A Right Jolly Festival

               I had been checking the Weather Channel app on my phone frequently. Rain had been coming in the form of scattered showers throughout the day Saturday, but the sight of the radar Sunday morning made me smile. The green line of rain showers were moving off to the east and leaving nothing but blue skies behind. This was a welcome sight as I prepared to spend the day in Zilker Park in downtown Austin for the Austin City Limits Live festival.

                ACL Live is an annual three-day event here and I had a pass for Sunday. It was a good day to be going. My favorite band, the Old 97’s, were playing there, and the rest of the lineup was impressive including Gary Clark Jr., the Avett Brothers, the Civil Wars, Iggy and the Stooges and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

 My supervisor Lindsay had hooked me up with the pass and I was excited about going. I also had a tag for the parking lot by our offices, but I showed up early to make sure I got a spot. As it turns out I was probably over-anxious as the lot was almost empty. I grabbed breakfast and a coffee and hung out downtown for a while until it was time to meet up with Lindsay (she had the writstband) and Isabel, a co-worker who had won her pass in a merit-based drawing at work (she’d done the most work so she had the most tickets in the drawing).

                It was an easy walk over to the park, and even easier getting in. There was no gridlock. The entrance area was spacious and had plenty of tables for bag checks (I wasn’t carrying one so I was waved right through) and then plenty of stations for scanning wristbands so we were inside quickly. 

                Stages were spread throughout the vast park. The massive Bud Light stage, where the headliners were playing was at the end of a vast stretch on the far side of the park. Two of the other larger ones were by our entrance, with several smaller ones around the park’s center. Most of the acts we wanted to see that day were playing at those two larger stages by our entrance, so we found a good spot in the middle of the park and plopped down for a while on a shower curtain liner Lindsay had brought to keep the dirt and mud off us (there were still some swampy areas after the rains Saturday). There were virtually no clouds in the sky and the temperatures were in the mid-80s, which made for a warm but very nice day to be outside.  After a trip to the beverage tent and a round of sunscreen, we settled in.

                I was quickly impressed with how well the festival was put together. There were vast open spaces, making it easy to make the walks from one stage to another, yet there were plenty of portable restrooms (I only had to wait a few minutes) and plenty of tents selling drinks and food. Despite being one of over 70,000 people at the festival that day, I never had a line of more than five people in front of me for anything. They also had plenty of trash can recycling bins throughout the park and even had volunteers walking around collecting aluminum cans and other trash so the place never got too cluttered.

                 The timing of the acts was impressive too, and it ran like clockwork. Just as one act was ending, another was starting on a stage nearby and the timing and angles of the stages made it so you never felt sandwiched between the sound coming from two different places. Each band had the crowd’s attention.

                We arrived around 1:30 pm so we were just in time for Gary Clark, Jr., a rock-blues guitarist who seemed energized by the large crowd and sounded terrific. Things were off to a good start. After his set we decided to grab a bite to eat, which presented the first challenge. In a sea of humanity like that with no designated seats it can be almost impossible to find your friends if you got separated. Cell phones helped but trying to use them to navigate through a large crowd proved tricky. For instance, saying you were next to the guys in cargo shorts and tank tops would only narrow the field down to about 35,000. Saying you were by the group sneaking hits off a joint only did marginally better.

 To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, we conquered this problem through the clever use of flags.

                Recognizing this issue beforehand, hundreds of people had arrived at the park bearing flags or other decorations on long poles they either carried or had attached to their backpacks. These ran the gamut from traditional country flags or sports team flags to the more creative (the Canadian flag with the maple leaf replaced by a marijuana leaf was a personal favorite) such as loudly colored feathered boas, stuffed animals and windsocks. These came in handy not only for them as their group could scan the skies to locate their friends, but served as points of reference for us and led to some wonderful texts between Lindsay, Isabel and myself when trying to meet up after separating:

                                LINDSAY: We’re next to the purple boas in the air.

                                Me: I’m right by the boas.

