Austin

Austin
Yeeeehaaaaa!

Anytime you’re in Texas and you’re having fun, you are required by law to yell “yeeeehaaaaa!” Turns out, in Austin we had to use that phrase a lot. Whenever we would tell someone we were going to Austin, Texas, their first reaction would always be “why?” Most of the outdoorsy people we met didn’t consider Texas to be an outdoor adventure destination. Frankly, except for rumors and assurances from Matt and Kim, neither did we. (Oh yeah, that was the main reason for going to Austin- to visit Matt and Kim, my friends from home.) Turns out, it’s a really fun place in all kinds of ways.

We rolled into town late at night, dirty, smelly and looking for a warm place to sleep. What we found was Matt and Kim’s new house, replete with two cats and a ball of energy and slobber named Pilot. (Note for those of you living on either coast: normal people our age can actually own a house in Austin. And a nice one too). The aforementioned Pilot is a 9 month old Golden Retriever who shakes his tail so hard his whole body goes flopping around the room like a fish out-of-water. For the first five minutes he sees you, he can’t stop thrashing around and jumping up on you, usually with a paw to the dangly bits. It doesn’t matter if you just put him outside 10 minutes ago, it’s all the same. After that, he’s a well trained, friendly and all around good dog.

We spent the next five days in Austin biking, swimming, boggling, going out and eating big meals. Matt, Nate and I went biking one day at Barton Creek, which is a trail that starts basically in downtown. The flat, wide and generally boring start of the trail quickly turned into tight, rocky and difficult singletracks criss-crossing the creek. We made a 15 mile ride out of it, the whole time remarking at how much fun the trail was and how close it was to town. We finished the ride off with a dip in Barton Springs, which is a natural spring dammed up to form the longest lap pool I’ve ever seen. It’s a constant 68 degrees all year long, winter or summer. Another day, Nate and I went to Emma Long park, which had the “most technical” trail in Austin, and maybe Texas. It was friggin’ tough! Lots of rock ledges on the up- and downhills that weren’t always rideable. We had to retry multiple sections. We worked on one 50 yard section of trail for at least 15 minutes, and only succeeded in riding it in sections, not the whole thing at once. At the end of the trail that day, we met some local riders who offered to show us their version of the best trails in Austin. We took them up on the offer and rode some trails that were downright fun and challenging no matter where you’re from. Mat, Jody and Jordan were all good riders and charged hard, taking drops and lines that were far from easy. On the last drop of the day, Jody and Jordan both stacked HARD. Jody just missed a tree in the landing, swerved out of control and slammed to the ground in a creek bed. He got away with just a gash in the elbow. Jordan didn’t manage to miss the tree and hit it head on, full force. Oh yeah, he’s also 6’4”, 260 lbs. Initially, it was unclear who was in worse shape, the tree or Jordan. After a few tense moments while he got his breath back, we found out the tree was the worse off. Needless to say, we were impressed with the riding and riders in Austin.

We certainly didn’t spend the whole time there biking; there are hundreds of other things to do in Austin. Ritu flew down for the weekend and we commenced a weekend of fun, food and adventure. Ritu and Kim hung out at Barton Springs while the (dumb) boys tried to swim a whole lap of the pool. That didn’t go so well. After swimming/walking the length of the pool, we tried to show off on the diving board for the girls, who didn’t really care, as usual. Later, we engaged in a four way battle for second place playing Boggle (first place always goes to Ritu. Damn that girl can spell!) That night was the big night out, and we headed down to 6th street, the center of going out in Austin. They don’t joke around down there, everything really is bigger. They closed off the whole street and hundreds of people were wandering around from bar to bar. At least half the bars had (good) live music, and the rest were fun clubs or chill hang out spots. We ended up in Pete’s Dueling Piano bar, where we all sang along to Jimmy Buffet, John Mellencamp, Sublime, Johnny Cash and a whole variety of other stuff. All of sudden it was 1:30 am, and time to head home. The street was still packed, but we’re all old farts now and needed to go home and drink some Metamucil. The next day we had a huge pancake and French toast breakfast and moaned about the lack of sleep. We finally kicked ourselves into gear and headed out to Hamilton pool. The ½ mile “hike” in led to a big sunken pool with deep blue water and ferns hanging from the roof. Nate, Matt and I had a cold swim across the pool just to prove how dumb we really are, which the girls already knew.

So, although you may have never thought about going to Austin, guess what? It’s fun! We left many new things to try for next time (I hear there’s roller derby just south of town!), and had an all around great time. So the next time someone asks me “Why Austin?” I’ll just say “Cause it rocks!” (Accompanied with some headbanging and air guitar of course).

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