San Antonio Fiesta

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After getting lost the other day we were closer to San Antonio than we expected, and we also found out that this weekend is what they call Fiesta, and there was going to be a parade today. So, we told the kids, and they were instantly jazzed about the idea of catching flying candy. Because to them a parade just means that people will throw candy at them.

We did our research and decided to drive to a mall a few miles out of town and catch a bus into the city. That went off without a hitch, and we were soon dropped off a block from the parade route. All good so far.

Within a couple of minutes the kids were both devouring a mango on a stick. Ahhh, just like back home. Soon after that we asked Ouest a question whose answer would cement in my mind just how big an effect her Mexican upbringing has had on her.

“Ouest, do you want a corn dog or a taco?”

Without hesitation, “Taco.”

Me looking at the long line for the taco stand, “Are you sure you don’t want a corn dog?”

“No, I want a taco.”

So eventually we start wandering along the parade route. There are chairs three rows deep on each side of the road and a good many of them are empty. We asked a cop who was in charge of the chairs and he said to look for the guy with the blue shirt in each section.

Okay, so we walked a bit more, found some seats, didn’t see anybody in a shirt so decided just to sit down and wait for the guy to come by so we could pay him.

A few minutes went by with no sign of anybody, so I tapped the elderly lady in front of me on the shoulder and asked if she knew who was in charge.

“Oh, all the seats are prepaid tickets.”

“Seriously, we can’t just buy the seats now?” There were hundreds of empty seats.

Then she whispered conspiratorially, “How many seats do you need?” And I thought, Jesus, don’t tell me they’ve got old ladies scalping tickets for a flower parade down here in San Antonio.

I told her two would be fine, the kids could sit on our laps. Then she said, “Here, come sit next to me, I’ve got four seats right here. They’re extras.”

I offered to pay for them, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I still don’t know how much those tickets cost.

She turned out to be the leader of a tour group from California, and a few people from the group had decided not to come along. It was pretty funny watching this lady who must have been about seventy years old taking care of a dozen other seventy year olds as if they were children. One lady even asked her if she could run across the street to buy a drink.

Five minutes later a lady came by asking for our tickets, and our new friend happily whipped out her stash on our behalf. Nice.

So, on to the parade. I’ve been to a few parades, and one thing they seem to have in common is that once they start they just sort of roll along at a nice pace, and after a little while it’s over. Painless enough. But this parade was something altogether different. A high school marching band would stomp past, then five minutes would elapse before the Budweiser Clydesdales snorted on by, and then ten minutes later the mayor would drive past looking sweaty. It was a four hour parade that could have been one. Which fine, whatever, as long as it isn’t ninety-five degrees on the black brick road. Oh my god did we ever get cooked today. Well before the end we had to bail out and go enjoy the shady front lawn of City Hall with dozens of other families.

Round about 3:30 we decided it was time to get going. Our bus was scheduled to pull in at 4:00. We got to the bus stop, but found it was right on the parade route. There were no signs telling us where the detour was, so I asked a cop and got pointed a few blocks away. We got there and began our wait in the beating sun with hundreds of others. When our bus hadn’t shown by 4:30 we asked a transit worker about it and was told it wouldn’t be by for a bit still, despite the schedule showing thirty minute departures.

Okay, so we retreated half a block away to some shade and kept a keen eye on the corner the bus would be coming around. And we stood there, and we stood there, and we stood there. I asked a VIA worker once again and was given some line about how crazy it is during Fiesta. When I asked him if Fiesta had come as a surprise to them, he told me that no answer he gave me was going to be the right one. Which, in fact, was the right answer.

One hour and forty-five minutes later we had watched hundreds of buses go past. We’d confirmed again and again that we were in the right place, but no bus seemed to be coming. Ever.

In the end we climbed, hot and filthy into a cab for a forty-eight dollar ride to Bass Pro Shop. We climbed into our bus, every single one of us in a piss poor mood, and drove to our nearby campground. Just in time for showers and bed.

I hate to let one thing completely color my opinion of a place, but this did. F’ing San Antonio and their non-existent bus. Tell the mayor I want my forty-eight bucks back.

Oh, I forgot about our get-the-heart-beating experience. I have a thing about horses. I don’t like them. I can admire them from afar, but I do not care at all to be around them. Why? Because they’re huge, and they’re strong. Have you ever looked at those legs? I don’t want to be anywhere near where those things can kick me.

Anyway, half a dozen waving cops go by on their horses and I hear one of them yelling something at the guy next to him. He seemed a little intense the way he was yelling, which is why it caught my attention. They passed by, and seconds later the crowd is screaming and scrambling. I turn and see the cop on his ass in the middle of the street and his big black horse skittering and sliding right towards us. I grabbed Ouest (Ali and Lowe were at the bathroom), turned back around to look the horse right in the eye ten feet away, and then watched as he spun back around and ran further down the block with cops scrambling after him. They caught him before he went into the crowd. F’ing San Antonio and their horses.