                And later…

                                Me: Where are you?

                                Lindsay: By the left side, green flag that looks like Arabic writing.

                                Me: Got it.

                                Lindsay: Golden Fish behind us too.

                                Me: The fish walked away.

                So that was handy.

                The food was terrific. Normally at these types of events you expect the usual fair food. Corndogs, funnel cakes, etc. Not at ACL Live. Most of the Austin food icons were represented, including Amy’s Ice Cream, both Stubbs and Salt Lick BBQ, P. Terry’s burgers, Torchy’s Tacos and a host of others. You honestly could not go wrong. I had a Stubb’s chopped brisket sandwich and a lemonade, which hit the spot after downing a few beers in the heat of the day.

                The Civil Wars were next, a low-key duo who sounded good, although some of the subtleties of their vocals were lost going out over a vast field. Still, it was enjoyable until Lindsay and Isabel made the fateful decision to head to the other stage to see Die Antwoord.

                In case you don’t know, Die Antwoord is a white South African rave/rap group. Yeah, right up my alley.

                The group consists of a DJ (a techno term for a guy that clicks a mouse on a stage and blares bad music stolen from other artists in case you were curious) along with a tiny, squeaky-voiced female that seemed like there was a an alarmingly profane middle school cheerleader on stage and a guy who called himself “Ninja” but looked a lot more like Max Perlich had gone on a four-year tattoo and meth binge.

                If you’re wondering which Die Antwoord song was my favorite, the answer is whichever the hell the shortest one would be. They all seemed like they were an hour long anyway. Before it all mercifully came to an end, there was a strange moment. On the platform stage left during the show, a couple of cameramen appeared along with a couple of rather familiar faces. After taking a good look, we determined indeed it was Natalie Portman and Michael Fassbender filming a scene for an upcoming Terrence Malik movie set in Austin, so that was a random interesting item. I’ll be looking for my big bubble head in the background when that comes out. After taking an even longer look at Natalie (I’m a guy, sue me), I bailed out on Die Antwoord before I jammed a pocket knife into my ears.

                The Avett Brothers were next. This is a band I really enjoy and one I was looking forward to seeing, although it created a conflict as one of my favorite bands, the Old 97’s, was playing on another stage at the same time. Since I had seen the 97’s numerous times over the years I decided to stay down by the Avett Brothers. The park was really beginning to fill up by that time and the sun was starting to sink down in the sky, which created more of a concert atmosphere than a festival feeling as the stage lights started to take effect and the bigger crowds made for louder reactions.

The previously mentioned big crowd for Avett Bros.

                The Avetts put on a terrific show, and I even made it across the park to get to the last few songs of the Old 97’s before moving off to meet up with Isabel and Lindsay again (thanks to the flag system) to catch Childish Gambino (actually Donald Glover, the actor from Community).  By then the lights, smoke and glow sticks were in full effect as darkness descended.

               The Red Hot Chili Peppers were headlining and were the last band playing on the Bud Light stage. There were tens of thousands between us and the stage, so after nine hours at the park we hung in the back, listened to a couple of songs and decided to call it a night. As we walked back across the park to our exit, the spotlights converged on one spot to form a pyramid above us, a cool effect to end the evening. We drifted out of the park a bit sunburned, quite a bit worn out, and very glad we had spent the day out at the festival. Enthusiastic kudos go out to all the planners and workers involved in putting on such a well-executed event. I look forward to seeing what they have planned for the festival next year. 

Everything's Bigger

The cliché states everything is bigger in Texas. We’ve all heard it. We also see it frequently on bumper stickers, license plate holders and especially on tacky men’s shirts with a big arrow pointing down. While a lot of that is just plain hyperbole, there is one department where I can say it’s true categorically: Bugs.

Since I moved here several months ago, I have come to realize the insect population here is supersized. At first I noticed mosquitoes the size of my fist, then swarms of gnats that formed near force-fields around any light in the apartment. The past month or so has seen an invasion of a different sort. As it turns out, crickets are attempting to take over Austin.

