Freeways

The road and freeway system here in Austin is atrocious. I've complained about it in person to some of you, but basically it makes me wish I still had to drive in LA! I know what you're saying... it can't be that bad. True: the traffic here is not as heavy as in Los Angeles, but the layout of the freeways is truly maddening. Three things in particular bother me about driving here and make me yearn for an hour sitting on the 405 at 1am on a Tuesday.

(1) The signage, what little there is of it, is completely cryptic.
(2) All freeways are bounded by a "frontage" road, that goes parallel to the freeway. These, I suppose, are to give access to the businesses and to "aid" entering and exiting the freeways. The result is that you are forced to make multiple U-turns, are punnised by miles of driving if you miss your exit, and getting around the freeways here is even MORE impossible than in California.
(3) All roads seem to have multiple names. And not in the way that's easy to remember, like how in San Jose, Capital Expressway becomes Hillsdale and then becomes Camden... but in the most obnoxious way that Ben White Blvd. is also called the SW Expressway, Highway 71, AND 290.

I mean, I'm not retarded... I can get around in my car alright. But I feel like somehow the oil or car lobbies (or both) conspired to design the dumbest freeways and roads just so we spend as much time as possible in the car. But also, people driving in Texas don't know what they're doing... it's like everybody thinks they're the only vehicle on the road. In CA, people drive badly, but at least they're not surprised when they see another car! I'll never complain about driving in California again....

Madras Pavillion, Austin, TX

My co-worker, who is from Mumbai, India, told me that the best Indian food he's ever had anywhere (that includes his mom's home-cooked meals) was here in Austin, at a place north of the city center called Madras Pavillion. My parents got us a gift certificate to eat there for Christmas, which we used last week. Justine got the south Indian thali (basically a sampler plate of many kinds of curries and soups) and I had the mulligatawny soup and a curry with ocre and green peppers. DELICIOUS! I would have to agree that this is indeed some of the best -- if not the best -- Indian food I've ever had. So if you're ever in Austin, be sure to check out Madras Pavillion! Service is without charm and the decor is lacking a bit (and they chould use with some Indian music playing in the background), but hey, the food comes out quickly, it's hot and best of all, it's super tasty! Also, they give a 5% discount if you use cash (be sure to ask for it!)

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

New Year's Eve in Austin

Here's what we did last year.

Now, here's what we did this year:

We went to the Continental Club's Gallery Room for New Year's Eve, instead of downtown Singapore....



We played Ping Pong while we waited for the band to play, instead of eating Thai food with my sister and waiting for the fireworks to go off on the Singapore waterfront....

The band consisted of Denny Freeman (guitar), Frosty Smith (drums), and Mike Flanigin on an organ. They were good... probably better than last year's fireworks!

I'd still take traveling over hanging out in a local club, but our new year's eve was fun and we met some cool people. Hope you had a good new year, too!

-mike.

Mimes are Boring

From a kid's journal at a Goodwill... priceless. Or maybe I should have said "kids say the darndest things." Either way, these are words to live by. Enjoy!

McKinney Falls State Park, Austin, TX

There's a nice state park a few minutes outside central Austin, and only minutes away from the 'burbs to the south-east of Austin called McKinney Falls State Park. It sounds lame, being so close to the city and under the airport-path, but desperate times called for desperate measures. To elaborate: We had just moved to Austin and were looking for an apartment while staying at the cheap and friendly Howard Johnson Hotel. Since our place wouldn't be ready for a few days, we decided to check out of the hotel and save a few bucks by camping at the park.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get to spend any time at the park except at night to sleep. I went to work in the day (remember, it's close to central Austin) and J hooked up with free wireless in various coffee shops around town to look for jobs.

So anyway, here's a new feature on the blog and my first review of a campground, hopefully with many more to come. There are over eighty campsites at McKinney Falls SP, and all of them have water, picnic tables, trees (huge bonus... ours had a massive live oak that covered our table and the spot where we pitched our REI Quarter Dome UL), fire pits/grills, and several have electrical hookups for you RV folks. The cost is quite high, over $20 a night, but the sites are big and are laid out well, most have lantern hooks/poles next to the tables, the bathrooms are immaculate (including the showers, which have free hot water). Reservations can be made at Reserve America (online) and there are a handful of walk-in spots, too (first come, first served); there are also group sites, if that's your thing.

On the two nights we stayed there (Wed. and Thurs. before Labour Day Weekend), we were the only people staying in our loop of campsites. Not even the park host was on duty those nights, so we simply picked out a spot right next to the bathrooms, pitched our tent, and had a nice meal before it started to rain a bit.

The park sits next to Onion Creek, and there's loads of hiking and biking trials there, as well as good fishing in the creek, so we've heard. There's an interpretive center, which is okay (the rangers were a bit surly when we were there) and a big campground fire pit/amphitheater thing.

The only thing that dampened our experience there is that on the first of the two nights we camped, it was about 90-degrees F at night and raining, which meant inside our puny backpacking tent, it was about 120-degrees F, damp, and smelly! I can't really fault the park for that -- it's really a problem with the Quarter Dome's design that it gets such poor ventilation when the rain-fly is fully battened down. On the second night, it was still warm at night, but we took the fly off and were able to sleep and cooled down as the night wore on, eventually getting down into the mid-70's, which was great.