It was actually a really nice day overall—it just ended so badly that I’ll forever rant about San Antonio. And I’ll never root for the Spurs either. Sorry, Mayor Julian Castro, that’s what you get. Boo-hoo for us.

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32 Comments on “San Antonio Fiesta”

  1. That has to be the saddest looking Mickey and Minnie I have ever seen. That alone would have turned me off to San Antonio! 😉

    1. Roland, you know me better than that. You once offered to buy me a phone. Remember that? 🙂 Can you even imagine me carrying an iPad around all day so I could stand on a street corner holding it over my head trying to get a signal to try and access an app that I would have had to download the night before and that probably has about a 50/50 chance of working anyway?

      I am soooo not interested in phones and apps. I can’t even express how little possibility there is of me using them.

  2. Jeez Pat, who took the jam out of your donut? You got free seats, you probably ended up in the black even with the cab ride back to the bus. During events like this public transport breaks, that’s just the way it is.
    Roland is right, might be time to get a phone, which is invaluable in situations like this. Giving attitude to overworked transit workers, who are probably trying to do their best, isn’t.

  3. I think the problem isnt just San Antonio, but any large urban area and any large public event — especially those involving lots of street closings. In Washington DC the $48 for your cab ride could be equaled by the cost of 4 souls going from the suburbs on the bus then the subway to visit the Smithsonian Museums – and back again.
    Paid Seating might be the alternative to having latecomers arrive just as the parade starts to stand in front of where you have been sitting.

  4. You had a dinghy for your boat, why not one for you bus? You can tow a jeep without a towing kit. Much easier, and you won’t even know it’s there.
    Because we are artists, we have to tow a van to carry our whole set-up, and have to use a lube pump, but even that is easy to tow.

    1. I would not tow a vehicle for the one day out of ten that we could use it to make our lives just slightly easier. It would make the other nine days exponentially more difficult. Our bus has a 318 engine that slows us to about twenty-five miles an hour on a long tall hill. Add a few thousand pounds more to the back of that? Nope, we are trying to keep things simple. Even if that means some bad experiences with public transport.

      1. Awe come on, it would give you an excuse to never back up and give you one more thing to fix with all that empty time you have every day while the kids are napping. What would be really cool is if you could paint it to match, a few grand would do the trick to match that faded 50 year old paint on the bus.

  5. i think you above commenters have forgotten what it is like to have 2 little kids who have been Out too long. if it had been just pat and ali he might not have been so put off but having little kids maximizes both your enjoyment and despair as a parent. 🙂

    pat, we too, when we were traveling around the US, stuck to the small towns and backroads. we pretty much stayed out of any large city unless we were visiting family. we saw a LOT of Texas (gulf coast, alpine areas, etc.) and it is fun seeing you in a lot of the places we went through. we once spent a couple days going around Austin – just found lots of places to poke our noses into…

    1. Many of us are living vicariously through you for one reason or another (age, infirmity, etc.). When you have a bad day, it upsets us because 99.9% of the time you are having a blast which makes us feel great!

    2. I think some may have just misunderstood your sarcasm and thought you were actually upset that the city bus didn’t run as scheduled on the day you wanted to ride it.

  6. Perhaps they have NEVER had a bad day…..IIRC you are not a zoo person…but the kids would like it, the San Antonio zoo is one of the nicest, and it has a train 🙂

  7. Honesty about your travels is what makes your blog real. I loath the big cities, and while there is much to love about SA, it is a very difficult place to get around in. When my son was born with clubfoot, we made the drive from Shiner to downtown San Antonio every weekday for 6 months to go to therapy. 4 hours round trip, every day. The roads are not well planned, traffic is insane, drivers even more so and everything floods when it rains. It was difficult to say the least. I enjoy downtown SA, and everything to the west of 1604 but that’s about it. Doing a day like that with small kids would be a sufferfest.

    Ideas of places to hit up if you are continuing west are Comfort, Kerrville (Kerrville state park…kids will love to feed the wild Turkeys), Fredericksburg (good beer and pizza to be had at West End Pizza on Main Street) and Llano (Coopers BBQ is awesome). Also Concan, Lost Maples and Medina. Very small towns and great places to camp. Between Fredericksburg and Llano is Enchanted Rock. gorgeous desert hiking. Might be tough to go to the top of it with small kids but there is a trail around the base and rocks for the kids to climb on. Kathy has some good knowledge of west Texas as they traveled and stayed there quite a bit.

    If you are heading south, let us know.

    Kathy probably has some good

  8. The seats are $12. It was hot if you were not in the shade. I live in new braunfels. Glad you enjoyed your time there- great place to boat and awesome place to live ! I enjoyed the parade but the horses made me nervous too!
    Hard to say how you could have avoided bus issue – Texas time is somewhat like island time – we are never in too much of a hurry – good way to live but aggravating when you are trying to get somewhere – happy travels !

