Weekend Travels

So I traveled to Austin, TX for a family wedding this past weekend, and boy is Austin a nice town. I was excited to get there, for the barbecue (wish I had found this site before I left!), the warm weather, and the simple fact that I'd never set foot in Texas apart from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.

The weather was consistently in the mid-70s to 80s the whole weekend, with a bit of humidity that reminded me of summers in Boston, and that warmth extended very nicely into the evenings as well.

Some of my cousins and I decided to explore the nightlife Austin has to offer on Friday night, since we had all heard great things about the city, and we happened to come across Sixth Street, which we very quickly found out is the center of Austin's live music scene, and a veritable paradise for the college set. The streets get blocked off by the police, and thousands of twenty-somethings (and not-quite twenty-somethings, for sure) are out roaming from bar to bar and club to club (grainily depicted in the cell-phone photo above). I've honestly never seen anything like it that wasn't a special occasion of some sort, and the whole ordeal made me feel quite old, since it seemed as though the vast majority of the University of Texas' 50,000 students had all descended on this one street that evening, with most of them appearing the better part of ten years younger than me. In any case, I fulfilled my goal of drinking a Lone Star, the "national beer of Texas", and it really wasn't any worse than your average Bud or Coors, with slightly more flavor, even. In fact, it tasted surprisingly like a PBR, which isn't so odd, considering that Lone Star is now owned by Pabst.

Austin, however, didn't feel like Texas, really. I don't know what exactly Texas is supposed to feel like, but I suppose it involves "liberal, left-coast, San Francisco" me feeling slightly uncomfortable at the "gun-racked, mud tired, carbon-spewing evangelical Republicanness" of it all. I guess Austin was too easy for me, in a way; a place that I could actually envision myself living at some point in my life, whereas my conventional view of Texas as being a great repository of all that is not-me has always made me somewhat intrigued yet fearful of the state.

On flying out from Austin on Sunday en route to Phoenix, I was able to see some of what I had thought were steppes out towards the western end of the state, but it turns out I was wrong as to what I saw. Those formations were quite beautiful from 37,000 feet up, and I really want to go back, either on a motorcycle or in a car to explore the West Texas backcountry further.

Ideally, I'd like to find out more about the Texas the recently departed Molly Ivins profiles below; the one that speaks of the mythology of the old west (and the terrible "ort" that goes with it) enjoy.

Post #1 and a Mission Statement (subject to revision)

Well here I am.

After having hemmed and hawed mentally for six months over whether to start a blog or not, whether to actually commit some of the thoughts in my head to virtual paper, I'm doing it. Just doing it.

As opposed to starting up a blog about me me me, akin to a MySpace or Facebook page, but more boring and with a lot fewer nice photos to look at, I thought I'd use my virtual soapbox to attempt to answer a series of questions that have plagued me to no end for some time now: Why is it that, in the most interconnected, information-filled moment in human history, my peers are so cut off from the wider world? Why does it seem that well-informed teenagers, twenty- and thirty-somethings are the exception these days, rather than the norm? With so much of our country's future riding on our generation, it seems mind-boggling to me.

It has occurred to me recently that I could do something positive for my friends and relatives who are busy and involved in their own lives, but who are still interested in what's going on in the world. I determined that I could start a blog where I compile some of the major stories every few days that I think my friends ought to be aware of, and then attempt to couch those stories within a wider context, all the while referencing the more "authoritative" news sources that I get the stories from to ensure that people can make their own judgements. This way, anyone who wants a little shot of the news will be able to stop by the site and see what's what, in my humble opinion. At least, that's what I envision...

In addition to news and serious subject matter like that, I'm sure I'll indulge myself in some commentary about life in the Bay Area, music, food, and most certainly motorcycles. We'll see what kind of blogger I turn out to be, and if things go particularly well, perhaps I'll create some subsites that cover these other topics, but I'm getting way ahead of myself now.

Clearly I'm tweaking the blog layout right now, and I'll be adding far more to it in the very near future, but I just had to get over this initial hurdle of the first post, so apologies if it's been a terribly boring slog. Here's some Earth, Wind & Fire to make it up to you: