So waving goodbye to our Austin hosts, in fact we gave them a bottle of prosecco, we hit the Interstate heading east to Houston. However, the small compelling matter of consuming dangerous levels of unhealthy cholesterol for brekkie called and an early stop was scheduled. We stopped at Maxine’s on Bastrop’s Main Street.

Bastrop is a very old town (by American standards) and owes its importance to being sited on the Colorado river and a historic crossing point for a major road going east. The road was important for the Spanish and then Mexicans heading east (to parts of their possessions.) These two nations were the colonisers of this part of the globe. Spain first and then they got booted out when Mexico gained its independence in 1821. The Republic of Texas was formed when a Texan volunteer army beat the Mexican army to create the Republic in 1836. This Republic became the 28th US state in 1848. Still with me? 

So why did Texas rise against the Mexicans? The Mexican regime was hostile to more Anglo/white immigration into Texas and by all accounts were not good masters. The Anglo/white population was mainly white European (Germans, Czechs, Irish and French) immigrants who’d moved here for the available land. It also helped that they could farm the land with the legal use of slaves. Mexico inconveniently banned slavery in 1827. There were initial concessions for Texas over slavery but when Mexico banned further European immigration there was conflict. Hence the war and subsequent independence. (The USA didn’t ban slavery until 1865 and you may recollect that that entailed the further death of over 600,000 to get that across the line in the American Civil War.)

This might explain all the Spanish city names and this considerable influence, to this day, on food, art and diversity of population in Texas, as well as the Spanish name itself. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Bastrop. It had a small magnificent museum down the street from Maxine’s and the history was told in great detail. It was fascinating, a little gem of a place. After a good look, on we continued.

Houston is a very large sprawl and frustratingly the Space Center was in the south east as we approached from the north west. However we found our Holiday Inn and checked in. Over the car park was a Costco, always carry your membership card, for cheap petrol and a mosey. The mosey included the purchase of an iPad for one of the son-in-laws. He’d identified that all Apple products were cheaper than in the UK. That and fuel are about it.

After this transaction a little detoxification ensued for dinner.

Visiting the Space Center was my idea. (Not the present Mrs Ives.) I’m not awfully scientific but I find the whole Apollo era engrossing. The adventure to a planet 239,000 miles away when technology in the western world still made this the best selling UK car in 1969 blows my mind. 

Houston was the ‘control’ but the launches were made in Florida at Cape Canaveral. However, here they had assembled a whole rocket and displayed it in a purpose built building. These parts are original: the Apollo launches had been planned to go up to Apollo 20 but the project was abandoned after 17; hence the left over rockets for the displays. One early Apollo mission left the three astronauts dead after fire during testing and, of course, Apollo 13 had to be aborted and the world watched as they adapted smaller rockets and components to get back to Earth. Otherwise they were all a brilliant success. To think, at launch, the 40 metre high rocket with three astronauts has about 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and kerosene as fuel on board seems lethal.

What also struck me was the intricacy of all the pipe work and electrics. A total ‘spaghetti’ of components all needing to work when you’re 90 miles from the surface of the Earth in a low orbit before being propelled to the Moon.

All the astronauts were former USAF test pilots. They had, no doubt, nerves of steel, familiarity with phenomenal speed, expert aircraft control experience and were trained to sit precariously amongst a whole set of prototype components on their first trajectory at thousands of miles per hour through thin air and then space.

They had a Space Shuttle (or Thunderbird 3 to those of a certain age) to look at.

So after rockets it was a visit to the Mission Control room where even Anna started to get excited. Here we received an introduction then sat through that moment of elation as we hear ‘the eagle has landed’. Eagle was the name given to the Apollo 11 craft. This included hearing the President (Nixon) talk to the astronauts in space . I loved it all. 

I loved less the hour and a half of driving through Houston motorways to get west again. If that wasn’t stressful enough juggling lanes at 55mph on motorways with many vehicles crossing behind and in front of you to take exits there was the commentary of Middlesbrough vs Leeds United to raise also blood pressure. Bless the TalkSPORT App. Two disallowed (good goals) and a last 15 minutes of hanging on to our slender 0-1 lead was nerve racking. However, they did hang on and we barrelled along to Schulenburg for the night before travelling on to San Antonio.