Hanging out in Crawford, Texas

So I'm spending the weekend with the President in Crawford, TX which believe me sounds much, much more glamorous than it actually is. Most of the time we're here, we don't actually ever see the President at all. We actually stay in Waco, about 30-40 minutes away and when you have to do a liveshot at 7a ET/6a CT and you have to be at work an hour beforehand and it takes 40 minutes to get there, you have to leave at 5:15 ET/4:15 CT and that kind of sucks. Our workspace is in the gym at Crawford Middle School. (Go Pirates!) But the good part is that they cater breakfast and lunch and there's always plenty of free ice cream on hand. Somehow all-you-can eat Blue Bell ice cream and then Katie's Custard makes up for the fact that I'm sleep deprived!

The last time I was here was the week between Christmas and New Year's in which it was the craziest week ever in Crawford. President Ford died the day we got here and then Saddam was executed a few days later. It was insane! But so far (knock on wood), there's nothing going on this weekend so maybe I'll actually have some down time and get to go shopping in "downtown" Crawford again (well there are only two stores so it shouldn't take that long.) I heard that there is a jail in Crawford which I'm sure probably hasn't had any visitors since the early 1900s but I'm going to try to check that out as well!

But the weirdest thing happened to start off my trip. We had to meet up at the Dulles Marriott to go to our press plane and while we were gathering, someone mentioned that Erik Estrada was at the bar. One of my friends in the press was SOOO excited and so my friend Liz and I went with her to track him down. He was standing outside and my friend was a bit star-struck (or disappointed that he doesn't look the same as he did in 1983) so I somehow found myself as the one carrying on the conversation with Ponch! He was traveling to Texas and I ALMOST convinced him to get on the charter with us. He was very excited when we told him there would be cheese on the charter! But alas, he was going to Dallas, we were going to Waco. So it just didn't work out. Too bad because I really would have loved filling out an expense report mentioning Erik Estrada's name!