If you're having a nice little get-together with fellow Jeep enthusiasts on a beach, the last thing you expect is to get your head almost taken off by some pilot who decides it'd be fun to bizz the beach.

But that's what happened last weekend on Bolivar Peninsular, the Galveston County Daily News reports.

A single-engine plane flew within 50 feet of the beach crowd, so close witnesses said they could see the pilot's smile.

The Federal Aviation Administration is not amused and is investigating.

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​Google, which is a company that is web-related (we think), is asking communities around the nation to abase themselves in a competition to get an experimental ultra-high-speed fiber system that can deliver the net at more than one gigabyte a second.

That is about twice as fast as a system that delivers at half-a-gigabyte a second, if our math is correct.

Google isn't actually using the words "abase yourself, people!" but you know that's what they want.

And Sugar Land is out to give it to them.

The "Think Gig Sugar Land Rally" is coming, and people are invited to come appear in a commercial to be sent to Google.

"The commercial will be shot at a public rally in Sugar Land Town Square during Friday's intermission of a concert by the Grady Skelton Band -- a high-energy country, southern rock, Americana group," the group says. So you know the crowd will be juiced.

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Photo by photine

​How did you celebrate the 174th anniversary of Texas' independence from Mexico? You probably didn't do anything like what a group of stalwart runners spent their weekend doing -- running the 203 miles from Gonzales to the San Jacinto Battleground in Deer Park.

Dozens of teams of eight to 12 members spent all weekend running the 40 legs of the relay, legs of varying lengths (from two miles to almost nine) that finish right through the heart of Houston and culminate at the obelisk monument in honor of the Battle of San Jacinto, where Sam Houston (namesake shoutout!) defeated Santa Anna on April 21, 1836. Even if your team has 12 members, that's a lot of running -- almost 17 miles a person if divided evenly. Most teams take the full two days to do the run, with runners sleeping just a few hours between legs. Some runners, ultramarathoners, attempt to run the full 200 miles solo. These guys have nothing on the MS 150-ers.

So, you're forgiven if that's not how you wanted to spend your weekend. But if the independence route interests you, it would make an interesting road trip, especially for a long weekend.

Below, some stops of interest along the way:

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​You probably didn't notice it, since we here in Houston don't end up getting much of it, but electricity created by wind energy set a record in Texas over the weekend.

Well, on Friday, at any rate, at 6:37 a.m. when 6,272 megawatts -- about 19 percent of the state's total at the time -- was produced by wind turbines. And that doesn't include the Panhandle, which has plenty of turbines but is on a different grid from ERCOT, the agency that serves most of Texas.

Typically wind power produces about six percent of the state's energy.

The turbines produce a lot of energy; the problem is that it takes transmission wires to get that energy from the deserted areas where it's produced to the big cities that need it.

In fact, at times the turbines shut down because they're producing more electricity than they can send.


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​Is the world ready for a not-too-bawdy version of the Texas Renaissance Festival? That's what a couple of Houston guys are finding out.

George Appling and Eric Todd have sunk $1.7 million into buying 105 acres and and putting up permanent buildings off 290 about 35 miles east of Austin. Vendors have built another $1 million worth of permanent buildings. It's called the Sherwood Forest Faire, it's got some big-name sponsors, and it's just had a successful opening weekend. It'll run on weekends through April 4.

Appling tells Hair Balls he and Todd saw a hole in the Faire circuit and took a chance. "We had either the cojones or the foolishness to go all in," he says of their investment.

The Sherwood Forest fair is not competing with the larger Texas Renaissance Festival, which takes place in the fall and is well-known for its rowdiness. Appling says Sherwood Forest aims to have a more family-friendly environment.

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Photo by Jim Schutze

​The Lower Greenville Avenue portion of Dallas is one of the city's more enjoyable areas (Caveat: We haven't been there in a while; maybe it's become Douchebag/Yuppie Central.) (And yes, we know the response to that is "Well, it is in Dallas.")

A four-alarm fire engulfed a chunk of the area early today, severely damaging a block that contained the Greenville Avenue Bar & Grill, Mick's Terilli's and the Hurricane Grill.

Said one witness:

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The latest fans of rap music? Old white people who hate public housing.

In Galveston, at any rate. The Galveston County Daily News reports that opponents to the plans to rebuild Ike-ravaged public housing units have been e-mailing a 2005 video of the song "Hustlers and Paperchasers," a video that features all kinds of rap-type activity in those housing units.

The chorus: "We're from the land of killers and thugs/ G's and moneymakers/People from Galveston Island are hustlers and paper chasers." Shocking, yes. Plus the video includes black people waving around money!!!

"The video has been making its way into the e-mail in boxes of city officials and residents this week as council members prepared to approve the release of $25 million in federal money to the Galveston Housing Authority to rebuild public housing," the Daily News reports.

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​Sorry, Texas kids and young adults -- one of your favorite loopholes on the road to getting a driver's license is closing next week.

Beginning March 1, every first-time applicant for a driver's license between the ages of 18-24 must take a driver's-ed course.

Before this, DPS spokesperson Tela Mange tells Hair Balls, some kids would wait until they were 18, pass the written test (which, to be sure, doesn't take a brainiac), and pass the driving test via skills they'd picked up driving illegally or on private property. No long, boring hours learning obscure safety yadda yadda.

"What happened was there were people who were like, you know driver's education -- pretty expensive. My parents annoy me; I don't want to do parent-taught," she says. "I'm going to wait until I turn 18, I'm gonna go in, and take the written test, and take the driving test, and I'll pass it and I'll get my license, and I won't have had to spend a lot of money on a [driver's-ed] course or a lot of time with my parents learning how to drive."

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Not filmed in Athens, Texas

​Kids, if you're looking for a change from the Spring Break crowds at Corpus, South Padre or even Galveston, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department has an offer for you: Athens!!

No, not Athens, Greece. Not even Athens, Georgia, home to UGA and REM wanna-bes.

Athens, Texas, baby. In the misty, isolated  forests of East Texas.

The Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center is your Spring Break HQ this year, not Matamoros.

"Are you planning an outdoor family adventure during spring break?" the agency asks. "Athens and the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center (TFFC) are the place to start. Athens is a great place to spend the night while enjoying area fisheries and attractions. Local hotels and restaurants welcome spring breakers."

And then, possibly the truest line ever put in a press release (at least the second part of the line): "You won't lack for things to do, and you won't have to deal with traffic jams and hordes of people to enjoy them."

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​We asked Texas Parks & Wildlife for more details on the customer survey we wrote about today, and they have come through. And it's crazy enough to deserve its own post.

TPWD provided a power point presentation of the study; scrolling through it we noticed a summary of focus-group research done on Hispanics.

The focus groups consisted of current park visitors born in the U.S. (who "watch at least 5 hrs/week of Spanish-language TV"), current visitors from Mexico (a 10-hour Spanish-TV minimum), and Hispanics born in the U.S. who do not visit Texas state parks.

We'll just post some highlights:

"The maximum number of people per campsite rule was among the most criticized, misunderstood and disliked." (Sample quote from the focus group: "We're big families...otherwise, we get separated...we need bigger areas.")

Sounds reasonable, although we can imagine the stereotypes already revving up.

Then, it got weird.
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