It’s not exaggeration to say they are everywhere. For some reason I’m not fully aware of, we are having one of the largest cricket seasons anyone down here seems to be able to remember. The lawns were alive with jumping bugs. They got into every nook and cranny of people’s cars. At night their chirping resonated through tightly closed windows and sliding glass doors. They coated the sidewalks, making you feel like you were literally walking on eggshells as they crunched under shoes and shopping cart wheels. The front entrances to the grocery stores were particularly vulnerable to becoming locations cricket-related atrocities, to the point where I think I saw a somber group of them erecting some kind of tiny memorial to their fallen comrades.

They have their ways of getting revenge though. About ten days ago I was walking into an HEB grocery store early on a Saturday morning when I heard a high-pitched shriek. A poor girl of about eight or nine years old had made the egregious error of pulling a shopping cart out of a rack (a rack? A row? You know what I mean, when 30 or 40 of them are rammed together making a kind of shopping cart conga line just inside the entrance). This stirred up a nest and several dozen of the little buggers when bouncing around her legs and feet.

I know I have squished many of them. Some intentional, some just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So it was only a matter of time before I was attacked. That time came last week.

Lying in bed with a book after a hard day’s work, I relaxed minding my own business in my bedroom when out of nowhere, I huge black object flew at me out of my peripheral vision and landed directly on my right shoulder. After I made a noise that sounded strikingly similar to a young girl grabbing a shopping cart, it hopped away and dove between the wall and the head of my bed.

I immediately went into self-preservation mode, throwing the book to the side (a bad choice really as I gave up my only weapon at the time) and assuming a defensive posture. I saw it hop behind my tall dresser and I knew what I had to do. Leaving it there was out of the question. No way could I sleep with that thing jumping around in there since as soon as I turned off the lights the chirping would begin, and believe me these things are loud enough when they’re outside, let alone when they’re operating from right underneath my sock drawer.

Jumping off the bed I closed the bedroom door, threw the cover off the bed and stuffed against the small opening between the bottom of the door and the carpet. Having thus cut off his escape route, it was Thunderdome. Only one of us was coming out of that bedroom alive.

First, I had to flush him out. He’d fortified himself in the corner of the room behind the dresser, and the space between him and the walls was too small to get at it with the broomstick I’d grabbed from the closet.  First I pulled the dresser away from one wall, but he cleverly just shifted to the other wall and camouflaged himself in dust bunnies. I grabbed the dresser and pulled it away from the other wall, but I still couldn’t get to him. I pulled it out further, planning on either swiping at him with the broomstick or destroying his compound with a fresh Swiffer when he used the distraction to hop out from under the dresser straight underneath my bed. Clearly I was dealing with a master strategist here.

I dropped to my stomach and scanned under the mattress. He made a move for the wall again. I slid the broomstick across the floor in a sweeping motion, and at long last he made his first tactical error. He jumped out from under the bed into open carpet. I grabbed my broomstick and made an offensive charge. Sadly, my swings were about as accurate as Alfonso Soriano with runners in scoring position. He hopped left, then right, and at one point I’m fairly certain he used his little cricket legs to flip me the bird.           One more sweeping motion across the carpet drove him further away from the wall, however and a second sweep made contact. I had him on the ropes, and I pounced.  A few more whacks from the broomstick and it was all over. Victory was mine.

As I sighed much like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocalypse Now, I surveyed the damage. My dresser was askew, the bed had been moved and the sheet thrown against the bedroom door. You had to respect the fight he’d put up. I buried my worthy opponent in a way befitting a loose cricket in an apartment; with a wadded up Kleenex in a trash can full of old grocery and gas receipts.

While I came out victorious over the insect world that night, I will not let it go to my head. I will train harder and longer, so the next time some bug wants to disturb my night’s sleep, I have one thing to say…

No More Idols

            In 1998 I moved to Indianapolis, mostly for a girl. I had been doing a year in Jacksonville, Illinois (and if that sounds like I’m describing a brief jail sentence, well it kind of felt like that) and took a new job. It paid all right, but I was just starting out and the move was relatively short notice, so I grabbed an apartment quickly. It was a studio on the northwest side of the city that took six-month leases. It would do for the time being.

