Vagabonding: Getting Back
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again–to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
Pico Iyer, Why We Travel
People often ask why I have taken up the itinerant lifestyle, why I’ve forsaken a house and gone to living out of a suitcase.
There are the obvious reasons. I lost my job right before all hell broke loose on Wall Street, New York City was vastly more expensive than I could afford while looking for work, I had recently become single again, and there was nothing material tying me to anywhere.
The subtler reasons had to do with myself. Those of you who have known me for a while know that the fall of 2007 brought with it a life altering experience. I was expelled from the place I called home, the people I loved, and the life I had been used to living. In the span of eight months I gave up on a life that I had always dreamed of in Montreal, with a woman I loved and a community that cared for me.
I had fought long and hard to go back home but when the time came that I was allowed to return, I had already given up on the dream.
I lost myself.
I stayed in New York. Buried myself in work, dance, staying out too late and having too much to drink. When work disappeared (money along with it) and relationships came to their close, circumstances made it clear that it was better for me to leave.
I had been reading the Four Hour Workweek as well as a variety of blogs on lifestyle design and all things pointed to leaving behind a conventional life.
This experience, this vagabonding, is my pilgrimage. A journey to feel whole again and comfortable as who I am. A journey to awaken an entrepreneurial spirit and to see the world with new eyes. To become a young fool once again.
San Francisco, CA – The Coffee Mission, Morning Yoga, and Washboard Trains (2/2-2/3)
Monday – Coffee in the Mission and then they took my money
I began by cycling down into the Mission District. The Mission was traditionally a latin american neighborhood which has been influxed with hipsters, young professionals and students. It has a lively nightlife and artistic community being dubbed as the New Bohemia in 1995 by the San Francisco Chronicle.
I started off at Ritual Coffee Roasters. It’s on Valencia between 21st and 22nd in the Mission (there is a second elsewhere in the city and one in Napa). The atmosphere is relatively minimalistic and the coffee roasting process happens right before you. There are bags of green coffee in the back while employees pour beans into the machines to roast.
Watching the process happen and knowing that the cup of coffee you are enjoying was probably roasted the day you ordered it or the day before at most is exhilarating. There is a directness to the experience of the product, an authenticity you don’t receive even when it is freshly ground.
The staff was exceptionally friendly, and I chatted for a while with one barista who recommended a clover drip of Ethiopian origin and the Sweet Tooth single origin espresso which they were premiering from Brasil. He recommended a local yoga class that he taught on Tuesday and Thursdays a bit farther down in the Mission. I took his card and seated myself to do some work.
The only downside to Ritual, they have no outlets for their customers. So while they provide excellent coffee and free WiFi when your battery is out of energy, that’s it. You’re done. It encourages turnover but definitely discouraged me from returning to spend a lot of time there. I work in four or five hour blocks of time at cafes and being unable to plugin seriously shortens my uptime.
Once my battery had run its course I cycled over to Philz Coffee which is on the corner of 24th and Folsom, also in the Mission. They are known for the One Cup at a Time motto where each cup is prepared individually (at high end cafes this is fast becoming the norm).
I picked up a Yerba Matte Latte (one of my new beverages of choice when I’m working) and settled down. For a popular and established cafe Philz maintained a recently put together atmosphere with an assortment of tables, chairs and couches amongst various plants and adornments. The wifi was solid and power outlets available. Done and done.
Work passed by, I had a poker game to go to down in SoMa at Manu’s. I showed up a touch late (as is my habit) and somehow managed to be the first person anyways. The game was $5 in and while I normally take my parents money at poker, I didn’t even manage to make the third round. Consolation prize, hanging out on the couch and then playing Jungle Speed as more and more players were knocked out. Jungle Speed should be for money, that’d be my kind of game.
Tuesday – Yoga with Men and Redwood City
One the advice of my friendly barista at Ritual, I set out for morning yoga down on 20th St. I didn’t know what to expect, and I’m particularly choosy about my yoga instructors for a few reasons, and arrived just as people were filing into the class. It was all men (rare in my experience of yoga) and I believed I had been invited more on the assumption that I was an attractive young man than for any other reason. The class went well, being traditional Vinyasa with some balances and strength training near the end of the class.
I haven’t regularly practiced yoga since I lived in Montreal and I miss the calm I find after savasana (corpse pose). It is a centering practice that I should pursue more actively and I have this notion in the back of my mind to go to Sedona, AZ and study. Follow in footsteps.
