Keeping Austin Weird, Two Guys and a Chevy Style

Hello Everyone!

When we first started the trip, one of the cities I was most excited to visit was Austin, Texas, because I had never been there and Ive constantly been hearing amazing things about it. Well, folks, the hype is real. Austin is a fantastic city. Great music, great nightlife, great barbecue, and great scenery, all with a really chill atmosphere. All in all, we had a fantastic time in Austin.

We got into town on Halloween day, which was quite lucky because we could have ended up in transit on Halloween, but instead we were in Austin. We had decided to dress up as Lewis and Clark for our costume as an ode to our current journey, and we had put the costume together using stuff that we had and a well timed and fortuitous trip to a Goodwill in Albuquerque. The costume ended up coming out great, but because we were in Texas and I had a coon-skin hat on, I kept on getting yells of "Yo Davey Crockett!" We did get one girl who recognized our costume though, which made our night. For Halloween, we went down to the main bar strip in Austin, 6th st., and went to see this bluegrass style swing band who were playing at one of the bars downtown. After the show, we hit up 6th st., which was absolutely packed with people. It was a pretty ridiculous time, tons of drunk people just milling about.

After a very long night, we woke up in the early afternoon and immediately had an achin for some good old Texas barbecue. So we checked out our trusty old Roadfood book, drove out to some random smokehouse in the farm country outside of town and had the best barbecue weve ever had. We repeated this every day we were in town. Simply stupendous food, and a perfect way to start the day. We had brisket, ribs, sausage, and some great chicken fried steak, all of which were mouthwateringly delicious.

While barbecue was our daily routine in Austin, live blues music was our nightly routine. Our second night in town, we just strolled around 6th st doing a little barhopping. As youre walking, you just hear great live music flowing out of bar after bar. We ended up at this great little dive with a great little blues band playing some great blues and soul music. The next night the girls we were staying with brought us to this sweaty hole in the wall place way out on the east side of town. It was this rickety old joint that had live blues music blaring and was packed to the brim with people gettin down to the music. Our last night in town we went to Antone's which is supposedly THE blues club in Austin. We saw a group of local legends who brought the house down. The whole feel to the scene was very cool because you felt like it existed for the locals and the musicians, not the hipsters or tourists. Everywhere we went we felt like we seeing some legendary stuff.

The city itself is very laid back and has a really chill feel. The University of Texas is right in the center of the city and has like 70'000 students, so theres constantly young people around. It really feels up and coming. On our second night we were walking across the main river in town around dusk and saw all these people just sitting around on the riverside. We went down and checked it out, and it turns out that Austin has the biggest urban bat colony in the world, and they all come out from this cave at dusk in this big flock. It was ridiculous to see the bats fly out and literally cover the sky. Definitely adds to the bluesy ambience of the city.

Keep it real,

Nick