I didn’t have cable or satellite, so I was at the mercy of a set of bunny ears for my TV viewing. Despite being so close to the Channel 6 tower it may have actually hit my apartment if it ever toppled over in the right direction, I was down to three or four channels.

While I was busy settling into a new job in a new city, I made time to head to Neon Johnny’s Sports Bar off 86^th Street every five days during that summer. The reason? Kerry Wood was pitching for the Cubs.

Except for a brief stint away from the team to pitch for the Indians and then the Yankees, Wood was a Cub all the way until May of this year, when he retired. He’s not going to the Hall of Fame. He’s not going to have his number retired. Still, it felt like the end of an era for me. In a way, Wood was the last player left from the time when I still idolized my sports heroes.

Wood was a rookie fireballer who burst onto the scene that 1998 season. In only his fifth start, he tied the Major League record by striking out 20 Astros in asingle game. His fastball would push 100 miles per hour, and the Cubs were the surprise contender in the National League that year. That whole summer, a Kerry Wood start held a special kind of anticipation. Would he strike out 20 again? Would he pitch a no-hitter this time? All of those things seemed possible when he took the mound. I made sure to see as many of his starts as I could.  Other Cubs fans gathered as well and we shook our heads in amazement as he overpowered another hitter, exchanging smiles and comments about this rookie that made us stop whatever we were doing when he took the mound.

Of course, being a Cubs fan means disappointment and heartbreak. For the players, it seems to come with the jersey. For the fans, it comes along as the downside to  being able to brag about Wrigley Field (still the best place there is to catch a game) and how you used to listen to Harry Caray and Steve Stone call the games on Channel 9 (and true Cubs fans know what I mean when I say Channel 9, years before it was WGN America or whatever). The Cubs made the playoffs as the Wild Card in 1998, but were bounced in the first round.

While Wood never threw a no-hitter either, he did remain a rock in the Cubs starting rotation Despite a lot of trips to the disabled list over the years as his body betrayed him, he also remained one of the true leaders in the clubhouse. He was always a good citizen, never got into any trouble, and always represented the team and fans well. He even spoke for us fans at times. For instance, when the Cubs’ Diva Sammy Sosa walked out on the team late in his final season with the Cubs, Wood was rumored to be the one to truly end the Sosa era by taking a bat to the primary symbol of Sosa’s egomania: the boom box he had by his locker that blared salsa music constantly, whether the rest of the team wanted to listen to it or not. Trust me, a lot of Cubs fans wish they were the ones swinging that bat.  

This May, word leaked Wood was going to retire. When he began to warm up late in the game (he spent his last few years as a reliever) the crowd cheered. As he went in the game he shook hands with the bullpen coach, which is not something that was part of his routine. We knew he was savoring his last mound appearance. He struck out his final batter, was removed from the game and left to a standing ovation. As he walked off the field, his son ran out of the dugout and hugged him on the field. Wood scooped him up and carried him into the dugout after tipping his cap to the fans. It was one of the better retirement moments I’ve seen. Normally players are forced out, cut by their team and left unwanted. Often injuries prevent them from taking a curtain call. While Wood’s arm was pretty much shot by this point, there was something poetic about him walking out to a standing ovation at Wrigley with his son in his arms. We should all be so lucky to go out that way.

I really don’t idolize athletes anymore.  I certainly cheer for them, but idolize now? No. They’re human beings, they make mistakes, they get hurt, they burst onto the scene and then fade from it. Some do well under pressure and some wilt. They make a lot of money, and some of them handle it well and some of them act like asses. That perspective keeps me from putting them on pedestals, which is a good thing in my opinion. They’re really not that different than the rest of us, it’s just that their work is on display for millions of viewers and then analyzed past the point of reason by empty-headed babblers on sports TV networks and the cesspool of sport talk radio shows.

