{"id":1130,"date":"2012-02-02T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T18:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=1130"},"modified":"2020-05-08T14:49:31","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T19:49:31","slug":"texas-day-2-lbj-and-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2012\/02\/texas-day-2-lbj-and-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Day 2: LBJ and basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin, Texas, Jan. 24 \u2014 <\/strong>The first order of business on this gray day was to get an actual car. The Nissan Altima had less than 1000 miles on it and a “push-button” start.<\/p>\n

I spent the short trip to the LBJ Museum getting used to the car and finding a fatal flaw in the GPS \u2014 it and frontage roads in Texas do not get along. It said “Keep right onto I-35 South” when I was supposed to take a right onto the I-35 frontage road NORTH a short distance before merging. This happened in both directions with the frontage roads, and would happen later as well.<\/p>\n

It hadn’t started raining yet, but the clouds looked mean as I walked to Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and found a huge addition to the north end zone that wasn’t there when I visited in 2005. It even has a food court.<\/a> In its own way, it’s a physical manifestation of the expression “We’re Texas, and you’re not.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhat you don’t see: A giant inside view of the floors and floors of presidential documents. Plus, an animatronic re-creation of Lyndon himself.<\/em><\/p>\n

I spent the rest of the morning inside the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. The outside is a stark light-colored building every inch its 1968 vintage. The inside was good and informative, encompassing LBJ’s whole life. The Oval Office replica and Lady Bird’s office are at the top. James Naismith’s original rules for “Basket Ball”<\/a>, written up 120 years ago, were on display in a special exhibit.<\/p>\n

I drove to Fran’s Hamburgers on Congress south of the Capitol after seeing it mentioned on a link someone sent me. It was good, but not $8.50 good.<\/p>\n

Back north to the Texas State History Museum. Parking was $8. I decided that I would not be going anywhere in the time between museum close and the basketball game.<\/p>\n

Photography was prohibited, which was a shame, because there was a lot of good stuff encompassing the entire history of Texas. The 20-minute film has a couple of surprises in it. I also watched the IMAX film “Tornado Alley,” which perhaps I shouldn’t have done because this was the same one in Iowa a while ago. I thought it was fine, and the closest I ever want to be to a tornado. I wrote this as I was sitting in an out-of-season overnight tornado watch, which is scary in its own way.<\/p>\n

Two hours to kill. I walked to McDonald’s for some food, then the other way to the Erwin Center. I actually ran into some Iowa State fans! I got a cheap ticket and watched the crowd trickle in. It was just a trickle until right up to game time, and even then the arena may have ended up half full.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a>It turned out to be a good thing this game was on the Longhorn Network. You’d have better luck finding a Husker who didn’t hate Dan Beebe than a subscriber to LHN.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nCy gets chased by a herd of Longhorns at halftime.<\/em><\/p>\n

Iowa State got off to a good start and then fell asleep. Royce White not only airballed two free throws and a three-pointer late in the second half, but the second free throw stopped close enough for him to catch it<\/em>. It was a dreadful outing by both teams.<\/a> There was no way this team could be competitive against Kansas or Kansas State. (Cue ominous foreshadowing gong.)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austin, Texas, Jan. 24 \u2014 The first order of business on this gray day was to get an actual car. The Nissan Altima had less than 1000 miles on it and a “push-button” start. I spent the short trip to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12072,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions\/12072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}