After yoga I stopped at another cafe on Valencia for a quick coffee, journaled for a moment, then headed back to Michael’s to clean up (he was my 2nd host). With a quick turnaround at Michael’s, I headed back out to catch the Bart down to San Mateo to meet up with Carla and Rye.
One thing about San Francisco public transportation, they need a unified system. There is the Bart (Bay Area Rapid Transit) which is basically a subway system, the Muni system which is streetcars and buses, the CalTrain which is a commuter rail, and then most likely a few more in the East Bay which I didn’t have the misfortune to need. None of these systems run on the same cards or fares and it was grating to have to switch between them.
So, while waiting for the next Caltrain (that I had just missed cause I had to buy a different ticket) at the Bart station I pulled out my washboard and practiced some rhythms I had been working on.
I love playing the washboard, although I occasionally find it hard to learn new things without having other musicians to jam with. It is an instrument I can bring anywhere and has brought me a variety of social encounters I would not otherwise have had. It’s a magnet for questions and comments and sitting at the station waiting for Carla and Rye to pick me up I struck up a conversation with a girl sitting next to me. We chatted for a short time about my travels and what she did in the city.
My travels have really begun to break me out of my shell socially, I am able to start conversations with perfect strangers without that incredible discomfort I used to feel. It’s one of the bigger challenges I’ve had in my life and it’s slowly dissolving the more I travel and want to learn about all the people I meet along the way.
Once picked up, we stopped for food in Burlingame and talked for a while. It’s interesting to hear what people think about my current vagabonding, how I’m funding it, why I’m doing it, and what plans I have for the time ahead of me. My latest project Slacker Reform is one of the ways I plan to give back to the world and to help others.
We hung out at their place for a while and they have two adorable cats, one who is 20 lbs and bigger than some dogs I have met. I miss being around cats especially ones that will drape themselves on you as if you were public property.
Carla runs a weekly venue down in Redwood City and I had heard good things about it, that and I wanted to get some dancing on.
Redwood City Swing is held in a ballroom outside of downtown Redwood City. It is a large space with good acoustics and a nice floor. We put together a little jam number using the California routine to showcase for the beginner class. For the entire night I could barely sit down out a song and everyone was incredibly welcoming.
By the end of the night I was wiped. Thankfully they had an incredibly comfortable bed all ready for me. Foam mattress pads and pillows are something I will invest in if I someday decide to settle down.
San Francisco, California – Cycling the Pacific Riptide (2/1)
Time flies and when you aren’t keeping track of it you don’t keep up with your travelogue.
I flew in the 31st of January and out on the 15th of February.
Flying in from Austin was a great experience and the glow of pacific sun warmed me on arrival. I toted my luggage to the Bart station and phoned my host, Shannon, that I had arrived and was on my way.
The Bart is a D.C. style metro system where you pay by distance traveled on the system, in comparison to flat rate systems like New York and Montreal. It is frustrating to pay $5 to ride the subway for 30 minutes when in NYC you can ride it end to end across three buroughs and still just pay your $2.50.
My first night in San Francisco kicked off with a bhangra dance party at the Yerba Buena Arts Center downtown. The main draw – free pizza of which I managed two tiny slices. The best parts: being complimented on my bhangra by random woman during the lesson and the short video documentary on helicopters and their status in Vietnam.
Cycling in Austin had me inspired to do the same in San Francisco and there are fewer better places that I’ve cycled. Sunday proved to be a perfect day for a ride and I started it off with a stop at the Squat and Gobble cafe. Breakfast was a florentine crepe, rosemary potatoes and coffee. The crepe fell flat for my expectations yet the rosemary potatoes were excellent. I sat outside and enjoyed the late breakfast, watched locals pass by, and admired the sun.
Packing away the leftovers of my breakfast for later consumption, I biked towards the ocean. The ride downhill was smooth and I stopped along the way for the occasional iPhone snapshot [note: invest in actual camera]. By the time I got to the coast it was nearly noon and I merged onto the coastal bike path. The coast has that short scrub-like appearance you find along the Atlantic. Trees are sparse and the ground is covered in short rough vegetation capable of weathering the salt and living in sand. Along the bike path there were occasional cases of unopened water bottles, presumably for cyclists and joggers. I decided against taking one.
