Austin

I flew down to visit Christine at the "winter home" in Austin for the first time since spring. I've decided that I can't travel to Texas June-August, or else I'll melt. The trip turned into a good excuse for us to eat and drink our way around town and we started Thursday night with some wine and junk food (high class funnel cake and bread pudding) at Max's Wine Dive.

I shipped my old bike down there last week, so on Friday I went for a ride. Stupid me, I forgot to load the Texas maps on my Garmin, but I still managed to make it to Christine's office for lunch. We went out with some of her coworkers to a burger joint called Mighty Fine. I refilled on calories with a burger, lemonade milkshake, and sub-par sweet tea.

In the evening, we went to Ginger Man and sampled off of their extensive beer list. They've got good beers from all over, including Fort Collins. It always makes me happy to be in a far away town and see the New Belgium handle pulled over and over. Unfortunately, we cannot survive on beer alone, so we had dinner at Maiko. Christine likes cooking on hot rocks, but I could take it or leave. She apparently never got to play with her food as a child.

Saturday morning I went on one of the local hammer-fest type group rides. Or at least, that's how it was described to me. I think there was something going on Sunday that kept the big guns from coming out, because this was far less hammering than I expected. It mostly consisted of people half-assed attacking and then either getting dropped, or turning back early (also known as trying to save face when you're about to get dropped :) ). I ended up with about 3 hours of ride time, which was a good excuse to go eat some more.

While Christine was finishing her own ride with some coworkers, I stopped by the farmers market and picked up a scone to munch on. Still hungry, I went to Frank for a hot dog. They have a variety of interesting dogs to choose from. I would have preferred a street vendor, but there were none around. It was a good dog, though, and I also quaffed a Live Oak Big Bark Amber.

Keeping with the beer theme, we went the the Austin Draught House after Christine got home. It's a pretty nice little bar with a good beer list. One of the more interesting things about the place is that you can take your beer out to the parking lot and just chill in your own chairs or tailgate. They don't serve food, so you can just order up a pizza and have it delivered. Nice.

The entertainment of the night was Son Volt at Antone's, but before we could rock we needed to eat. Tonight was a stop at one of Christine's favorite's: Truluck's. Very good fish, and home of what Christine claims is the best carrot cake. It's pretty good, but I'm going to need to sample more carrot cake to decide.

On to the show. I love Son Volt, but man Jay Farrar is one lifeless dude. Barely talks, blank stare, and just does his job. I've got some new found respect for their guitarist though. He was rockin. The openers were Jason Isbell and the 400 unit, who were also pretty good. The roughest part about the show was no seating. We're not just old, but after working out hard, our legs were completely toast.

Sunday morning we laced up our shoes for a run around town lake. Yay running. My favorite. (I hate running. It's so punishing and I'm slow.) Christine says we maybe jogged a couple miles, but I could swear it was more like 10. :) We made up refueled after running with pain au chocolat from Driskill Hotel/ Meh. Pastry was reasonable, but all the chocolate was on one side. After that snack, we at had some Migas at Jo's.

One more beer run. This time to Whip In where we chugged down a Koningshoeven La Trappe while I watched the Steelers get beat down by the Bengals. It's a cool little shop the stocks a bunch of beer. You can buy something there and belly up to their little bar while you drink it for a modest "corking" fee. It also looks like they have some good Indian dishes.

Dinner tonight was in the restaurant at the bottom of Christine's building, Mulberry. Delicious. It's nice to have a place like that so close to home. We had some time to kill before another show, so we went to Péché for cocktails. They specialize in cocktails and it shows. The food menu also looked inviting, so we'll have to go back again.

We ended our weekend with a Swell Season concert at the Paramount Theater. The heart of The Swell Season are Glenn Hansard and Marketa Irglova. These two were featured in the movie Once. Their music is awesome and we were both really excited to see them live. They didn't disappoint. Hearing Glenn Hansard bang out Say It To Me Now on his acoustic guitar gave me chills. What a great vocals and passion. Combine that with a restored early 1900's theater, and it was truly an awesome show.

So that's it in a (big) nutshell. Christine took me to the airport at the ass-crack of dawn for my 6AM flight back to Colorado where I was greeted with 10 degree temperatures and snow on the car. It was a shock to the system after have been in shorts in Austin, but I don't care. The cold, crisp, thin air of Colorado felt great. Good to be home.