Getting to Austin, Texas -- with detours and challenges to overcome!

4.3

I awoke to morning was full of motion and intrigue. My Dad and Shane had already gotten up and were pumping oil. Let me tell you if you don't know already, but your sleeping environment filters into dreams into the strangest ways. Once I was up, I went looking for the bathroom, and stumbled upon a bald eagle perched across the water. It turns we had pulled into a quasi nature preserve the night before, and had spent a peaceful night next to the Spring Creek Lake. We did some more maintenance on the bus, and got on the road around 10:00am. Our high hopes for no filter frustrations were dashed as the bus stalled out before even getting out of the city. It took a series of no less than three separate pulling over sessions for us to get going for more than 15 minutes at a time. By the time we broke the 15 minute threshold, we had some of the smoothest driving this far.

All was not smiles and rainbows like we thought though. Pretty soon Shane checked out our GPS position, and apparently we had committed a navigational foul. It was getting on for 3:00pm and we were being forced to backtrack in order to make it to our show in Austin at the Boys and Girls Club. As we got closer to the city, Shane held up the phone and pointed to a section of our route that was outlined in red. He asked me briefly, “What's the red part mean?” Honestly I couldn't have conceived that it was going to be some of the slowest moving traffic in history. We took the first alternate route possible and got an impromptu introduction to the Austin downtown scene. Although I still don't quite understand, my Dad was vocally gleeful about the whole detour, and several times along the ride he said,”Austin is my kind of town!” Maybe it is going to be smiles and rainbows after all?

Our show was in another gym, and you might know how I feel about that. However, the presentation of material came up against a whole new kind of friction. Because of our various complications, we were suddenly sharing the gym with a basketball game. It was pretty interesting to observe the attention flitting back and forth between our show and their warm ups. I felt like I was getting a very clear idea of what demonstrations appealed to this audience. By the time we were packing up, the game was in full gear. However, our send off recovered a touching note because of an incredible thank you card from the clubhouse director.

With the sun setting, we turned our attentions to the rest of the evening’s entertainment, and I can't really believe what we found. Shane made a phone call to one of his friends and asked what we needed to do with our short spell in Austin. This friend recommended the Barton Springs which are part of the Zilker park downtown. Please take a look at the photos included, because it defies my description at the moment. Needless to say, we couldn't believe our luck.

Having our swim followed up by the small feast from a food truck fleet was the epitome of comfort.

I'm ready to follow this trajectory into my dreams. Till tomorrow!

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Tasty Bits:

During the times when the engine was performing best, we accomplished the impossible. Not one, but two cars ate our vegetable oil fumes. We went wild inside!