The Word Show

Our last 24 hours in The Lone Star State would prove to be a lot like the delicious burritos that we enjoyed in the East Austin restaurant, Juan In A Million; they were as memorable as they were densely packed.

After shooting up a storm at Red’s, we drove an hour SW of Austin to New Braunfells to indulge in that most leisurely of watersports: river tubing. This is where you lie in an inner tube, and let the natural current of the river carry you to a point downstream – in our case, a point about 5km’s further down the Guadalupe River – all the while taking in both the splendour of your natural surroundings, and inexpensive beer. Note: you can’t really drink expensive imported beer while you tube – the inherent pretentiousness of drinking imported beer totally flies in the face of the purity and simplicity of the sport tubing. And yeah, I would definitely term it a sport, because in between the long periods of relaxed, serene flotation, you occasionally need to dispense with a concentrated burst of frantic paddling in order to be properly positioned to flow through the rapids. It’s not unlike curling in that regard, except you’re actually riding the slidey thing, and you’re not dressed like your 5th grade lesbian gym teacher.

We did it through a proper tube/rafting rental outfit, and they set us up with all the kit we needed, and some stuff didn’t (see below for examples), as well as lifts to and fro the pick-up and drop-off points. Unless you’re going with well-equipped locals, this is definitely the way to go.

Evan and Guy, logging in the hours, so you don't have to

Look closely at the low hanging branch, and you'll see some x-rated reptilian activity. You can't keep a good turtle down.

And what a way it was – especially after, about 30 minutes into our excursion, we floated up to a group of friendly, bikini-clad tubists (tubistas?), who were celebrating a birthday in their group, and had their own, makeshift floating fiesta in full swing, so we joined them for the remainder of the 3-hour float down the Guadalupe. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend one’s birthday than to lazily float down a river with your best mates and a few cold bevvies in tow. Texans really do have the important stuff figured out.

For your future reference, here is a list of what’s required for a successful tubing excursion:

- a river
- an inner tube
- bodyweight
- alcohol

And here’s a list of optional items that we saw fit to include on our trip:

- bathing suit
- waterproof camera
- sunscreen (you can opt out if you want to achieve that “local” look)
- baseball cap (preferably with camouflage pattern, or logo of your preferred, value-priced alcoholic beverage (bonus points if your hat contains both of these elements))
- resealable container of beef jerky
- beer coozy
- cooler & additional inner tube (for sealed beverage transportation and temperature optimization)

Optional items that we did without:

- inner tube insurance (the outfitters actually tried to sell me this)
- self respect (I actually thought we had brought this along, but I realized I was mistaken when all three of us decided to pee in our inner tubes, rather than do the slightly classier move of “abandoning ship” to relieve ourselves in the open water).

I feel like tubing really needed its own entry. It was that awesome. We’ll wrap up Texas properly tomorrow. Yeeee-haaw.

On Day II of our Austin visit, we awoke at dawn with a deep hunger for Mexican carbs, leisurely aquatic flotation, and shooting high-powered firearms. Little did we know how well, by day’s end, we would sate this mutli-pronged hunger.

For the best breakfast in Austin, more than one person had heartily recommended “Juan In A Million” – a quaint Mexican restaurant in East Austin. So we motored out there, and were greeted by the jolliest manager/owner I’d ever encountered. The man seemed genuinely delighted that we’d decided to dine at his establishment – as if there weren’t a continuous stream of willing patrons waiting to enter, which there was. Think of the snobbiest maitre d’ at the most exclusive French restaurant, and this Mexican gentleman was the exact opposite. We all went for the “Don Juan” breakfast – a comically huge mishmash of eggs, potatoes, bacon, tortilla flour, and cheese, all for the low price of $4.99. It was unbelievably good. So good, in fact, that we felt compelled to leave nothing on our plates. This was bad, because the heaping plates contained roughly twice as much food as a normal-sized human should ever consume in one sitting. Needless to say, by the end of the breakfast, I felt enormously satisfied, seriously bloated, nauseous, whale-like, and fairly immobile. I did not feel like Don Juan. I felt like a fattened a hog, and I was proud of it. I felt like a Texan.

After Juan’s, we hopped back into White Heat and headed out to Red’s Indoor Range. Yes, we were going to shoot us some guns. As one might expect of a Texan gun store, the walls are lined with the sort of heavy artillery you’d previously seen only in high-budget action movies. Hunting rifles, shotguns, automatic assault rifles with laser-sights…it was pretty intense. It was the visual response to the question “why kill a deer with a clean, single shot from a hunting rifle, when you can send him to his maker with two dozen rounds of rapidly-dispensed exploding tip bullets? That’s progress for you.

