Adding to the record, yesterday was the 5th times I went to Houston in the last 37 days. I signed up for a group visit to Vatican exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science. The group was supposed to be consisted of graduate students and young professionals. At the last minute, literally, half of the signees did not show up and, interestingly, people just started popping up requesting to fill in the empty seats. So, instead of the "homogenous" age group, we had a variety from 9 y.o. to 60 something.

The list of passenger went like this:
-An overbearing lady in a green cotton shirt, the first driver of the van.
-A guy in thick glasses who is a Chemistry Phd student, the second driver of the van.
-A humble lady in her 40's, who personally knows a lot of my dept's old professors.
-Her equally humble stroke-striken mother.
-A guy with a heart muscles problem, who was pretty knowledgeable about, well, pretty much everything.
-A lady with a big black bag, who was trying to be politically correct all the time.
-Her darling Peanuts addict daughter.
-A lady in the late 20's, who despite of having a foreign accent, refused to answer the question of where she originally comes from.
-And then there was I, the observer, the bearer of fact.

With that last minute changes, we were 40 minutes behind schedule before everybody was finally buckled up in the cargo-modified 15-passenger white van. Extra careful driving is a must, for the fact that the van has a much higher center of gravity, which is categorized as a roll on prone vehicle.

The first 15 minutes of the trip was filled with awkward conversations. I was then trying to fall a sleep while the lady with the big black bag was invading my personal space with her bag-digging activity. But then, things got better and better with all the jokes and all the stories.

-to be continued...