Day 2 in Auston

We awoke late and bleary-eyed after an epic night. After a thorough recount of the previous night’s events, Marv (Carl) and Hippo (Zeltz) were predicably hungry. This was despite the copious amounts of BBQ and pizza that both had consumed the night before, but regardless, we headed out to get food. Thankfully, we were able to find Wholefoods market which was essentially a supermarket and foodcourt rolled into one – so we ordered some much needed healthy food, grabbed prime people watching seats and cast our eyes over the best that Austin had to offer. After tearing ourselves away from this thoroughly enjoyable pursuit we went for a wander through the many and varied Op-Shops, antiques stores and cowboy-boot shops that were on offer. The highlight was Allen’s boot store which offered literally thousands of pairs of boots, including some that cost in excess of $6,000US. Deciding that this was out of our price-range, we went down to the river to watch the bats (apparently there are millions of them) fly out from under the bridge at sunset. In reality, it was a flop. Whether this was because the bats had all migrated or whatever – there simply were no bats.

By this stage, Marv was hungry again so we went in search of more BBQ. We were not disappointed to find Ruby’s BBQ where we loaded up on more delicious Texas meat (sloshed in nutritious BBQ sauce). Carl was absolutely stoked by this prospect and proceeded to order the biggest item on the menu and then supplement it with an additional side dish. Upon his amazing completion of this meal, Carl decided that he “wasn’t that full” so we decided to have a couple of beers in our motel room before hitting the town for Zeltz’s farewell party.

We started our night off by playing a couple of games of pool and drinking cheap beers which was all well and good until we caught the eye of two young ladies, one of whom was relatively attractive and the other of whom was a punisher. After her telling us that I looked like a vampire (?) and that Carl looked 19 (understandable) we decided that it was time to go so we pushed on to the next pub. We were somewhat sidetracked en route to buy 8 shots for $8, but managed to find another place that was to our liking. I should clarify – when I say “to our liking” I actually mean – probably the best place in the world. We spent the majority of our night here, chatting to an increasing number of locals, dancing on the open-air dancefloor and getting progressively drunker. We did make a brief detour to catch up with Dean Mac at another place across the road which was also pretty good, but quickly returned. When the pub shut at 2 we joined the throng of people on the streets – and continued to chat with random people. In between times we tried to bargain down the price of pizza. It was at this point that Zeltz attempted to make the pizza more palatable to CENSORED by saying “here comes the aeroplane”. By this stage it was about 3, so we got a cab home – thankfully for us the cabbie was very knowledgeable and he regaled us with his wisdom regarding where the best places to eat out are in Texas and all about American women. By the time we got home we were wiped and proceeded to pass out, thus drawing a close on probably our best day of the trip so far.
That’s all for now.
Jez