After a quick lesson in firearm safety from one of the salesmen, and then laughing uncomfortably at a weird joke he made about killing infidels, we were granted access to the firing range. The three of us shared the first gun we rented – a .22 caliber revolver. Pretty much the Toyota Camry of pistols – simple, reliable, unexciting, but very effective. Guy and Evan both managed to cause decent damage to their targets with the revolver, but I’d failed miserably. Would this be the space shuttle landing simulator all over again? What was wrong with me? I’ll tell you, dear reader, what was wrong: it wasn’t enough firepower, apparently, as when we stepped up to the more-powerful Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol, I ended up nailing the centre of the target, as if I’d been doing so for years. I am, apparently, a stone-cold mofo; a smooth operator.

Actually, I wasn’t. Handling and firing a Glock was exciting, but also deeply unsettling. I was constantly aware of the amount of firepower – and, indeed, KILLING power – i was harnessing in the palm of my hand. It’s amazing how much noise and how much recoil the little thing is capable of. It’s a strange feeling – perhaps addictive to some, but certainly not to me. If I was sure of anything after firing it, it was that I never wanted to get shot by a Glock. I feel like that would be enormously unpleasant.

After emptying a dozen rounds into the target with the 9mm, it was time to trot out the big stick – the AK. The Kalashnikov AK-47 has been, for decades, the preferred rifle of countless armies, militias, terrorists, child soldiers, and, today, Red’s Indoor Firing Range. This gun’s most impressive trait was not its power – there are surely bigger and badder guns out there – its how mechanically simple it is. Bullets go in here, pull back a spring-loaded lever there, reload here, point there, and fire away. You can even submerge it in water, shake it dry, and it will still work. Brilliant. No wonder everyone uses it. It was fun to shoot – all you had to do was make sure the butt of the rifle was firmly tucked under your arm, otherwise the gun’s kickback would overwhelm you. That said, i did relish the idea of getting a visible bruise from firing a too-powerful machine gun – how awesome a weekend war story would that make

Stranger: “Dude, what’s with your bruised shoulder?”

Me: “Oh, haha, yeah, that was from the recoil of the AK-47 I was firing over the weekend. No big deal really. How was your weekend? Get up to anything?”

The writer getting into character

We left Red’s $120 poorer, but undoubtedly richer in life experience. The main take-aways for us were 1) guns are bad ass, 2) guns are scary, and 3) when at all possible, it’s best to avoid getting shot by a gun. Indeed, words to live by.

Tomorrow…Tubing and Texas Wrap-Up!

After a fairly legendary night in College Station, haggard as we were the following morning, we were keen to hit the road and unleash the full brunt of White Heat’s mighty 4-cylinder engine on the unsuspecting Texas interstate – our destination: Austin. I am sad to say we never took a picture of the highway demon that was White Heat, but see below for a photo of a similar chariot. Beauty, eh?

Before we could get on the road, we needed to fuel up on gas and burritos at the previously mentioned “Freebirds World Burrito.” Let the record show: I was the only one of the three of us who sacked up for the Monster-size burrito, itself still only the 2nd largest burrito size on the menu. The largest-sized burrito on offer was the aptly named “Super Monster.” where the Monster Burrito was roughly the size of a Nerf football, the Super Monster was closer in size and shape to a small child wrapped in a beach towel. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when the cashier mentioned they sold, on average, at least 2 Super Monsters per day. God bless Texas.

A Tale of Two Austins

Folllowing a pretty drive through the lush, springtime Texan countryside, we rolled into Austin by mid-afternoon. We dropped off our bags and parked White Heat at our hotel, and proceeded to explore Austin on foot. We checked out an outdoor art fair that had some pretty interesting pieces on display. One booth was selling kitschy lawn ornaments, constructed out of discarded metal debris – most of these were selling for around $500, and the sculptor/booth guy admitted to selling quite a few of his creations over the weekend. Clearly, Austinites had money to burn – at least the newcomer Austinites that came along with the tech boom of the 1990’s. Dell Computer is based there, and so Austin’s high-tech industry appears to have grown around them, and it shows in the kind of yuppiedom that exists North Congress Street. You see a lot of fit, outdoorsy, frequently nerdy 30 and 40-somethings, driving Lexus hybrid SUV’s.