I didn’t always think this way, of course. Michael Jordan seemed to walk on water to me, and when I was given tickets to a Bulls game as a gift, chills ran up my spine as I saw him in person for the first time, jogging out onto the court in his warmups with his head down, dribbling. Even that seemed amazing to me at the time.

Walter Payton? When I was a kid I used to dream of playing wide receiver for the Bears. Why wide receiver? Because they already had Payton at running back, of course. It never occurred to me back when I was ten that he would retire one day. I just figured he’d still be there, gaining thousands of yards after I graduated from college. 

But eventually, Payton did not want to go through the grind of the season and retired. Michael Jordan had a couple of false-starts when it came to retirement, and ended up trying in vain to lead a crummy Wizards team to glory when he finally decided enough was enough.

I’m still a huge sports fan of course. I still cheer for a lot of players, and there are still athletes like Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, Georges St. Pierre and Lionel Messi that I go out of my way to watch. Wood was the last one still active who used to give me butterflies just in anticipation of seeing him play, back in those summer days of 1998.

While I feel I have a better perspective on these people now, I can’t help but feel like I had a little more fun back when I thought these guys could leap tall buildings in a single bound. 

On the Road Again

            As moves go, this was a big one. According to Google Maps there are 1,025 miles between New Albany and Round Rock. This was going to take some work. The wonders of the internet and fax machines made the transition easier than it used to be. I had an apartment lined up and my utilities arranged. Now all I had to do was get everything I owned down to Texas.

            That would be accomplished with the help of a rented Penske truck and some friends. My buddy Vito was quick to volunteer for packing duty. My mom and stepfather came down as well. Thanks to them and my newfound philosophy of “That’s it, I’m throwing all this shit out,” we were able to cram everything into one truck, a Saturn and a Pontiac.

A couple other friends, Jack and Nick, would help with the driving. My parents decided to come along on the road trip as well, which was both a big help and a comfort through the entire transition. Two days of driving lay ahead of us. Jack and N ick manned the moving truck, my parents were in their Saturn, and I was in my car, accompanied only by my XM/Sirius Radio. The caravan pulled out and made its way South. On day one, the trip wound its way through Nashville, Memphis and ultimately to Little Rock for the night.

The drive went fairly smoothly. The miles rolled by as we drove through Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas where – let’s face it – there is very little to look at. You get into a bit of a trance rolling through hours of interstate with nothing but lines of trees on either side of you interrupted by the occasional l small-town exit populated by truck stop gas stations and big-chain fast food joints.

Riding alone in my car was certainly different than flying down for my interview. My departure time was early, and I arrived at the Indianapolis airport while it was still dark. It was then I learned among other things Panda Express food smells even worse at 8 a.m. then it does during the day. Luckily I was able to take a few deep breaths close to a Cinnabon to fix that problem.  

I had a middle seat for the first leg of the trip, which went from Indianapolis to Denver before a connecting flight took me to Austin. I thought I might have rolled a proverbial seven, as the flight was full – except for the aisle seat in my row. I had visions of sliding into the aisle seat and enjoying a free seat between me and window-seat guy. He and I kept exchanging glances, even once muttering to each other, “We’re not this lucky, are we?” No, no we weren’t. Just a minute before the flight attendants closed the door, a disheveled man in a suit with a crooked tie and a laptop came rumbling in and plopped down next to us. He was one of those guys whose sinuses were so congested he snored whether he was asleep or not.

We landed at the Denver airport, which is actually located in Kansas. That’s only a slight exaggeration. It certainly is not anywhere near Denver, which I never even saw out of the windows even when landing or taking off. There I passed the time reading my Nook among the other connectors of America. The guy sitting across from me was reading an issue of Field & Stream. According to the cover, it was the “Close Call” issue. I wanted to ask what kind of close calls there could be in a field or a stream (get a fishhook in the eye? Trip on a creek rock in eight inches of water?), but he didn’t seem interested in taking questions.   