By the time I reached Golden Gate Park, I was headed for Lindy in the Park, I had cycled farther than I had since living in Montreal and had good bit to go through the park before I got there. I was sweaty, having over-layered, and my legs had that semi-numb lactic acid buildup feel. I looped the bike-lock through the spokes and frame and set it to the side.
An hour later and I had barely rested a moment as Shannon introduced me to friends and fellow dancers and I was seized upon for nearly every song (this would prove to be a trend in SF). I took a few moments to snap some pictures of the park, although very few of them turned out well. The dance wrapped and we zipped off for food at a local Chinese restaurant.
I had work to do so I got advice on a cafe in the Mission, Ritual Coffee Roasters, and headed out. I barely made it down Haight St. before I saw a cafe that called out to me. Coffee to the People had a really nice vibe and by the time I looked at the time it was nearly 8:30pm. I had intended to catch Gaucho, a hot jazz band, down at the Riptide between 8 and 10pm, so I had to hurry. I slung my gear into my Chrome bag and huffed back down to the ocean.
Riptide is a hole-in-the-wall surfer dive bar a block away from the Pacific. Divided in half by a U shaped bar, with mostly local beers on tap, and a strange assortment of surfer paraphernalia and animal heads on the walls, it had a unique feel. There had been a Superbowl party earlier so leftover wings waited for the taking. Gaucho is a small group in the style of Django with a touch of the gutbucket New Orleans style. The musicians were friendly, quite talented, and encouraging of the dancers who got up in the tiny space.
We left the Riptide not too far into their last set and headed to the Rite Spot Cafe, a bar in the Mission district. The Sweet Hollywians, a string jazz band from Osaka, played a really tight set to a packed audience. They had a unique sound and really good presence on top of spinning ukeleles. I ran into a few other people I knew at Rite Spot and caught up with Manu who was my host for the last half of my stay in San Francisco.
My first day was full and finished.
I’ll attempt not to write whole days out again in my summary of San Francisco, but sometimes they are so packed it is hard to avoid.
To San Francisco – Planes and Standup Comics (1/31)
So, San Francisco! San Francisco, San Francisco… Not “San Fran,” no, apparently not! I didn’t know that, I would’ve said “San Fran,” but you’d go, “No, we don’t like “San Fran,” fuck it!” Or what’s the other one you don’t…? Oh, Frisco! You don’t like that either.
Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill
Flying is such an experience and my best experience so far has been my hop from Austin to Phoenix on the way to San Fran. (There I said it, shoot me.)
Brian, the young frosted-hair flight attendent, would have made a better standup comic than steward. He welcomed us on board and helped us to understand the safety procedures.
Wear your seatbelt like a rockstar, low and tight.
If in the unfortunate event that our flight becomes a cruise, swim or swim faster.
If you don’t like my jokes there are 6 exits…
In the event of loss of cabin pressure, stop screaming, let go of your neighbor and pull down on the mask. If the bag doesn’t inflate that’s cause the crew is getting all your oxygen.
He was so entertaining that he received a warm round of applause from the cabin when he finished the comedy sketch, I mean safety instructions.
As we taxied to the runway he advised us to “sit back, relax or lean forward and stress out, your choice.” The rest of the flight was a breeze. We cruised over western Texas and New Mexico till we touched down at Phoenix for a short layover.
The flight from Phoenix to San Francisco, far less entertaining yet the views from my window were amazing. Red cracked earth through Arizona, canyons and plateaus, white capped mountains next to blue lakes, into the rolling green of California.
If you end up flying Northwest Airlines and end up with a frost-haired flight attendent by the name of Brian, sit back and relax.
Austin, TX – Highlights and Hill Billies (1/24 – 1/30)
Alright there were no hill billies in Austin, Texas – there are barely any hills for that matter.
Last Highlights
The majority of my time in Texas was occupied with one of two things: dancing or coffee.
My weekend was packed with partying, dancing and competing at Lone Star. I carried away four trophies from the event, a first in the Strictly Fast and a third in the Strictly Blues with Teni, a third in the All-Star Jack & Jill with Karen, and a second in the All-Star Strictly with Gina. One for each of the competitions I entered (go me!).
