Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Scenes from Austin

Our helmsman, Joe.
Kirsten, holding on.
Me again, in my new green sunglasses.
Brian, our master of ceremonies during the sailing excursion.
Skies at the Austin Kite Festival.  
Kirsten, John and Josie.

Well, I've now left Texas behind me, but not before a couple of adventurous days in Austin visiting with my friend Kirsten and her family.  She just about wore me out, but we had a great time, seeing local (and awesome) band the Gourds, going sailing on Lake Travis in gusts up to 45 mph, biking along Lady Bird Lake to the Austin Kite Festival, where as nice as the kites were the highlight was the chicken sandwich from kebobalicious (something like that), visiting with other college friends Brian, Anne-Marie and Margot and their families and children, and finally topping it all off with a Pretenders show (Chrissie Hynde does rock, definitely).  

Austin is almost criminally groovy, and winter seems an ideal time to visit there, not to mention the rest of Texas.  There seems to be tons going on, and the weather seems hard to beat, even for someone born and bred in the snow belt and finds the first snow of each season a pretty special time (the last snow is something else entirely, but at least Spring is around the corner by that point).  There's a million bands, everybody is biking, hiking or jogging around town, and good Tex-mex food graces every block.  

Now I'm back in Cincinnati to visit with family and get a few hometown chores done and get a couple 5-ways at Skyline before setting my sights back on Boston and my big transition to farm life up in Ipswich.    I need some boots.  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rest in peace, Esme. Good people everywhere are weeping with you and your family. We're all so sad and so sorry.