It’s a stark contrast to the “Old Austin,” South Congress street area, steeped in Country and Rockabilly music culture. You could call it “Quirky Hipster Austin” vs. “Square Yuppie Austin.” Ultimately, the two tribes do appear tolerate each other well enough – though one can sense the undercurrent of passive resentment with the “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirts that sell so well South of downtown. At the the end of the day, however, the two Austins have plenty in common: they’re both overwhelmingly white, fairly secular, and tend to vote Democrat. Whether they prefer to accessorize with horn-rimmed glasses and neck tattoos or “Live Strong” bracelets and yoga mats seems pretty irrelevant.

Moreover, if there’s one event that seemed to unite both camps in shared awe, it was the daily flight of the Congress Avenue Bats. No, this wasn’t an amateur sidewalk trapeze team, but rather a nightly occurrence in the Spring and Summer months: between 750,000 and and 1 million bats, that reside under the Congress Avenue bridge, fly out from under the bridge at dusk every night, in search of food. Seeing 1 million+ bats fly out all at once from under a bridge to form dark, fast-moving moving clouds is a spectacular sight, regardless of whether or not you’re a software millionaire, an inked-out hipster, or a hard-livin’ country musician.

Sorry for the tease: Guns and Tubing, as part of Vol. IV, will be for the big finish tomorrow – this much, I promise, amigos.

Found in a back shelf at Allen's Boots, an old cowboy boot shop in hipster Austin: a stuffed Jackalope with bonus deer's head lurking in the background; the ultimate Hipster home accessory.

By pure coincidence, the dealership sign floating above the White Heat look-alike, shown in this photo, is exactly what you felt when you slipped into one of White Heat's baby-soft bucket seats.

Down the hatch, Señor! The author, at "Freebirds World Burrito," about to embark on a gastrointestinal journey into the unknown.

Shiny, Yuppie Austin

The Austin Motel. A famous landmark in old, hip Austin. Yeah, I know what it looks like.

On the morning of day 2 of our visit to “Tejas,” we slipped into White Heat (the name we had given our rental Chevy Malibu) and giddyupped on down to the Houston Space Center. The Space Center was not one building, but rather an enormous campus, which you toured on a trolley with a guide and about 30 other visitors. Below is a photo of one such visitor, surreptitiously taken by Guy. Note that he is fully “sacked up” with a day pack AND fanny pack. Nice. If anyone was going to know more than the tour guide about mission control, it was going to be this cosmonaut:

This gentleman was "sacked up" and ready for his NASA tour

Incidentally, the guided tour of space shuttle mission control, of which a blurry picture is shown below, was very cool.

NASA Mission Control with one non-astronaut blocking my perfect photo

Just as neat was seeing a decommissioned Saturn V rocket – the rocket that was used for most of the Apollo missions of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The Saturn V is staggeringly huge. Laid on its side, it’s about the size of a 30-story office building, or abouthalf the size of the “Monster” burrito I would be served at Freebird’s restaurant in College Station, Texas.

Saturn Rocket

It was all very impressive. There were, however, two personal disappointments with the Space Center: 1) While Ev and Guy, both trained pilots, had flawless landings at their turns with the space shuttle flight simulator, I crashed badly. Twice.

The frustrated author looks on in envy as Pilot Evan comes in for his 2nd smooth landing. Showoff.

2) The gift shop was selling a disturbing amount of Star Wars merchandise. Why does NASA need to sell this in their gift shop? It’s just like the Museum of Natural History selling Flintstone action figures. If you’re an impressionable 9-year-old (or naive 31-year-old), what’s to prevent you from believing, in seeing all the plastic Light Sabres and Darth Vader figurines, displayed next to factual astronomy books, that Star Wars is actually steeped in reality, and things like R2D2 robots and Light Sabres are actually NASA creations? Sure, one could argue, that’s when parenting and education ought to come into play, but it still seems like a bit of selling out on NASA’s part. Also, on a more serious note, the gift shop was selling astronaut freeze-dried ice-cream for $10.99 per packet, which is a gigantic rip-off.

All that said, it was an excellent first-hand view of the space program, and we felt like we had fulfilled our educational needs for the trip. Now it was time to get “crunk” with Willie Nelson.

About 90 miles north of Houston was our next destination: College Station, Texas: home of Texas A & M (Go Aggies!) and, on that day, a Willie Nelson outdoor concert. We dropped our bags off at the Holiday Inn, and walked* over to the Wolf Penn Amphitheater fairgrounds, where there were 3 events taking place on that day: The main event was the Willie Nelson concert, with special guest opening act “.38 Special,” a 1980’s bar rock band famous for a string of power-ballad hits (or perhaps just one hit, I’m not even sure). The other two events were a BBQ competition and a competition to see whose dog could jump the farthest off a dock and into a pond. Yeah, that‘s a thing. Unfortunately, we’d arrived too late to witness either the BBQ cook-off or any airborne canines, and Guy was inconsolable about missing the dogs (2 of Guy’s favourite things are dogs that can jump real high, and dogs that wear sunglasses).

