Austin City Limitless
Chapter 1: Perihelion, Y'all!
I haven't seen Jamie since our legendary adventure in Costa Rica several years ago. Since then, contact has been limited to scattered and sporadic calls and emails. It's fun to think how people's orbits interlap at odd angles. Even though our time in proximity may be brief, gravity pulls at our trajectories in ways that change your path forever. If I hadn't left the bar when I did, I wouldn't have run into Anne and Lavonne, who wouldn't have invited me to Costa Rica, where I wouldn't have met Jamie, who wouldn't have invited me to her wedding, which meant I wouldn't be here in Austin, Texas drinking Mexican beer with a Welsh surfer. Even though I doubt this completes the circle, if it did, I have to say its been good.
Flying still amazes me. How, in the morning, you can leave all you call home and by early evening have outrun the sun to someplace where even the weather and constellations in the sky aren't familiar. This morning I took Minneapolis' relatively new light rail line from downtown to the airport and it was slicker than Teflon-coated snot. It made our little metropolis feel like a big city in a good way. I had flashbacks to London and Chicago trains as we wobbled politely past the platforms. I recognized the familiar early morning squint of waiting riders raising their heads as they felt the oncoming rumble rise up through their feet.
There was a brief bounce in Chicago where I whiled away a spare hour at an airport pub. The bartender was watching the live news feed from the near-Biblical wreckage of New Orleans. "It's a shame that with all this going on there[base ']s still people trying to take advantage of those refugees. They can't go anywhere. They just have to wait there. And there's still companies that are going to try and price gouge them." She then charged me $7 for a small beer.
My experience with all things Austin have been limited to the Spam capital Austin, Minnesota, Steve Austin the Six Million Dollar Man and those shagadelic Austin Healy English sport scars. I'd never even set boot in the Lone Star state before, though many people have told me Austin is the only place to bother with. I knew I could expect an awesome live music scene and assumed I'd probably be able to get a killer burrito somewhere, but that was it. So I was glued to the window of the shuttle van from the airport. We took a rough bit of road through a neighborhood that was barely above a shantytown. Corrugated roofs and handpainted signs advertised countless places to get windows tinted, to have your hair done and to get plastic bags full of the "best tamales" from cooler-toting old women sitting by the roadside contemplating the world under the shade of umbrellas.
Right away I notice it's hot here. Hinges of Hell hot. Space heater in a Death Valley phonebooth hot. Tabasco shooters on the sun hot. Angelina Jolie saying "Let's do it doggie-style so you can balance your Guinness on my back and we can both watch the game." hot. I'm sweating like a priest at a Little League game. "Oh, but it's a dry heat." you say. I'm sorry, after it hits triple digits, hot be hot and any cool adjective you try to hang in front of it just sizzles away to steam on the sidewalk.
Which is why this cold beer I'm enjoying poolside with the parents of the bride and groom and various other family members tastes so damn good.
I finally got to meet the groom, Ceri. A very good-looking guy. Of course, that may have just been his Welsh accent making him so dreamy. So for the next half hour, I imagine anything he says is in the voice of Gilbert Gottfried. Nope. Still dreamy.
Speaking of first meetings, this was the first time Ceri's family--who had just flown in from Pontardulais, Wales--got to meet their future daughter-in-law, Jamie. It was the first time the in-laws had met each other too. I met Ceri's brother and his girlfriend. I met his best friend, Nick--who I was sharing a room with. I met Jamie's brother and his wife and assorted other relations who ran by chasing kids into the pool or heading off on various recreational jaunts or matrimonial themed missions. With all the new faces and steady stream of cold Dos Eqquis, the party was coming to us, so there was no point in moving elsewhere.
While Jamie's dad was telling tales of his days with the railroad, I noticed a sign for a portable kiosk pop up along the Congress Avenue bridge. It said 'Bat Shop'. Even if it hadn't been framing a gorgeous sunset, it would have caught my attention. Turns out the bridge is home to around 1.5 million Mexican freetail bats. They come up from central Mexico and take up residence in the narrow crevices under the bridge from March to November. They tried to get rid of them several years ago, but failed and instead decided to make them a tourist attraction. Even the local hockey team is called the Austin Ice Bats. People gather on the bridge and surrounding river shores to watch them take off around dusk for their nightly feeding. No need to be like the Wu Tang Clan and proteckt ya neck, they're in search of an all-you eat skeeter feed. It's estimated they eat 10-30,000 pounds of insects a night.
As the sun tucked behind the treeline, you could see a couple dozen bats drop down and do a sort of haphazard fluttering recon up the river. Then, at some unheard call, a steady brown ribbon of bats came flowing out from under the bridge. We were several hundred yards away, but they came silently swooping over your heads before disappearing into the deepening dusk. Given their sonar system, I wasn't worried about one hitting me. But still, you have to figure that with almost two million bats, there's bound to be a really stupid one that would forget to check his blindspot and merge straight into your forehead. Such was not the case. Tonight.
Watching the bats go ballistic on the Minnesota state bird got me hungry and soon my constant whining had cajoled a group of us to head out to the Sixth Street area that's a continuous stretch of bars and music venues. We wandered for a while before settling on a Cajun place called Jazz.
"Scotch? Scotch!"
Upon hearing my non de plume shouted out on a crowded street, I turned around and saw my friend Mark. Friend Mark who had left Minnesota about eight months ago to move to LA and pursue a music career. As it turns out, he was doing alright and was touring with a band called The Hopeful States and opening for Smog. They were planning at the joint right next to Jazz.
After dinner, most people wanted to head back to the hotel, but Andy and I were going to check out Mark's band. The place was packed, so I let Andy's bouncer-size frame lead the way through the crowd. We had just missed Mark's set, but made up for it by buying him a beer and listening to his tales from life on the road. They started on the west coast and were working their way east with a stop in Minneapolis next week. It seemed to be agreeing with Marky Mark; he was clearly excited and still feeling the rush of doing a live performance. Either that or he was back to taking hits of dried human adrenaline off of matchsticks. Something we both swore off after the incident that became known to local law officials as the 'Terre Haute Terror'.
Eventually finding our way outside and through the Sixth Street throngs that filled the closed down street, we arrived back at the hotel. A guy in his mid-forties asked us if we had a car and could give him a ride to the airport so he could pick up his teenage son who was sent away to live with some relatives before Hurricane Katrina hit. He said he played drums with Brooks & Dunn and had one of his three houses destroyed by the hurricane. His delivery seemed a little too pat and smooth and the unspoken question in the still hot air was "Why don't you sell one of your many houses and use some of that money to pay for a cab to the airport?"
Before going up to the room, I checked the pool patio again in the belief that the group would still be outside having 'one more for the elevator'. They weren't. Even the bats had had their fill of Austin for this day.
But tomorrow was another day. Another full circle. And no telling what would tug your travels along the path leading forward to contact with more memories-in-waiting.
9:50:19 AM 
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