STR8 UP WITH A TWIST

Today I went downtown the George R. Brown (GRB to us Houstonians) to pick up my race number and packet at the Expo. Until today I didn't realize that the GRB was celebrating its 20th Annivesary. I remember the first time I saw the building I thought it looked like a landlocked ship.
The marathon will bring $30 million to the city. Not bad for a weekend event.

The expo has all kinds of stuff! Free stuff and stuff you can buy. There are people from other marathons there promoting their events. Hummer, Best Buy (The Geek Squad), Michelob Ultra were just a few of the major exhibitors. The Roger Clemens Institute at Memorial Hermann was the major sponsor.

This is where they divide the show offs from the slackers. Us slackers had to go to the right to get out packets. The show offs went to the left.
After I got my packet I had to get my chip activated. This chip will track our splits and also make sure that people don't cheat...like Rosie Ruiz.So after the chip was activated, it was time to hunt down my shirt.
I walked to the other side of the exhibit hall in search of my participant shirt and this is what I see! They're only going to give me half a shirt because I'm only running 13.1 miles? How rude.

As you can see, there's all kinds of stuff going on at the expo. I tried a new energy bar...well it's new to me. LÄRABAR According to their website:

LÄRABAR is a delicious blend of unsweetened fruits, nuts and spices - energy in its purest form. Made from 100% whole food, each flavor contains no more than six ingredients. Pure and simple, just as nature intended. 1 SERVING OF FRUIT * NO ADDED SUGAR * UNPROCESSEDRAW * NON- GMO * GLUTEN FREE * DAIRY FREE * SOY FREEVEGAN * KOSHER

The other cool thing that I found is a towel for The Cal Mobile. Well the driver's seat. It is an oversized white towel with an adjustable elastic band to keep it secure so that the towel isn't sliding down the seat while you drive. You can see a picture of it here.

It was time to mosey back to NoRO. The weather was really nice again and I would like to have enjoyed some time outside but I have some out of town visitors arriving tomorrow so I had to str8en things up back at the house.

Oh...I wondered about my 1/2 shirt. I opened up my blue bag that they gave me at the expo and it is a full shirt...not a midrif.