  9. San Antonio is on our list for our next vacation….but I would have sworn it off, too, if I had that same day you did. Piss poor planning on the city’s part. We are not phone users, either…we have cells, but they are way old school and no fancy apps, etc. I refuse to have to rely on technology.

    Anyway, keep on, keeping on. Hopefully a hot shower and a good nights sleep helped!!

  10. yea pat. if you had an iphone you could of ubered your ass back home.

    iit just so happens that i have one laying around. its all yours.

  11. I’m a San Antonian and I laughed through this whole post. Not offended at all. 7th largest city in the US by population and we have a TERRIBLE bus system. Terrible. It drives me insane. This city could be so wonderful. As it stands, it’s just alright.

  12. I totally get your aversion to cell phones. I could go on for hours about my own immense dislike of them, but you do realize that you don’t have to be *that* person, right? You don’t have to give out your phone number or answer the phone when it rings. You don’t have to text, play games, check Facebook, or let it dominate your life. I barely touch my phone, but I do love the convenience of it once in a great while. It has come in handy in a few situations. They have incredibly cheap Tracfones where you just pay for the minutes you use. To each his own, of course, but I can’t imagine driving around remote back roads with little kids and not having that peace of mind in case there is an emergency. It is one thing to have convictions about the way you will live life and raise your kids, it is another to cut off your nose to spite your face just so you don’t conform to society. Just my opinion, of course.

    1. “I can’t imagine driving around remote back roads with little kids and not having that peace of mind in case there is an emergency.”

      We’ve heard this so many times. And every time someone says it I think, “Oh my would the smartphone advertising execs love to hear how their campaigns have worked.” My parents didn’t have cell phones, my grandparents didn’t either, and not once do I recall an emergency that they couldn’t handle without one. I also don’t personally know anybody who has ever averted a disaster because they had a phone in their pocket. They may have averted an inconvenience or two, but at what cost?

      Here’s my plan in case of an emergency. I’ll run or drive or whatever to the nearest house, and I’ll knock on their door, and I’ll ask them to help me.

      We haven’t had a phone in eleven years. So accounting for inflation, basically, with the money we saved we have bought and paid for this bus that we’re currently driving around in.

      It’s funny really, getting a phone is not even a conversation that Ali and I have ever had. It literally never comes up. The idea doesn’t even cross our minds.

      1. Eh….to each his own. I hate everyone with their faces in cell phones. It’s sad to see what society has become, but I wouldn’t be without a cell phone ever. And yes, it did save us. When my son was 4, he had an anaphylactic reaction out on a hiking trail. We were able to call 9-11 as we were running with him on the trail back to the car. They were able to dispatch the ranger in the park who was able to arrive with an epi pen and save our son. Of course, now we know and he carries an epi pen everywhere he goes. Best of luck!

  13. Pat, thanks for the update. I cant speak for everyone but perhaps by you saying that you had a rough day implies that Ouest and Lowe had a rough day too. I am trying to say this with out sounding stalkerish, But many of us are Pat and Ali fans and even bigger Ouest and Lowe fans! Where else could I learn new words like Booga Booga?

  14. Sorry you had such a frustrating experience in San Antonio, Fiesta is a madhouse to say the least. I hope you’ll give San Antonio another chance when it’s not so chaotic, it really is a beautiful city with alot of history.

  15. What No Cell phone? I am soo impressed. You guys rock! Way to keep it real. We are so tired of seeing families at a restaurant having “family time” and everyone is staring at their phone and not talking. Dads and moms at the park with their kids and the dad/mom on the phone the whole time. Families dont talk anymore. 6 year old kids are walking around with phones. My phone broke and I waited a week to get it replaced, it felt so liberating not to have a phone. When I went to the store to get a new phone and told the girl at the counter that it broke about a week ago, she couldnt believe I went a week without a phone. She said she couldnt go 20 minutes without her phone. There is a huge addiction to phones that nobody seems to talk about. If you cant live with something for 20 minutes thats called an addiction in my book.

  16. We also remain cell phone free. And to counter the “what about an emergency” comments, it seems we are constantly reading about or seeing dangerous situations caused by peoples inattention because they are looking at their damn cell phone! Just a few weeks ago a man with 4 small kids in tow jay walked across a street in front of us while looking at his phone. We were going slowly but please imagine how terrifying it was for us when a 5th child completely unseen between the parked cars ran out in front of our car to catch up to dad who was now across the street but still looking at his phone and not his children. We couldn’t stop thinking about how that stupid incident could have destroyed so many lives had my husband not been paying such close attention.

  17. I’m sorry you had a rough day in San Antonio! I am a San Antonian and I absolutely love this city. It’s a beautiful place, especially during fiesta, with genuinely nice people. Don’t let one thing that went wrong be a reflection of the city as a whole, but as a breakdown in transportation during one of the busiest time for our public transportation system which could have occurred in any urban setting during a city-wide celebration. Anyway, I hope you continue to have a great time on your travels!

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