December 2006 trips

My company has shutdown holidays starting from 23 Dec 2006 to 2 Jan 2007. I decided to travel down south to Texas to see friends and Ramesh. Ramesh has been in US for the last 6 months but I have not seen him though I have been in telephonic contact with him.
I started on an almost 1000 mile each way trip to San Antonio on 22 Dec at about 4:30 pm. I reached Coffeyville, KS (Mahesh Deshmukh-a friend who recently moved-'s place) by 12:30 am. I had dinner with him and retired for the day. The next day, I started from there to Dallas. Mahesh was going to Florida with other friends.
I asked Venu (another friend who recently moved to Victoria) to go to SA and pick Ramesh and come to Dallas by the time I reach Hidden Ridge in Dallas. Ramesh's friend (Ashok) has been working there since last 2 years. We had lunch and went to see downtown, Dallas that night (23 Dec).
Ashok is a very good cook. He made chicken curry for lunch. We then went to see some shopping malls (in Galleria and Grapevine) because it was very cold outdoors on 24 th Dec. I made a call to Naveen (IITM friend and ex-roommate at OSU) and was planning on meeting him in Houston on 25th Dec. Ashok's roommates Hussain, Mallik, Sayed and Kiran made mutton biryani that night. It was a great feast. Kudos to Sayed and his recipe.
Next day (25th), I and Ramesh in my car and Venu in his car started to Houston, first to see Naveen and his wife, Indira. She prepared some nice biryani for lunch. We then went to see Houston downtown and Galleria locality. We then started to Victoria that night. That night Venu prepared fish biryani. It was awesome.
We decided to go to Galveston island and to NASA Johnson space station on 26th Dec. We spent about 2 hours at Moody Gardens in Galveston and went to space station. At space station, we were able to cover some film shows but missed all tram tours; something should cover in next trip if it happens. We went back to Victoria.
I and Ramesh started to San Antonio on 27th about 8:30 am and reached Chase Hill Blvd by 10:30 am. Ramesh prepared egg curry and relaxed with some Telugu movies that afternoon and then went to see SA downtown that night. We went on riverwalk for about a mile; it was very crowded; lot of restaurants and lot of malls.
I decided to relax the whole day of 28th. On 29th, I and Ramesh visited my Childhood classmate Lakshmi Bhavani, her husband Subba Rao and their two kids Siddarth and Shivani. On the way back, we met Ramesh's friend and came back to SA. On 30th we stayed put home as it was continuing to rain and watched Telugu movies - Pokiri and Bommarillu.
I started my drive back at about 10 am 31st and reached Coffeville by 8:30 pm. I was tired and went to bed early. I finished the morning Chores and started to Waterloo by 9 pm on 1st Jan 2007. I reached Waterloo by 6:30 pm.
I relaxed the whole day of 2nd Jan. The normal winter work-home routine life begins from 3rd.

Watch my trip pix at http://picasaweb.google.com/merugu143