isn't a major airport and seeing as we were in a 570 seat Airbus A380-800 they weren't equipped to deal with a plane that size so we had to be bused the half mile or so to the terminal.  We headed off after being told that we had 3 options available

1. Board 1 of the 14 coaches chartered to drive us the 247 miles to Houston airport
2. Check into a hotel in Dallas and Lufthansa would arrange our onward travel the next day
3. Make our own way to our final destination

Immigration was surprisingly smooth considering they were swamped and I was sat waiting for my luggage at around 8pm, it turned up at 9.45pm!!!! We'd been on the go for nearly 35 hours now.
When we considered our options the hotel stayover was out of the question as we had to be in Houston and the thought of sitting on a coach for 4+ hours then getting a 30 mile taxi to the hotel didn't appeal so Jordan, Chris and I decided to get a one-way car rental and have a Texas road trip to drive the 277 miles to the hotel, the best of a bad situation but not brilliant to be honest.  We picked up the car at 10.30pm and set off via a service station on the outskirts of Houston for a McDonalds and Red Bull, not that we needed wings because we were bloody sick of them and for the 1st hour or so we changed drivers every 20 minutes due to fatigue but once we'd had a kip and some caffeine we were away.  We arrived at the Hotel Indigo in Galleria, Houston at around 2.30am, some 40 hours after we set off absolutely shattered, and feeling slightly less than clean so the 1st thing I did what have a shower and shave and eventually climbed into bed at 3am.
As journeys go I've never experienced anything like it and if I ever have to do it again it will be too soon.  We stayed in the hotel in Houston for 2 nights before travelling the 50 or so miles down to Lake Jackson on Wednesday to move to where we'll be living for the next 6 months, I'll go into that in more detail at a later date but for now I'll leave it there.

If someone said to me now that I have to get on a plane I'd probably shoot them!!!!