July 5th-6th, 2009

Having eaten our fill of brisket burritos and meat on sticks at the The 4th of July celebrations, we headed to Austin. We were going to spend a couple of nights with our friends Colin. (His wife, Claire, my high school friend was in California. Remember Blue Lake?) We got to their house met Starla their dog and the three of us walked around their neighborhood, South Congress, to find something to eat. We ended up at The Trailer Park. there is a phenomenon in Austin and perhaps other places where people run food stands out of Airstream trailers. The Trailer Park was a parking lot with a conglomeration of these Airstream restaurants. Each specialized in a different type of food. It was as if the food court, fed up with materialism had abandon the civilization of the shopping mall, to live the life of a Gypsy.

The next day while Colin was at work we took a day trip to San Antonio. We saw the tourist marketed Riverwalk and it reminded us of a scaled down less crowded Fisherman's Wharf. There are a bushel full of chains that make there way into these places. You can eat the same over sized hamburger on Michigan Ave, at Fisherman's Wharf, or on the River Walk.



Nearby was the Alamo. It was absolutely crawling with people. A tour guide, named Arthur with a thick New York accent, was giving a talk about the infamous siege by the Mexican military on the outnumbered independence seeking Texans. There was no mention of why they wanted to be independent. Later as we walked through, I asked Arthur.
"So, why did they want to be independent?"
"well, the Mexican government had taken away a lot of their rights. And you got to remember, there were a lot of big egos involved."
I must have stared blankly or some how conveyed "bullshit" to him, because he skirted the issue for a while longer before mentioning,
"You know, there were also slavery issues involved, it was very complicated."

What the folks at the Alamo are unsurprisingly reluctant to own up to is that Mexico outlawed slavery, and that was the driving factor behind their independence struggle. Oh, Texas.

Shelby kept saying
"But, they lost....Why is it important?"
We left without seeing the whole thing. Had enough of my righteous indignation? I have, so I'll move on.

We moved on to the old Mexican market.


We both bought wrestling masks and I bought a giant hat. Much to Shelby's shame, I walked back towards the car through downtown San Antonio wearing both the my mask and my hat. When we came upon a Shriner's convention, I would always comment on how ridiculous they looked, sarcastically saying,
"Nice hat."
after they had passed.
we Drove back to Austin, stopping in Gruene to see the dance hall in Texas. I highly recommend it.

Back in Austin, We all ate Indian food and Colin took us to a few out of the way bars. One dedicated to Johnny Cash and one built out of railroad cars. Exhausted from the full day of sight seeing and the Texas heat, we went home and slept.