Deep In The Heart Of Texas

One thing about America is that the there's a distinct difference in terrain as you cross between states. Louisiana was subtropical, with thick, sticky air and heaps of bugs, all in swampland. Crossing into Texas the land and sky open up.

Arriving at the Johnson Space Center (sic) in Houston that afternoon, I walked around every exhibit and watched every film on offer. I took the tramcar tour around the NASA facilities, seeing the astronaut training facility and the massive warehouse that houses the Saturn V rocket. A humbling experience.

From there I legged it through Houston at dusk, driving in the hot Texan night air to Austin. It's very dry here. There's a lot of white concrete and my lasting memory of Texas will be the glare.

The truck's air con takes off the edge, but it's developed a problem where the power steering stops working when the air con is on, so I can only really have it on at freeway speeds, and on the freeway it's just as good to enjoy the 2x130 a/c (two windows at 130kph). I suspect the issue lies with the drive belt. I've picked up a spare belt just in case this one goes on me, but I'll try to increase the tension and see if that fixes it or breaks it.

I arrived into Austin late on Wednesday. On Thursday night, my friend Samantha and her housemate Sadia invited me to dine with a couple of their friends at a Turkish restaurant. We were seated in a beautiful courtyard with lots of pretty little lights as the sky turned lavender. After dinner the owner of the place, and older woman with no curves (save a boob job) came out and started doing a belly dance without exposing her belly. It was a bit fun, a bit hilarious, and a bit creepy, all at the same time.

The following day, Sam and I went to South Congress. A year or two back I read a book called The Common Lawyer. It describes Austin in great detail and really made me want to come and visit the place. SoCo is where most of the book is set, and so we went to Guero's Taco Bar, where the main character spends a lot of his time drinking Coronas on the patio with his friends. Guero's was also featured in Tarantino's Death Proof. We enjoyed more Tex-Mex and some Coronas on the patio before walking up SoCo and going into the rad vintage brick-a-brack shops and some cowboy boot stores.

The past few days have been a whirlwind of cheap drinks and mountains of Tex-Mex, and variations thereof.

After enjoying some theatre in the park last night, my tourguide Sam and I drove to Rainey Street, downtown. It was a street of weatherboard houses, just like you'd find in and suburb of Australia, but the insides of the houses had been completely gutted and turned into bars. But we started at the food trucks. An empty piece of land halfway down the street with food trucks at the perimeter and seating in the middle. With more Tex-Mex, Texas BBQ, and some souvlaki, we went with Thai for a change. From there we went to Lucille's bar. Standing in the backyard, drink in hand, it felt like an awesome house party -- except with a full bar and a few bouncers. It probably helped that I befriended a large group of Aussies, too.

I'm in Austin for a few more days so I'll be doing some more exploring and probably some more eating, I'd imagine.