I’ve never competed in an All-Star division before. You’d think it would be stressful or daunting – not at all. Exciting, entertaining and fulfilling is more like it. Watching Mikey & Nina rock it from the start and not worrying of dancing with someone I’ve never met before made the Jack & Jill a great experience. Competing with Gina for the first time, feeling like we did well, and then winning second was very rewarding. Aside from the All-Star divisions, competing with Teni is always fun – we have a good rapport on the dance floor both goofy and intense depending.
Coffee amounts to a lot of sitting in cafés and doing work on this site, Slacker Reform and DancewithCarl.com. I spent more than 8 hours some days at my computer working on layout, SEO, content, and such things. Slacker Reform has a plan, no launch date, but a plan. DancewithCarl is basically done minus photos and photo credits.
I checked out Caffeine, Kick Butt Coffee and Genuine Joe’s in Austin successfully. They were each quite unique.
Genuine Joe’s, where I spent the majority of my time, had a home reading room feel. Chairs, tables, and couches were all hodge-podged together. Staff were welcoming and talkative (especially when you are there more than they are), the coffee was good and their lattes were named in an aptly leftist fashion.
Kick Butt Coffee is owned by a martial artists and the whole café has a distinct martial theme with rubber ninja stars at the register (watch out Andrew), weapons on the walls and a kicking cartoon logo. The coffee was quickly delivered and it feels good to support a local chain.
Caffeine was recommended by a friend of mine from Montreal. It has a co-working day on Fridays where freelancers, entrepeneurs, etc. gather to work on their respective projects in a creative communal environment. The environment is slick and minimal. Coffee came with refills, WiFi was consistent and fast.
Other places I visited included San Francisco Bakery (an ironic prelude to the next destination on my journey) and Starbucks (the perpetual fallback).
The Wrap
Next time I’m in Austin I hope to explore south Austin more. Caffeine was located in that neighborhood, as well as Freddie’s Place which Mike and I went for burgers. South Austin has a number of local businesses, a really nice vibe, and it is on my list for next time.
While Austin didn’t meet all my expectations as a dense urban area it was filled with great stores, like Cream Vintage, great cafés, and great people.
Vagabonding – Going It Alone
…you should always be ready to go it alone…
Rolf Potts, Vagabonding
Since I left my stationary life behind in November, then flying to Atlanta, GA in December I have been around close friends — that is until I decided to go somewhere I had never been before without a Lindy Hop event to buffer me.
I flew to San Francisco because the flight was cheaper than other places I was hoping to see and I’ve never spent time in California. I had a number of contacts here, people I knew more as acquaintances than as close friends, and they have been gracious and generous. Manu, Shannon, Carla, Michael – some of them people I met for the first time when I put my stuff down in their home have been wonderful and hospitable.
Having been around very close friends for nearly two months without interruption it was when that immediacy disappeared that loneliness hit me.
I didn’t expect loneliness to come on as hard as it did.
Chris Guillebeau just recently wrote about loneliness on the road. He has been traveling a lot longer than I have and his words help me weigh loneliness in a different way.
My thinking is, if I never experience it, I’m probably living a safe, comfortable life.
Vagabonding is an act of pilgrimage.
I am on the road to excise the parts of myself which stand in my way. To come to terms with myself on the edges. To do the things that scare me. To grow in spirit and character.
As these words from Michael Crichton go: “stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inveitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.”
I am not in a foreign country where the culture clashes against my very person or the world around me is alien, yet I am still stripped of my ordinary life. I have not the friends I know with me or the places that make me comfortable.
It forces me to enjoy the simple pleasures that I can find. Walking streets and neighborhoods I have never seen. Sitting on a picnic table with a cup of coffee. Practicing calligraphy. Chatting with strangers at coffee shops, bus stations, and airports.
I am in practice a very socially connected person.
I talk to a number of friends all across the country throughout the day. I keep up with my e-mail, social networking sites, blogs, text messages and phone calls. Yet I am at the same—a solitary person. I need time on my own to recharge. I have spent days living in NYC where I did not talk to or message a single person.
I am in need of finding refuge in solitude once more.
Austin, TX – Werewolves, Vampires and Whole Foods (1/23)
Friday:
Now what do werewolves, vampires and Whole Foods have in common? Well obviously werewolves and vampires are in the same genre but put them in Austin, TX, the headquarters of Whole Foods, and you’ve got a serious match up.
The plan for Friday was simple, get a ride to the movie theater and watch Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.
