3/2/2005 06:19:00 PM|||Larry||| Yesterday was a long, but interesting day. The Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce made its bi-annual trip to the Capital in Austin with the purpose of passing out the current issues statements. In visiting the different Representative's offices, we did not get to visit with any of the actual elected officials, but spoke with many of their right hand people. The reception by these people was polite and they showed interest in us and our issues. I am sure they see dozens of groups (or more) each day and are polite and show interest, but it did not seem put on or faked. I saw people I knew from other parts of the state there doing the same thing and saw some really interesting architecture.

Ten of us made the trip and we met several others there. Lunch was at Sarreano's (close I think) and it was a Fajita buffet and it was superb. We had a guest speak, a professional lobbyist, that gave a very interesting talk with a good Q&A that followed. Then we heard from a couple of our current State Representatives and that was followed by Q&A too. Transportation was furnished by Allen Samuels Chrysler with a couple of Chrysler Pacificas. Nice, but not my cup of tea.

This is my first trip to the Capital building and I am impressed. The building is beautiful and there are tourists everywhere and all seem welcome. I saw a lot of groups of school age kids accompanied by "tour guides" the appeared to work for us, the taxpayer. They were doing a super job from what I listened to. I learned that the star at the top of dome in the inside is 108' up and is 8' across. It looks small as you can see in the picture below.

On the return trip, the suggestion was to find a Baskin Robbins for a few scoops. One of the riders had a web enabled Blackberry and did a few Google searches looking for one in the Brenham area, which would be about half way home. This was a miserable failure, so I cheated and called my sister, who lives in Brenham and with a little insider information we hit the local Scoops located inside a C-store affiliated with Exxon. We all bought a couple of scoops of varied flavors, mostly centering around chocolate and the overall consensus was high praise. The ice cream was a hit and my suggestion and locating of the shop was applauded by all.

Good people, good trip, good visit at the Capital, good ice cream...what could be better. What a country!|||110981077608633378|||Chamber Trip to Austin