Keeping Austin Weird

Kate and I are having a bit of a vacation here in Austin Texas where the city motto is "Keep Austin Weird". We fit right in. The picture at left is from the Cathedral of Junk which Kate had researched before we were on the road. It's a huge lawn art sculpture of found objects located in the backyard of a  modest home on a quiet residential street a little south of where we're staying in the SoCo (South Congress) neigbourhood. Vince, the artist who built the cathedral, was at home when we biked by and invited us in to have a look. It's definitely weird. I gather it's his full time occupation these days. The life of an artist.

We drove down over three days getting out of Ontario just before the nasty winter weather set in. We've been in touch with friends back home (try Google Voice for free calls to any land line in Canada and the USA). Cindy told us about the snow storms and whiteouts that have resulted in huge crashes along the 401 and road closures in the usual snow belt locations. Mike curses our good luck to be away from it all.

We missed all of that nasty weather by leaving early on a rainy morning late in January. Our first day we drove 12 hours. We crossed at Port Huron (where the border guard asked Kate if she had to twist my finger to go to Texas -- I had sliced the tip off my pinky on our kitchen mandolin) and drove to Bowling Green KY just an hour or so from Nashville TN. The next day we put in 8 hours to Texarkana and the last day 6 hours to Austin. That's 26 hours in total. Google Maps had predicted 25 hours (which we were skeptical about).

The short days on the drive were largely  motivated by our cats Richard Parker and Piscine Patel (see the Life of Pi) who have come with us -- Kate was worried about them. Actually they travelled very well and settled down pretty quickly. We're talking about zooming back in two long days on our return since the critters are so well behaved.

We stayed at the La Quinta hotel chain while travelling as they have a cat friendly policy. Both hotels where very nice and I would not hesitate to recommend them to others who are travelling with pets. We met lots of dog lovers staying at the hotels. You don't see as many people travelling with cats.

We also brought our bikes which made packing and unpacking each night interesting. We've been making good use of them biking around the neighborhood, along Town Lake and down to Zilker Park where we sadly discovered that the sacred waters of Barton Springs are closed until March for renovations of the dam and the creek bypass! Damn! The weather here has been very warm (in the mid 70's rather than the usual mid 60's) and we had hoped to go in for a swim.

We've rented a 2 bedroom home called Casita del Sol in the SoCo neighborhood through an Austin property management firm called VacationCake. The house is just great -- check out the photos on their web site. We have two bedrooms (we are expecting some family and friends), a great living and kitchen area and, best of all, a big back yard for the cats to play. The cats have settled in and are starting to expect regular supervised play time in the back yard. We indulge them several times a day. The house is very well appointed and in the few days we've been here we're already talking about booking again next year. We're just around the corner from 1st St S and a short bike ride from the SoCo funky area on Congress.

We've been to the Magnolia Cafe (an all day breakfast joint we always visit -- "Sorry, we're open") and Gueros (a large taco joint -- Bill Clinton eats here (sic!)) for dinner and music in the garden under the live oaks. Kate says the best tacos so far were at "Torchy's Tacos". It's a small chain which started here in Austin. We went to the one around the corner on 1st St S where we had a quick snack before going to see some conjunto music by Susan Torres y Conjunto Clemencia at a dive called the Scoot Inn on the east side of town. We liked the music a lot. We especially like that it was an early evening gig as we've not got in to staying up late.

We have plans to see more music, lots more music. We'll blog about that another day.

Keeping Austin Weird -- one day at a time.