"You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas"

Let's just get this out of the way: I am a horrible photographer. Scratch that, I'm a horrible photojournalist. Alright, time to get this thing going.

Austin was amazing. The four days I spent with my two of my favorite and great and closest friends are quite possibly the best four days I've had this year. They may not know how much I love them, but these two kids made my summer as memorable as it was and I'm glad we were able to experience Austin City Limits together. This will be something I'll tell my kids about.

We were crazy, driving down to Texas. And by crazy, I mean, we were crazy in even thinking about driving. It's an exhausting drive, but looking back, was worth it.


Succinctly, we saw as much of Austin as we could in two and a half days. Ross, Chris and I got into Austin around 10:30 on Friday and after dropping our bags off at my cousin's apartment, we hit up the Drag. The Drag (Guadalupe) is similar to Limestone in that it's the road that divides campus from city. Except, being that it isi n Austin, the Drag is significantly cooler than Limestone. We had a delicious dinner and spent the next hour walking around and exploring campus.

Ross said it was a sobering experience, to walk around such an amazing and neat campus. He said something along the lines of it being sad, knowing that those opportunities to attend a cool college, and more broadly, the college experience, is gone.

Saturday was spent checking out downtown Austin with my cousin and the boys. We walked to the capitol (which is bigger than the capitol in D.C.! Go Texas!) and took pictures. Had lunch and played pool in a bar, cooled down for a bit with a nap, shopped at Waterloo Records and went to dinner with some of my family friends. After dinner we walked to an ice cream shop and really just soaked up the Austin evening. Later that night everyone cleaned up to check out the infamous 6th St. bars.

Fingers were crossed that I would get in and luckily I did. Overall that evening was great, and thought a good friend, we heard about an ACL After Show and saw St. Vincent perform at a bar a little ways from the bar we were at.

Sunday was the festival. We saw:

-Yo La Tengo
-The Broken West
-Midlake
-Regina Spektor
-My Morning Jacket (w/Andrew Bird)
-Bob Dylan & His Band


We saw bits and pieces of:

-Bloc Party
-The Decemberists
-Ghostland Observatory
-The Jelly Dots...

There was tons of food and arts and crafts and local vendors. And I'm not going to lie, there were moments were I was completely miserable. We all were feeling the heat, but the festival was set up so that if you need to cool off, you could. Plenty of misting stations and an air-conditioned AT&T thing that people could walk into.

I love Texas and can't believe this weekend went by so fast. The drive back home wasn't too bad, and everyone took turns driving. I'm pretty sure I got stuck with one of the most boring sections of the drive: Dallas, TX to outside Little Rock, AR. Blegh. When I drove over the state line, I was honest to god, incredibly sad. Both the boys were asleep and I had Sufjan Stevens on (didn't want to wake them, they deserved a hearty nap) and everything about that moment was so...overwhelming.

When Ross dropped me off at my apartment that night and we exchanged our casual "see ya later!"'s, I felt dizzy. Like, this whirlwind of a trip just occurred, and I as thrown out right in the middle of it.

What a great road trip.

In other news, this is why I believe that music, live music at that, is the most moving and beautiful art forms of all:



(by the way, that's a Davy Crockett quote. Ross quizzed me on the way down to Texas and surprisingly I remembered all my Texas facts. Shoot me a question and I probably know the answer!)