Austin City Limits

Austin City Limits was one big hot and sweaty mass of humanity. And it was great, as we expected. We suffered through the heat, had our daily slushee around 5:00 — those things do wonders to cool you down, and anxiously awaited the sunset. As the sun goes down, everything starts to seem better. It’s cooler. The music is better. It gets hard to see anything in the dark except that there are bodies everywhere, and the whole experience becomes surreal.

We drove up on Friday morning and stayed with my college friends Leila and Brian. Despite the fact that they live less than 4 hours away, I hadn’t seen them in two years. They moved from southwest Austin even farther out to Driftwood about a year ago, so this was the first time I’d seen their new house. Though they do live in the boonies (albeit a convenient mile from the Salt Lick), their house was beautiful. We didn’t spend a lot of time there with the music festival and everything, but we did have time to play their Nintendo Wii. Extremely fun — and a surprisingly good workout. Our arms were sore the day after playing an hour and a half of tennis, boxing, golf, bowling, and baseball.

Staying there also gave me the chance to go biking with Leila on Saturday morning. She’s training for the 40-mile ride as part of the Livestrong Challenge next month, so she’s been riding and spinning a lot. We drove to one of the areas that’s popular with biking and rode about 17.5 miles at a leisurely 14 mph average — and finally stopped because my front tire was losing air at a fairly rapid rate. (I haven’t found the culprit yet, but I haven’t actually taken the tire off yet. Will do that tonight.) It was a nice ride, though even the relatively small rolling hills of Austin did a number on this flatland cyclist. I was puffing and panting on any incline. As we finished putting the bikes back on the car, I lifted up my shirt to wipe the sweat off my face and trapped some kind of insect in there. It must have been a bee. When I lifted my shirt again in response to a stinging sensation, something fell out and there was a stinger stuck right there in my tummy flab. Ouch! I pulled it out, and the sting really hurt for a bit. The pain went away after a while, but then the itching started. It still itches like crazy. Itch itch itch.

Yesterday was Leila’s birthday, so we celebrated with brunch at a restaurant downtown. The service left a little to be desired, but the food was great. Jose and I wandered around downtown Austin for a few hours after that before heading over to the final day of the festival.

ACL itself was, as previously mentioned, a blast. Favorite acts included Andy Palacios and the Garifuna Collective (a band from Belize that we discovered on Friday), Andrew Bird, Arcade Fire, and The Decemberists. The worst act we saw was Regina Spektor. She’s very popular right now and I’d heard her most popular song on the radio and thought it was ok — but I hated her performance. Ugh.

We had to leave after Decemberists (though heard some of Bob Dylan while waiting in line for the buses) to head back to Houston. I drove the first half feeling fine, then proved that as soon as I hit the passenger’s seat, no matter what, I fall asleep. I feel really bad for making Jose drive from 11:45 – 1:30 with no one to keep him entertained. I am no match for the passenger seat and its sleep-inducing qualities.