October 26th -- Austin

Then I took off towards Austin. I stopped at a AAA office to get me some maps, since I didn't have the GPS stuff with me in the BMW. Saw a red M Coupe there in suburban Houston, got a big wave out of the driver. I think I must have been her first other M Coupe sighting, because she sure was emphatic!

The plan was to stick to the original plan, just do it without the motorhome. That meant stopping in the little town of Brenham on the way from Houston to Austin, where the Blue Bell Ice Cream plant is. Now, not being from Texas or a handful of other southern states, I've never really heard of Blue Bell Ice Cream except for my occasional visits down here. But being an ice cream snob (New England is full of little ice cream parlors where they make the ice cream right in the store), I thought I'd give this a try. The tour ends with some free ice cream samples, so how could I pass it up?

I couldn't get over how popular the tour was. I was on the 1:00 tour, with 39 other people. And they do this 8 times a day or so at this time of year, and much more in the middle of the summer.

The tour was fairly interesting, and they have an old-fashioned ice cream parlor right on the grounds where it ends. Naturally, I got vanilla, because that's the way you test ice cream :-)

Before I tell you how it was, let me explain the ice cream snobbery. See, store-bought ice cream, and even some parlor ice cream, usually has poor texture. Ice crystals, or it's just too hard, not creamy, etc. I've always believed that this came from being moved from freezer to freezer. A lot of store bought ice cream also tends to have a gummy flavor to it, which I really hate. I've found Breyers to be good at avoiding this. Anyway, my policy has been basically that if the ice cream has been shipped in a truck, it's not worth eating.

Okay, so the Blue Bell here at the factory wasn't shipped in a truck, it was made right on the premises. But it is, after all, store-bought ice cream. And I was surprised to find that it had ice crystals, though was generally creamy, but it definitely had that awful gummy taste. So, I was disappointed.

Anyway, after the tour I continued on to Austin. I spent most of the next two hours dealing with stock stuff. See, today, the 27th, is the day that the employee lockout period ends for sales of Marimba stock, meaning that all of us who work there can actually turn our stock into cash today. But preparing for that has meant filling out a bazillion forms, which has been very frustrating to do from the road. Rex told me on the phone on my way to Austin about some forms that I hadn't yet seen, so I found a Kinko's, and he faxed 'em to me. I filled them in, faxed them out, sent the originals out via FedEx ... For travellers without a home base, you can survive extremely well with just Kinko's and Wal-Mart. Great stores.

Okay, so it was finally time to go hook up with Sandy for dinner and hopefully a fun evening (they usually are, so I had no doubts.) She's been reading all about this trip right here, and was determined to "make" the web page. I stupidly left the camera in the motorhome back in Houston though, so she won't make it into the pictures. At least I'm talking about her.

So, I show up at her place, we sit and talk for a little while, then head out to dinner (Thai food). It was very good, but surprisingly hot and spicy. Guess I was in the north for too long! I can't remember what we were planning to do after dinner originally, but on the way there I asked about 6th St., which is the party part of town. I haven't done 6th St. since the first time I was in Austin a long, long time ago ... so we headed that way. Actually, maybe that's where she had us heading all along, I have no idea. I was just along for the ride. Well, okay, I was driving, and I almost turned the wrong way on a one-way street, but whatever. :-)

Started in a brew pub. The baseball game was on TV, and the Braves were leading in the 2nd inning. I realized then that after the Yankees beat the Red Sox, I haven't paid any attention at all. I guess it's 2 games to 1 now, Yankees.

So, beer #1 was consumed at the brew pub, along with a lot of great conversation. After that, we went to another bar, where Sandy's boyfriend Joel was playing Dominoes with his buddies. Right, Dominoes. (Does that have an "e" like potatoes? You can call me Dan.) No, this isn't that game we all played as kids where you line up the 5 with another 5, it's like a card game, kind of a cross between Bridge and Spades, played with tiles instead of cards. I guess the advantage is that you can put dominoes in the dishwasher.

So, I met the crowd, and we consumed another beer (Fat Tire, this time ... I love that stuff) while I tried to absorb how this game worked. It all went just a little too fast for me to really grasp it, but I got the basic idea.

Sometime in there, a guy walks up and asks if he can ask us all a little about our beer preferences, in exchange for $20. The glasses at the table were full of what I'll call "good" beer ... you know, amber, not yellow. Joe Goeke likes to say that it's not good beer if you can see through it, but I can personally relax that constraint somewhat. So, he asks us what we're all drinking, and why, and what makes one beer better than another, etc. This was hardly scientific, just a free-for-all conversation (videotaped by another guy ... wonder where that tape is going to end up?). He then steered the conversation towards Mexican beer. Do you like any Mexican beer? I offered that I liked Dos Equis. Well, it turns out that this guy was representing Dos Equis, and was trying to understand why Austin is the only market in the country were it outsells Corona. Here in Austin there are even two varieties of it (I'm pretty sure we only have the one brown-bottle one in CA, at least, it's the only one I've ever seen.) Anyway, after a bunch more Q&A, he dropped $20 on the table and left. Interesting.

Okay, so the dominoes resumed and Sandy and I took off. We were walking down the street, saw a pool hall, and decided that that might make a nice way to spend some time. I believe Sandy said, "We could shoot some bad pool for a little while." I thought that I'd prefer to shoot some good pool, but it turns out she was right. Since beer #3 (another Fat Tire) was involved here, it only got worse. I had a couple of good shots, but many more awful ones. I think Sandy out-played me. She won the first game when I sunk the 8 ball in the wrong pocket. I don't remember how the others turned out. Maybe we only played two, although we played for quite a while. We only managed two games in something like an hour because we sucked.

So at this point, Sandy was still concerned that she wasn't going to make the web page. As you can see, we could have quit right here and she would have made it just fine. But she was determined. She had this plan. She is the self-proclaimed best two-step teacher in Austin, or the world, or something. And I am a self-proclaimed non-dancing klutz who likes country music. Match made in heaven?

However, there was an issue. The only country/western bar in the vicinity is a gay bar. Seemed pretty likely that this little fact would clinch her spot on the web page.

The bar was pretty empty, maybe only 15 other people in there. We were definitely the attraction, since we weren't the same sex as each other. But, whatever. The dance floor was usually empty, although occasionally some people would be up there.

So, we sat down at a table and she explained the two-step to me. One, 1-2-3, One, 1-2-3, One, 1-2-3. That's it. I guess it's just two steps, but you count to three. Yeah, I get it.

As long as Sandy was leading, we were fine. Usually. If I started to think about the song, then my feet would lose the rhythm somewhere and I'd switch feet (so we'd be moving the same foot at the same time, and everything would get all whacked.) So, I just tried to concentrate on my feet, find the tempo ... and for three big glasses of beer, I think I did okay. I'm clearly not a natural. Must practice.

The whole evening was really fun! Definitely made the drive here worthwhile. But it was midnight and some people have to actually go to work in the morning, so I dropped Sandy off and went and found a hotel, and fell soundly to sleep.

This morning I have to find out the latest prognosis on the motorhome, and depending on the answer, either head back to Houston, stick around Austin, or maybe head to San Antonio. We'll see.