In stark contrast, the drive down during the move was strictly solo for me. I do well on long drives, but two days alone in a car will make you feel pretty restless. At least the food was good. We followed up a Cracker Barrel lunch with dinner at Waffle House. At first we weren’t sure where to eat, but when we found out my mom had never experienced the wonders of Waffle House, the decision was made. Waffle House is one of the great grub places, and Jack and I had eaten at numerous locations over the years in the middle of the night on way back home from wrestling shows, or after a night of Kamikazees and pitchers of beer at the New View. A particular favorite excursion there was highlighted by a friend of ours stating his drunken intention to become the fourth member of the Fat and the Furious team. Jack and I were there, giving the FNF a quorum, so we asked how he intended to do that. He declared he would down a triple order of triple hashbrowns (yes, he intended to eat nine orders of hashbrowns). The giant plate of spuds arrived, ketchup was applied and about three bites were taken before he stated his next intention, which was to pass out.

It was a shame, as Waffle House hashbrowns are a terrible thing to waste. The food is basic, quick and tasty. Mom and Marty are brilliant at finding good places to eat and are used to good food, so Waffle House was a risk, but they seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes the basics are the best.

After a night’s sleep it was back on the road. There is very little between Little Rock and the Texas state line, and this stretch felt like the longest part of the trip. Crossing into Texas perked us up a bit, as the dull tree lines eventually yielded to impressive ranch mansions and the sites of Dallas. We were only a few short hours away.

As the last miles rolled by and the skies grew dark, I reflected on what was happening. My parents and friends would help me move, then either drive for fly back north. I wouldn’t be with them, though. I was staying, over 1,000 miles from where I had been living. I had no friends in Austin, and a few family members I hadn’t seen in 25 years, if at all. Was I making the right decision?  Would all of this work out?   I even said it out loud to myself once or twice, “I live in Texas now,” as if I were trying the words on to see if they fit. It felt pretty good, and I was anxious to see what the future would hold.

But we still had to get to Round Rock. As we passed Waco, then later Georgetown, we neared the hotel we would stay in for the night (the apartment office was closed by the time we made it to town so I couldn’t pick up the key until the next day). Coming around a curve on I-35 I saw ahead of me a police car that had someone pulled over on the right shoulder. I changed lanes to give them some room, as did Jack behind me in the Penske truck. As I did, the pickup truck in front of me checked up hard. Now it’s normal to slow down a bit, but this guy slammed on his brakes like he had just spotted a red light. I jammed on my brakes and the tires squealed. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the Penske truck rapidly filling the mirror. You have to be kidding me, I thought to myself. We come all this way and wreck with only five miles to go? I braced myself, waiting to feel the crunch of a truck loaded with almost all my possessions hitting my only car. But the crunch never came. Somehow Jack managed to get the big truck stopped before he hit me.

I took a deep breath. I’d had my first close call, and it turned out all right. I decided to take it as a good sign as we rolled into the hotel parking lot. The next day I picked up my key from the apartment office and we moved my things into the new apartment. Mom and Marty would be staying with me for a few days, but the day after the move, I did have to drive Jack and Nick down to the Austin airport. They had to catch a flight back to Louisville. They’d been a great help and doing the move without them would have been a ridiculously tough task. Saying goodbye to them was even more difficult, though. There was no “see you next week,” or “we might be doing (x) this weekend, we’ll call you if we do,” and no more buzzed trips to Waffle House.It was just an open-ended goodbye.

While I am sure we’ll all hang out again in the future, and while we still talk on the phone and stay in touch via Facebook, etc., walking out of the Austin airport that day made me realize just how much I’d miss my friends.  I also felt another corner had been turned as I pulled onto I-35 North. It was time to head to my new home. 

Time for a Change

            In the end, it was actually an easy choice. Things simply had not been going well in the Louisville area for me. Truth be told, that had been the case for a few years.

