The Texas Capitol and Stubb's Bar-B-Q:
On the weekend, I ran in Zilker Park and along Barton Creek on both Saturday and Sunday. Great places to run, although a bit warm (85-90F) and Barton Creek is a rough trail for stretches. Those runs were 12.5 and 11.5 miles respectively done a bit slow due to both heat and trail conditions, but great places to run. Aggregate did 64 miles in 12 days in Austin, which was more than I did for all of July (been taking it easy after Boston). During the week ran around the IBM facilities and TACC campus, more grass than sidewalk.
On the Friday night I was there attended a Cowboy Junkies concert at Stubb's Bar-B-Q. Interesting venue, great concert... very fortuitous for their tour to intersect my trip. Margo came out to chat with folks afterwards, I suggested they should come to Alaska: "We'd love to".
Their diary excerpt follows:
Long Journey Home. Austin, August 4, 2004A very steamy couple of days in Austin. It was our day off yesterday and it was one hundred and one degrees. Today it cooled down to a refreshing ninety four degrees. It was so hot yesterday that I had to abort an attempted walk around town. I could feel my body trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It kept trying to tell me that things were not quite right, system shut-down was imminent. After a couple of blocks I decided to heed its advice and head back to the safety of the air-conditioned hotel. I didn't leave the hotel for the rest of the day.
Today Margo and I had an early morning call, 6:30AM, for an appearance on a Fox TV morning show. These things are always a bit time consuming, but definitely worth the effort (you can't beat TV for getting the word out). The folks on the show were very hospitable and made an unbearable hour of the day, very bearable. Later in the day we dropped by KGSR which is a long time supporter of the band and one of a handful of commercial stations left in the country that has a personality reflected by their playlist.
The gig tonight was at Stubbs Bar-B-Q: a very old structure and outdoor compound. I never learnt what it was originally built as, but it has a very comfortable, well worn feel to it and it is just a little bit nasty. A typically, a-typical Austin venue. The audience tonight was excellent, as is the norm with Austin audiences, loud and boisterous and engaged. We had another great night... what's going on here.... one great show and audience after another... must be the heat.
Austin is a great music town, unfortunately I did not have time/energy for additional concerts other than eavesdropping on some other music.
The conference "event" was a cruise along Town Lake (actually, it's a river) with the highlight being the sunset departure of Mexian Free-tailed bats from Congress Avenue Bridge. Something like 1.5 million bats flying off at sunset it was an impressive sight. Unfortunately, too dark for pictures with the disposable camera I was using.
Wildlife on the cruise (sorry no bat pictures).
Wilder life on the cruise.
Images of Austin (from the cruise).