*A quick note about walking anywhere in College Station, Texas: it’s just not done. The lady at the front desk of the Holiday Inn acted as if we had death wishes in considering walking from the hotel to the fairgrounds, which turned out to be a 15 minute stroll. No joke, she looked at us as if we’d intended to scale Everest in shorts and flip flops. It explains a lot about the epidemic of obesity in Middle America.

When we did get to the amphitheater, we immediately knew we’d be in good hands, because the first thing we saw past the ticket booth was a cart selling homemade beer koozies. A beer koozie (or “schnootzie”, or “beer cozy”) is the soft thermos you slip onto your beverage in order to keep your drink at optimal serving temperature. They are made of various synthetic, insulating materials, and the best versions usually come printed with either a witty saying (my favourite: “But these ARE my dress clothes!!!”), or a depiction of majestic wildlife. Going to an outdoor country music concert without a koozie in tow is akin to showing up for a high-noon showdown at the OK Corral with an empty six-shooter – though at least at the OK Corral, you’d be put out of your misery pretty quickly.

A random photo of the coolest thing I've ever scene attached to a tow hitch. G.I. Joe is apparently alive and well, and he likes to go fan boating after eating some BBQ. Booya.

As for the BBQ, while we did miss the competition, we decided we had to try to find a way to score some leftovers from one of the teams that were still milling around the designated RV/trailer area. It was quite the scene, with RV’s and pickups as far as the eye could see, each with picnic tables, lawn chairs, competition-grade BBQ smokers, the odd swamp boat (shown above), and “washers” games in full swing*, not to mention the sweet, bewitching aroma of homemade BBQ permeating the air.

BBQ Nirvana

Sure enough, we found one BBQ team – and they were definitely a team, sporting matching hunting camouflage uniforms-  who graciously offered us a few plates of their competition-grade smoked BBQ brisket. It was easily the best brisket I’d ever had (sorry Grandma Betty). We also chatted with a nice, middle-aged Texan, who worked as an energy researcher for the state, and offered us a pretty compelling argument against clean burning coal and, quote, “that hybrid automobile bullshit.” Point taken, sir!

*FYI “washers” is a game of skill whereby a player must toss a small round metal ring (a washer) from a set distance into one of 3 assigned holes. It combines the intensity of lawn darts, the skill of bocce, the camaraderie of team sport, and the adrenaline rush of…right, that’s going a bit far, but it appeared to be a fun way to pass the time before intoxication set in and/or one was ready for another heaping plate of BBQ.

After thanking Team Camo for their generous hospitality, we exited the RV area and found for ourselves an agreeable patch of grass for prime Willie Nelson watchin’.

On the road again...

Here are 3 quick facts about Willie Nelson on tour:

1) he has a surprising amount of energy for a man of his advanced age.

2) He does not do encores – the man gets it right the first time around.

3) The side of Willie’s tour bus has the best air-brushed mural I have ever seen, and I consider myself a connoisseur of this art form: it was a depiction of a head-dressed Indian chief atop his steed, and that horse was mounting a mare. Yes, it was awesome. See below for grainy picture.

Best. Airbrushed mural. EVER.

The other genuine surprise of the concert was what we saw between .38 Special and Willie Nelson’s performances, where one might have expected the organizers to have shoe-horned in a local bluegrass act or perhaps a lassoing demonstration. Instead, a DJ piped in Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock” at full blast, while a person appeared on stage, dressed entirely in LED lights, “shooting” lasers at the crowd. Think of a glow-in-the-dark Michelin Man, and you have the idea. Holy hell, it was amazing. Daft Punk robo-hijinks serving as an intro for Willie Nelson seemed about as likely to happen as a ninja fight scene erupting in the middle of a Jane Austen novel. But it happened. And we were there. Was the effect amplified by the countless Budweiser “Tall Boys” we had been downing over the 6 hours we had been there? That’s hard to say. But show me a grown man who isn’t still impressed by a laser-shootin’ robot, and I’ll show you a liar.

OMG LASER ROBOTS!!!!

Anyhow, the night ended well indeed. Some friendly locals took us on a night tour of College Station. There was two-steppin’ at Daisy Duke’s, there was tomfoolery in Bottle Cap Alley outside the Dixie Chicken, there were wild, drunken promises made to ride horses all the way back to Canada. All in all, it was a good day.

Stay tuned for Vol. III – bat swarms, guns, and beer-fueled tubing down the Guadalupe river…