~ Peddling, Rocking, and Saying Goodbye ~

Day Six, the final day of the trip to Austin, October 20th, is rather fuzzy. This may come as a shock to each of you, but I haven't been creating these amazing detail-packed blog entries about my vacation from mere memory. Indeed, during the vacation, I took notes about the activities in my journal and from those notes composed these fantastic entries. The last day of the trip, unfortunately, I did not take any notes and I do not have the greatest of memories (which is why I am a voracious note-taker). Last night I popped by Josh's residence to deliver some pain killers and chicken noodle soup for his cold or flu, as well as a knitted gift for his birthday (Happy Birthday!!!), and we were discussing the final day of the trip and trying to remember certain details. What was particularly irksome was that we could not recall where we had had coffee that morning. Never fear, however, because this morning it hit me!

Friday morning began with us riding bicycles down the greenbelt area, across the Colorado river, and over to a coffee establishment called Flipnotics. This place is also a hipster clothing store and had a big patio with wireless internet and flowers. After getting our coffee, we initially sat outside. We moved seats several times because we couldn't get everything exactly perfect, and we ultimately sat indoors. If memory serves me correctly, we had a little bit of a late start that morning and I think that it was around noonish by the time that we left.

Our plan for the day was to go on a big mountain bike ride, exploring all of the trails around the Barton Springs area. Which was a lot of fun! Riding a bicycle on these trails was unlike any biking I have ever done during my entire one and three-quarter years' experience of mountain biking. Firstly, their trails were much more consistently technical than anything I've ever ridden. I was quite proud of myself for being able to ride as much as I did, and I was able to ride most all of it. Riding in the Boise foothills, truly technical parts of trails are pretty rare and I'm usually too much of a weiner to challenge myself over much of it. That whole "I don't want to fall and hurt myself" thing. But in Austin, there wasn't a choice. It was either ride my bike, have a lot of fun,challenge myself, and take a chance on falling and getting hurt, or don't ride, don't have fun, and don't take any risks. I chose the former. And it worked out beautifully. I had so much fun and I felt so proud of myself for being able to clear so much of it. Secondly, the trails in Austin were dense with folliage and trees. In Boise, the foothills have "high desert" qualtiy to them, which implies that folliage is almost nonexistant except for some knee-high sagebrush and brambleweed. In Austin, it was like a jungle, with the trees hanging low over the trails. So not only were the trails themselves more technical, but the trees growing all along either side of the trails and sometimes hanging over the trails, which meant that it truly was a full-body strategic riding experience. While I was popping my front wheel over rocks, I was also negotiating my handlebars around tree trunks, and bending my torso down low to avoid hitting branches.

From what Josh was telling me, the mountain biking in Austin is much more similar to mountain biking in most of the country, whereas in Boise it is somewhat exceptional. While I was feeling like a major accomplisher, Josh was feeling like he was back home in Kansas, it being the same sort of mountain biking that he first started riding on. Additionally, the trail system in Austin, while it was definately well-maintained and well-traveled, did not seem to be as well-mapped as in Boise. At several junctures, it was not readily apparent which way the main trail went. So on multiple occasions, Josh and I found ourselves on these offshoot trails which led to strange areas with deadends. Thus, our biking was quite the adventure. We found mini-canyons and caves, streams, and had a lot of fun.

At some point, we realized that we were starvin' marvin and we asked for some directions on how to get to some civilization. From these directions, we got outside of the wildernessy area of Barton Springs and was on some far end of Greater Austin that wasn't even on our map. We asked someone if there was a place to eat nearby, and he looked down at our bicycles, smirked, and said that we had to go up a certain hill to find any eating establishments. This certain hill was one that I had seen two minutes earlier and thought to myself, "Oh my! That's a crazy steep hill. Good thing we won't have to ride bikes up it." And I kind of gulped. As I approached the hill on the bike, switching for the first and only time into my granny gear, I kept the thought of impending food at the forefront of my mind to provide me with some pseudo calories. Needless to say, Josh arrived at the top before I did, but I still felt that I did a pretty good job on my climbing. At the top, one of the first things that we saw was a big sign that said "Chilis" and there was no need to even have a conversation. We went there, a chain restaurant that we could have found in any city, and had a fantastic huge meal. We also took advantage of the opportunity to cool down. Afterwards, we wandered through some of the shops, including a Nordstrom's Clearance Outlet where I considered buying a fugly pair of Prada bootties.

We continued riding for a time and then turned around and headed back downtown. From here, my memory is a little fuzzy, so hopefully Josh remembers what we did. I think that we rested at the hotel for a while. But eventually, we got all dressed up and walked down to Red River Street. We had hoped to eat at Moonshine again, but there was too long of a wait. Instead we went to yet another Mexican food place (yea, it might be a long time before I crave an enchillada). I wasn't in the mood for Mexican at all but we were kind of in crunch time and needed to eat something and this was the only place that didn't have a wait. Plus, it was right across the street from Stubb's Ampitheater, where we were going to be seeing Built to Spill play that night.

The concert was great! I am a fan of the Built to Spill. The opening band, which was named...something???...can't remember...wasn't all that remarkable. Josh and I found a place to sit, and we ended up having to keep our guard up to keep our spots, but it was a decent ways from the front and we could see Doug Marsh bright and clear.

I did not sleep very well that night. And we had to get up at 4:00 in the morning to get to the airport. Yet again, I failed at interpreting the bus schedule. I was certain that we could take a bus to the airport, but I had neglected to read the weekend schedule, on which there is no bus running that early in the morning. So we had to take a cab. And we had kind of a miserable airport experience. I was so exhausted, cranky, and very uncomfortable. Our connecting flight was delayed and I was blowing my discomfort out of proportion. I was so happy when I arrived at my home.

Posted by jennifer at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)