a post austin reflection

So last weekend I spent a couple days in Austin Texasssss with two good friends. It was a girls weekend away with goals of cowboys, booze and bbq. We had a great time and made lifelong memories....

Here are a couple pictures of what sezy bitches we are:



The weather was amazing on Saturday and Sunday so naturally we had to get ourselves out to do a little urban CANHOOING!!!! And for those that don't know, that is like canoeing for normal people, but for Helga and I we tend to rename everything. This started back in Seattle with Ev and Sneaky Pete. If there is a city and there is water, we will eventually find boats just so I can continually yell "STROKE, stroke, stroke" OR Helga can chant "we're on a boat, we're on a mother f-ing boat!"



This is a great picture because I look like the unibomber (f-ing ball of death in the sky trying to kill me), and Helga is soooo BUSTY!!! We saw turtles, lots of floating trash, and a bridge of squeaking bats (see below), but unfortunately we did not see any beavers.

Friday night we ended up at Midnight Rodeo, which was definitely an experience. This is an old barn whose rodeo ring was converted into a dance floor with a gigantic disco ball above it. There was a really good live band for most of the night, and then at about midnight it was like someone snapped their fingers and the place turned into a ghetto nightclub. I swear, I've never seen anything like this. The cowboys and cowgirls that were two steppin did not miss a beat to start grinding on each other!!!! It was like one, two, step, and now I'm dirty dancing! I liked it. It was really really entertaining.

Throughout the weekend Helga and I ended up dancing on railroad tracks at multiple times. It all started after the midnight rodeo and continued when we were hiking the next day. This dancing on railroad tracks might become a normal thing now, next time, we'll be in MN and have to stop just to do a little butt dance.



Sunday morning we had to go to church....which for us was attending the Hippie Church at Taco Xpress so that we could hear some live gospel music for sinners. This is where all the crazy hippies who don't shave their armpits go to sober up and eat tacos. We fit in perfectly! The 7 person band was a-maz-ing with a violin, tube, mandolin, and an accordion (I need more accordions in my life). They sang good gospel music while we drank margaritas and ate tacos (and actually the entire weekend was focused around taco eating).

The highlight of this morning (besides the crazy hippies dancing) was the guy with a dread rat tail......I'm thinking of growing a rat tail as well and perhaps braiding it or making it into a dreadlock. It is sort of like the more PC way of doing a mullet (business in the front and parrrty in the back). Check it out and the band in front:



Now I know you've heard that everything is bigger and badder in Texasss, and we definitely experienced that first hand. I was immediately reminded of this because of all the BIG ass trucks. A number of them attempted to kill our little rental car. Then we went shopping and the fruit was all insanely HUGE. The grapes, and I'm not kidding, were about 1 1/2 inches wide. As Helga said, you eat 4 of those and it is like eating an apple. Also while shopping, we ran into some funky lemons, which resulted in this picture:



Sunday afternoon we took a picnic up a mountain of death (which turned out to be about a 30 stair hike) to overlook the river and all of Austin. The picture above of all three of us was from the bluff we hiked to. It was great to relax, have some wine and cheese, and watch the sun set. The good Lord was present through the clouds that afternoon, and if we are using this theory of thought, he was peeing on us all day on Monday because it was rained!



Chris Hansen, that sezy news reporter from Dateline's to Catch a Predator, kept coming in to all the weekend conversations. Remember when that guy used to trap sexual predators, bring them into a house, and then lift his leg to talk to them. I always thought this was super weird and somehow in TX, people lift their legs like this all the time. It is like this odd form of lunging. We saw it in Peter Pan statues and of course we did it too:



AND if you have no idea what I'm talking about, watch this sketch from Studio 60, specifically at the end when he crotch shots the guy he is talking to:



We had to experience everything that was uniquely Austin, which includes the millions of bats that live under a bridge. At dusk every evening the bats starting flying out of their bridge home and it is one freaky experience. They are so squeaky and just keep coming and flying away. It was an early Halloween adventure:



Other highlights of the trip:

1. I ate a cactus....actually I had slices of cactus in a taco, a cactus fruit, and a cactus fruit flavored margaritas.
2. We attended anything -fest related, including Cocktoberfest (where there were signs that said "free drinks for dicks").
3. Constant and nagging reminders of how amazing DQ's Pumpkin Blizzard is...
4. Being surrounded by 11 Fiesta pitchers in our studio B & B....why is the world does someone visiting Austin need 11 pitchers in one small apartment???? I can't even make that many batches of margaritas in 3 days! Even the damn butter knifes had pitches on the handles.
   
5. The television shows in Texasssss are very exciting. For example, for about 1 hour we watched a cowboy ride his horse in figure 8's without speaking, then he loaded it in his truck. It was gripping!
   
6. Rocky Horror Show is an excellent show to watch after an night of drinking and for the morning after. LET'S DO THE TIMEWARP!!!
7. For those who don't know I have a problem pronouncing things (I'm really good at foreign languages too), and this continued throughout the trip as things blended between spanish and english. Our landlord was ceclia, sherry, susan....feck, I still don't know her name.
   
8. I got a new parasol, which Sarah called a sassfas or something root beer flavored or something like black licorice.
9. I got a toe disease from a dog that ate a rat.
10. Helga was attacked by fire ants which results in her freaking out and stripping off all her clothes. This was secretly entertaining to watch, especially when she kept itching her foot in bed.
11. Pedicures and Ethiopian food makes for great rainy final day activities!
    

THANKS for the amazing trip!!!!