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The oddest thing that any kid said to me was at that school -- one of the little girls asked me if she could have the fishing Barbie on my roof! I tried to politely decline with, "No because it's stuck to my roof." But she was persistant & came right back with "Well can I have it?" I couldn't help blurting out, "No you can't have it! It's stuck to my roof!" I suppose I should have been gentler, but the heat, the excitement, and the realization of how many repairs were needed from the earlier school, were all starting to get to me.

But the funniest thing about that school was the photography teacher. He really sounded like he was at the end of his rope. I remember sitting on a wall with the two guys from the sandcastle car, watching our cars. The photography teacher was right behind us and he was critiquing the kids' photographs, rather harshly I thought. "Do you see what's wrong with that photo? Your composition is all wrong! You've cut off the front of the vehicle!" Maybe he just needed to speak loudly to get their attention in the middle of all that excitement. But from where we were, just listening, he really sounded a bit sharp with them. "You need to work on your composition! You're not framing the images! Put that stick down!" The three of us nearly busted up laughing when he inserted "put that stick down" into the middle of his tirade on proper composition. I have to say, I'm glad I never had an art teacher like that when I was 12!

At the next school I have no idea what happened, because I spent the entire half hour across the street, talking on the phone with Verizon. They reset the account, it worked for about thirty seconds, and then prompty stopped working again. That web cam thing was such a headache! I wish I hadn't publicized it at all. That way, when it didn't work I could have just forgotten about it and gotten on with enjoying the events of the weekend.

Georg did tell me that two little boys had the classic "boy" reaction to the Barbies on my car: one of them yelled "Barbie! Yuck!" and they literally averted their eyes, covering their faces with their hands, and hurried past as fast as they could. Priceless!

I have to say, I'm amazed that even though I have hundreds of fish on my car, kids zero in on the three Barbies. I never realized how much fascination Barbie has for kids until I put one on my car. For a lot of kids, it's literally all they notice. Girls love it of course, and a lot of boys do too, although many boys have the "Yuck!" reaction described above. If I were to do another art car, I think I would do a Barbie car. Paint it bright pink with those groovy flowers from Barbie packaging, and cover the car with all kinds of Barbies. I could even put Barbie make-up heads on the rear shelf. But Georg has threatened to never ride in my car if I paint it pink. So the ultimate Barbie vehicle will have to wait.

Finally we got to the last school. This was a high school, and I have to say it was a bit of a letdown after the extreme enthusiasm of the younger kids. The high school students were on their lunch break, so instead of teachers ushering them to the cars in groups, they were hanging out on the lawn in front of the school. They seemed feel it would have been uncool to show too much interest in the cars. So instead of pulling up to packs of kids running screaming towards us, waving their arms in the air, we got to stand there while the teenagers ignored us for a decent interval.

Even after they felt OK examining the cars, they still didn't want to look uncool by showing too much interest. Instead they sort of sauntered up, and strolled back and forth at a safe distance. I guess it's just not cool to act interested in things. I did have a nice conversation with a young woman who invited us to a party that night with live music. I knew there was no way we'd be up to that kind of event, but I talked to her for a while anyway. She had graduated from that high school the year before and was working as a model for their figure drawing class. She explained to us that cars were a distant third behind boys and fashion for girls that age, and didn't register at all with the boys. I guess she felt bad about the lack of response; it was really nice of her to make the effort to talk to us.

The only exchange I remember having with any students was when a couple walked past the car while I was standing near it. The girl squealed, "Look, she has your hair!" I looked over and sure enough, the boy's hair looked just about the same as mine. Brown underneath, with turqouise highlights that were starting to fade out. He probably even used the same brand, Manic Panic. He looked so horrified! Here he thought he was being so rebellious and cool, and then he sees an old fat lady (he couldn't have been more than 16, which would make me twice his age, gack!) with the exact same hair! Poor kid.

By this point, we were all feeling hot, tired and hungry. We had been promised a free lunch at a local restaurant, so we felt much relief when our leader finally signaled us to move out. By this time we had lost two of our police escort, leaving us with only one policeman. But he was amazing! He would stop at a light, wait for most of the cars to get through it, and then zoom ahead to the next light just as the first car got to it. The blocks were so short in downtown Houston that he really had to move! He was accelerating so hard that his Harley set off car alarms as he passed by. What a crazy sight. The nine of us cruising through downtown Houston with one motorcycle cop, lights flashing and sirens blaring, car alarms going off on either side as we drive by.

Finally we got to our post-drag destination: red beans and rice at a nice restaurant called, um, I forget. Greenfield? Treebeard? Greentree? Well it was a nice place. Cafeteria style. We had free red beans and rice, bread and iced tea. Some people bought extra food, like a vegetable or dessert, but the red beans and rice were plenty for Georg and I. We sat with the rat car lady who regaled us with stories from previous parades.

They had given a free lunch to the policemen as well, so I went over and thanked our lone motorcycle cop for taking such good care of us. He didn't seem to want to chat, just said "All right. Thank you." Maybe I shouldn't have interrupted him while he was eating.

OK, that's all for the Main Street Drag. We didn't go to the Art Car Symposium, instead we went out to dinner with our friends Peggy and Chris who had just gotten in from Austin. Chris looked online and found a neat restaurant called Fusion something. It had Cajun, Jamaican and Southern food. Great food! We had a sausage filled with rice called boudin, and I had jerk chicken for dinner. It was a little spicy but not too much. And we shared a fantastic sweet potato pie for dessert. I swore I was too full to have more than a bite, but I ended up eating plenty.

That night we had talked about hanging out by the hotel pool, which would have been really nice. But Georg had read in the information packet that we wouldn't be allowed to drive in the parade without a fire extinguisher in our car. I didn't have one, so off we went to gas up the car, and find a fire extinguisher, electrical tape, and extra film for Peggy. I'll spare you the gory details, except to say that we got completely lost in a rather seedy part of town. We finally found an Autozone that was open late, but the excusion took over two hours all told. Needless to say, no one was up to hanging out by the pool after all that stress. So we laid around our room, taking care of a few last-minute preparations before the big event the next morning.