spacekadet blog

i finally got my photos back from my trip to Lubbock, TX for the Red Raider Minisymposium. the images rekindled feelings that i thought i had forgotten along with they chay keizer model. but now it’s clear that lubbock is in me, and it’s not going anywhere without the assistance of an ancient indian burial ritual. so forgive me if i live in the past today. i know it’s not like me. just remember…

it’s not me…

it’s lubbock.

i left for lubbock on a thursday afternoon. as the super shuttle pulled away from my driveway, Lia called and told me to “bring the warmest coat i had”. but it was early, and i was feeling too groggy to make the driver go back, and besides, this is texas — how cold could it possibly be? when i got off the plane and out of Lubbock Airport, the first thing i noticed was the arctic air feeling me up through my crappy old navy sweatshirt. something had to give. my first plan of action was to acquire something warm. a cowboy in my bed wearing nothing except his hat and a pair of spurs would have sufficed. but i knew that attempting that probably meant getting hung in the town square. so i headed “to town” in search of an extra shirt. the first thing i saw as i left the Days Inn was the “Stadium Inn” next door, situated across the street from the TTU stadium itself. what I want to know is: why didn’t we stay there instead?

i can’t say that i’ll ever forgive pahdu for that one.

turns out that the only shops that sell clothes in lubbock only sell stuff that come embroidered with a hideous TTU logo. the upshot is that i finally figured out why the hell a math conference had “red raider” in its name. the bitch factor is that i now own a TTU hat and a long sleeved red TTU shirt.

the ultimate pimp slap came when i put on the shirt and found out that its sleeves were three-quarter as opposed to full sleeve.

but that had to happen i think.

things improved drastically when i caught up with lia and her friend, pam, from upenn. pam is a kindrid spirit, one who i feel i’ve known forever in the cosmic sense. you might call her: the shizzle. i go to these things to meet cool people, and to have my goals realized so quickly immediately justified my trip. as it would turn out, i would need the comic relief to get through what could have been a most painful weekend.

it was cold, you see. really cold. and then i got a cold. a snotty nasty mucous fest brewing relentlessly. and it was lubbock. the walk from the Days Inn to campus was mostly orange, grey, and miserable (see panorama above). and once i got to campus, it was more dull and lifeless than the dust expanse i had just travelled. i figured that was because school wasn’t in session — only it was in session. and such was life at Texas Tech University. pizza, school, and football games. even the homeless steared clear of this weary rural America town.

the case for “lubbock sucks” was won when i discovered that lubbock is in a dry county. fortunately, there was a math reception on the first night which served plenty of wine and food. i can now understand why we have such a problem with obesity in this country. if i was that bored all the time, i would probably eat myself to death (that is if i didn’t drink myself to death first). although i wanted to mingle, i was feeling a little antisocial. so hid in the corner with a plate of hummus and grease and made fun of people with my new friends who failed to get a photo of this guy we saw/met who had really huge hands. in fact, i never got the full story about what happened with him and pam after lia and i left. if i’m ever in pennsylvania again, remind me to steal pam’s diary.

speaking of math, i should probably mention something about the conference itself. the talks were decent, but sadly, all concerned topics in physiology modelling that i’m not really interested in. and there was very little math. i think all the speakers shared powerpoint slides because they all had the same graphs to represent their results. there was coffee and cookies in between talks. there wasn’t enough good people watching, except for this one girl who had on a hideous sweatshirt that had a “top ten reasons to be a math major at ttu” list on the back. the only reason i remember is “to keep the eraser companies in business.”

on the last night in lubbock we found a bar (apparently you can buy booze at bars, not at stores… cuz it’s sooo much safer to drink at a bar and drive home than drink at home in the first place). here we finally hung out with some other math people. while that was nice, i should have stayed in. my nasty cold must have clogged my sense of reason because i made a complete ass of myself. i won’t go into details … i’d like to take this story to my grave. but all i know is that i will probably have to discontinue my studies in math biology just so i don’t run into these people again.

lubbock was so bad that i left a day early and caught a standby flight home. i did bring home with me some fond memories along with some lubbock mud stuck in my shoes. the trip was awful but it makes me laugh. in fact, i laughed a whole lot in lubbock, inbetween visits with the snot rag. places like lubbock, well, you just have to laugh. cuz otherwise you end up like one of them.

you can see all of my inspirational photos from lubbock here.

Related posts:

1. from lubbock with love
2. building the case against lubbock
3. If Ever There Was a T-shirt…
4. pretty good day
5. i’m more than a bird