            I had been laid off from work. The job market in Louisville was, in a word, abysmal. I had been through a string of bad relationships. This was simply not panning out. This blog, in which I wrote with such enthusiasm last spring and summer, fizzled out along with my feelings of self-worth. People asked me to write more, but I had a terrible time bringing myself to start typing. Each day I would fill out job applications online, send resumes, answer ads, make phone calls, and it all lead to a deafening wall of silence and apathy. The daily rejection of looking at my phone and seeing no calls, the logging in and seeing nothing but spam emails began to take its toll on the rest of my life. I felt my thoughts and ideas had no value, so I just stopped writing them down.

            This was no good. I had to do something. I had to start looking elsewhere. I had a near miss on a job in Las Vegas. That may not have changed my situation, but it gave me a bit of confidence that I had made it past a couple rounds of the selection process. It also gave me more incentive to look somewhere outside of the Ohio Valley for work. The question was, where should I look? I began to scour articles that ranked cities in America, and it wasn’t long before a pattern began to emerge. “Top 10 places to live,” “Top 10 growing job markets,” “Top 10 cities for the college educated,” list after list, Austin, Texas kept appearing.

            I decided the time was right. I began answering job postings in the Austin area, and before long, I had an interview. In a week I’d gotten more of a response than I had in months in Louisville. I booked a flight down to Austin and a hotel downtown. On a whim, I decided to stay a couple of days to get a bit of a feel for the place.

            Upon landing at the Austin airport, I immediately had a good feeling. Some places just have a vibe, and Austin’s seemed inviting to me. Despite the gray skies and rain falling that day I was comfortable. The attitudes of the locals may have had something to do with that. The area had been in a terrible drought for a year, and the rain was a big relief to them. They were also quick with advice about where I should go. I didn’t even have to ask (although I would have anyway), they were all quick to welcome me to town and give their thoughts on how I could have the best time possible while there. The woman at the rental car counter, the man standing next to me as we waited for our luggage to work its way down the conveyor belt, and the hotel desk clerk all gave recommendations. All three mentioned 6^th Street, of course, which I knew was the main drag of live music bars and clubs. I had done some scouting myself and had planned a trip to the University of Texas campus and to South Congress Street for a show at the Continental Club.

            I checked into my hotel, which was within a block or two of the impressive state capitol building, and right between campus and the 6^th Street complex. Perfect.

            I walked about a mile north to get a look at UT. As I expected, it was a beautiful campus. I strolled through the buildings, past the sports complexes and to the union. I headed across the street, grabbed a coffee from a non-megachain coffeehouse and sat down to people-watch. The weather had cleared up, people were out on the sidewalks and the area had that palpable feeling of energy that a college campus provides. I love that energy.

            After a couple of hours I made the walk over the hilly downtown area to 6^th Street.  This was a Monday night, so some of the clubs were closed and the ones that were open were far from busy, but it was still a good time. Even on a Monday, live music could be heard pouring out of the windows and from the rooftop beer gardens of the district.

            I had my interview in the morning, which went well enough that I spent a couple hours scouting potential apartments in the Round Rock suburb and talking to my stepfather on the phone about how well things were going. I could hear how happy he was for me in his voice, which was its own reward. Then, in the evening I had a real treat. I had a chance to spend the evening with my uncle, whom I had not seen in 25 years, and meet one of my cousins for the first time. Having a chance to hang out on South Congress Street having dinner and a few drinks with them was a real pleasure and the true highlight of the trip.

            The night capped off with a James McMurtry concert at the Continental Club. James was tremendous as always, and as I headed back to my hotel I reflected on the previous couple of days. I felt fortunate to be able to experience all I had seen in Austin. When my plane took off the next day, taking me back to Indiana, I had a strong feeling I would be back soon to stay. Thankfully, I was right. While the job I had interviewed for on that trip didn’t quite work out, another one did.

            I’ll be blogging more soon about the move and my early experiences down here in Texas.  Now that I’m getting settled in and feeling good, I feel like doing some writing again.