If you're coming to Austin, and it's not summer, I highly recommend going out there. I know that J & I will be checking out the park again this fall when it cools down so we can check out the hiking trails, try out new gear, and get out of the city quickly. Which is one of the reasons I will choose to give the park a 7 out of 10: It's close enough to Austin to be used as a base of operations for exploring the city as a visitor (and MUCH cheaper than a hotel!) as well as a good place for an overnight or weekend escape (provided it's not a million degrees outside) for Austinites and it makes an easy day-retreat. The facilities are top-notch, but the reason it doesn't score higher than a 7 is because the rangers were surly and I plan on reserving 8's, 9's, and 10's for those campsites that are really spectacular AND serve as gateways to phenomenal outdoors activities (stuff that's way out of the way, has amazing views, etc.).

Capybarra and Hot Sauce

Yep.... it's been almost two weeks since we got to Austin, and we almost have a place. We've paid up our security deposit for a place just south of the river in the hip young neighborhood known as SoCo. Unfortunately, we're not able to move in until Wednesday next week because they're re-furbishing the place (still) so we're spending the weekend at my cousin's house near Houston, which is cool because I never got to see her much when I was young as she lived so far away.

Last weekend, after we had settled on a place to live, we went to the Red Bull Flugtag event, which is where crazy people from all over Texas (and North America, too, as contestants came from Minnesota and Alberta!) make human-powered flying machines that get pushed into the Lower Colorado River (which for some reason is called a lake in Austin) from a 30-foot-high ramp! Priceless. The only crappy thing was that it was about a million degrees outside and the sun was setting behind the ramp, which means to watch the event, you had to stare directly into the sun. Hopefully next year they plan it a bit better.

Bats in Austin are a bit of a theme, as a big colony lives underneath the Congress St. Bridge.

Overall, though, Austin has been fun, so far. We haven't taken in many of the cultural sites (like we havent been to the capital building, yet) and I worked all week at UT, but the people have been great, the food is amazing, and there's a bunch of cool independent restaurants, shops, coffee houses, etc. It's like being in Santa Cruz!

The Texas State Capital building, which I've been told is open 24-hrs. a day.

Anyway, after the Flugtag, we were pretty tired and even though we knew that on Sunday there was the annual Hot Sauce Festival, where individuals, restaurant chefs, and bottlers compete with one-another for the best red & green salsas, pepper sauce, and "special" category. "So," we thought, "there's no way we'll be interested in hanging around at the hot sauce thing because it'll just be too darn hot." But then again, what the heck else were we to do? Hang out in our Howard Johnson Hotel all day? [I must give a plug here and say how accomodating the HoJo Austin was. For less than fifty bucks a day, we got free internet, free breakfasts, a nice clean room, shower, and bed, etc.] So we went off with three non-perishable food items each (donated to the local food back) for some free salsas! And man am I ever glad we went! First of all, as soon as we showed up, I got to take this picture:

Justine and Caplina Rous, the baby Capybarra!

Yep. Didn't know you could own those, but it seems that there's a breeder of these gigantic South American rodents right here in Texas! SOOOOO CUTE! This one's just a baby, but the world's largest rodent can grow to be 150 lbs.!!

For the rest of the afternoon, we walked around trying different salsas and mustards and glazes and some hot sauces that were so hot they literally make you cry! Tamales and beer were plentiful, as was the free water, which helped put out more than a few fires on our tounges (as this video shows)! Overall, it was an excellent experience, and if we were in Austin this weekend, we'd be going to the annual "save the bat" festival, which has bands, food, and around 8 million bats, who come out from under the bridge just after sunset! Must be quite a sight...

'Till next time,
-MB.

Crowds and tents at the Austin Hot Sauce Festival!

A new shirt and a new koozie!

More Photos!!

Here's our drive from Albuquerque, NM (which sucked for the one evening we spent there, though we did have a good breakfast and Papa John's for dinner) to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in TX. We drove through Roswell, NM, thinking it would be fun to get lunch there and take pictures of crappy alien stuff, but it ended up being totally lame and everything was closed, didn't have vegetarian food, and we ended up having Subway, instead.

Once we made it to the actual park, where it was very hot, we set up our tent the shadow of the Guadalupe Mountains, which are actually the Capitan Reef, and ancient (non-coral) fossilized reef over 250 million years old. The next day (which I think was Sunday) we hiked for a few hours down the McKittrick Canyon trail (link goes to a Map). For some reason, it cost us another ten bucks to do this, but it was worth it. See, the park is part of a high-desert plateau called the Colorado Plateau (?) which makes up much of the South West, including the Grand Canyon. In addition, the park is home to some permanent spring-fed rivers, which means that in the canyons and in the high back country, this "desert" is actually pretty lush, as you can see in the photos. In fact, the foliage as you get into the canyon switches from desert shrubs to Rockies-like terrain, full of pines and oaks and maples. It's weird to see a cactus growing under the shade of a Ponderossa Pine, right next to an old Maple Tree! I should also add that the weather on this trip has been pretty amazing. Mostly very clear skies, nice days, cool evenings, but occasionally super duper hot (we had to pack in the hike after just a few hours b/c we were drenched with sweat!) and it has rained so hard that you can't see out the windshield and the car is hydroplaning all over the place, complete with massive thunder/lightening storms. Also, there have been crazy strong winds, which to a Californian like me has been really strange, since summers in Cali are so gentle. Anyway, the trip out to Austin has been good, and now we begin our search for a new apartment. More photos and stories to come, however, as we continue this adventure called life!

Still More Photos!

Here's some of the Grand Canyon, where we spent a few days. Be sure to check the three posts below for more photos from the Great Santa Cruz-to-Austin Road Trip, August 2007!

Mike.

Here

Photos!!

Photos online of our road trip, covering the time between the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park and entering New Mexico... see also photos posted in the two posts below this one.

Enjoy!

here

Photos!!

Photos online of our road trip, covering the time between the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park and entering New Mexico... see also photos posted in the two posts below this one.

Enjoy!

here