Hey! Here I am on the road, and I haven’t ridden any roller coasters in the last FOUR days. Time to do something about that! But first, breakfast…or maybe not. When I went downstairs for the breakfast that’s included in the price of my room at Holiday Inn Express, I was greeted by a handwritten sign declaring the kitchen to be closed. The gentleman at the front desk explained that their oven was on the fritz – it just refused to turn on. I thought about the breakfast I’d had there the previous morning, when the oven was still among the living. They had (among other things) Froot Loops^®, orange juice, fresh fruit, and pre-packaged Otis Spunkmeyer^® muffins. I was about to ask him why they needed a working oven to serve these particular delicacies, when he suddenly launched into a glowing endorsement of a (relatively) nearby restaurant called Snooze A. M. Eatery. It sounded better than a Holiday Inn Express breakfast, so rather than harangue the hotel staff, I drove to Snooze. I did not lose. There’s a section of the menu devoted to variations of Eggs Benedict. I did a half-and-half order, with their Habanero Pork Belly and Pork Chili Verde benedicts. They was both yummy!

Next, I made my way to the Kemah Boardwalk, home of the Boardwalk Bullet. The Bullet was under construction when I was working in the area 15 years ago. Even unfinished, it looked awesome! This bad boy is the twistiest of twisters – the track passes in and out of the support structure, over and under itself, more than any other woody in the world with a total of 42 crossovers. To pull this off, the ride repeatedly “hops” from side to side – so when I finally got to experience it today, I found it reminded me of Dollywood’s Thunderhead and ValleyFair’s Renegade. But both of those coasters do their hopping over a large amount of land, whereas the Bullet packs its 42 crossovers into a MUCH smaller footprint. So most of this coaster is inside itself – you are completely surrounded by the ride’s own structural timbers, which makes it feel even faster than it really is. And at 51 MPH, it’s way fast for a woody! This is definitely in my Top Ten wooden roller coasters – maybe Top Five.

With my coaster lust satisfied, it was time for a leisurely four-hour drive from Kemah (southeast of Houston) to Corpus Christi. This drive was uneventful, apart from a few fights with my GPS navigation app. But I’ve gotten used to those.