As you can tell from the trailer, Rise of the Lycans is high-brow film worthy of Cannes or Sundance. It lived up to expectations proving quite entertaining. Highlights included a sex scene montage worthy of an early 90s blockbuster full of panning closeups of writhing naked bodies, the proletariat rising up against the establishment in true Marxist fashion, and fight scenes worth their salt in any B-rate fantasy action film. [note to self: acquire lace-up leather pants and a long coat to wear shirtless]
Having fulfilled our art quota for the day, Gina and I walked to Whole Foods cafe for a caffeine fix (and a quick pickup of my new favorite bar soap).
Coffee in hand we landed ourselves on the picnic tables outfront. We fiddled with our phones and lazed atop the table chatting. Lying down in pubic spaces is an amusing shift away from the conventional. Doing things in an unconventional manner is part of the The Year of Awesome, as Gina describes 2009, and I’m wholly endorsing that fact. This was my favorite experience during my stay in Austin.
Friday night was the kickoff for the Lonestar Championships, a regional Lindy Hop contest (as if you didn’t already know), and was margarita night for those in the loop. I competed in two divisions Friday night. It was my first time competing in an All-Star contest, the All-Star Strictly. Gina and I kicked ass and took names in honor of The Year of Awesome. We won 2nd place. Unfortunately there are no pictures or footage of us dancing together, apparently it never happened according to Facebook and YouTube. The other contest, the prelims for the Strictly Fast. Teni Lopez-Cardenas and I danced it up and made it to the finals on Saturday.
More to come on Austin, TX: Lonestar, Latenights and Laundry (or something like that).
Austin, TX – Boots, Booze and Bubble Tea (1/21 – 1/22)
Texas.
I have never had the urge to go to Texas mostly because of an aversion to things that are a) oversized; b) overly religious; c) populated with poisonous snakes.
But I went anyways.
Somehow I got past the gargantuan zealot rattlesnakes and took a Greyhound to Austin, TX. Now, Austin isn’t typical Texas from what I’ve heard and I didn’t emerge into a land of ten-gallon hat wearing bible wielding rednecks so I was relieved. Austin is as urban 21st century as it’s hipster cafes and bars.
Going about Austin without a car was more of a challenge than I had anticipated. I had this vision of Austin as a denser city manageable entirely by bicycle or public transit. I forget – this isn’t NYC anymore. Mike and Laura were gracious enough to let us borrow their car when possible to go on longer drives.
Wednesday: Bubble Tea and Booze
Gina flew in and we met up at Tapestry and taught a class for the Lindy Project. This was my first time teaching with Gina (more to come) and our material was well received. Success.
Everyone headed out for bubble tea, it seems to be the in thing for Austin lindy hoppers. I have not been a huge fan of tapioca in my drink before but I’m always up for another chance. Picked out a honey mango milk tea with large pearls, it was delicious and gone so fast that I ordered a mango smoothie to chase it down.
Rather than call it a night Gina and I got dropped off on 6th Street, one of the main bar strips, and looked for a bar with good music. We made it down one side of the strip and started back when we ducked into a little pizza joint for a slice. We backpedaled to an upstairs bar we had passed with R&B music pumped out of its speakers. IDs checked we walked up and found it dead. Crickets chirping dead. The DJ was spinning on a little stage and the bartender chatted with someone who either worked there or knew him. We considered it then ordered a quick round and left.
One place down.
Next stop was a bar playing soul music, not exactly full but at least populated. A quick round of tequila and Gina introduced me to the Texan’s beer: Shiner Bock. We were about to get up and dance to a Marvin Gaye song and it snapped off – no courtesy fade out, nothing. In the back room (probably about four times the size of the front section of the bar and open two stories) a band started up. Resigned to not chug our beer and head out into the night again, we settled into a couch to listen.
The band was decent, playing a mix of rock mostly from the 90s. I even got a shout out with a compliment on my hat and scarf. The guitarist kept the crowd, if you call eight people a crowd, entertained and they put on a good show despite the turnout. Apparently guitarists are hot by nature. [note to self: learn guitar]
Beers gone we decided to make one more go of it and hit up The Chugging Monkey. An Austin institution of inebriation (as could be determined by vote or by proxy for the beer pong tables it had out). We ordered another round or two of beer and managed to dance a bit to the random mix before the bar closed out and we flagged a cab down to take us home.
Now cabs in NYC are an institution. Most of the time you give them an address and they might take a moment to orient themselves to that section of the city or burrough but they sure as hell don’t pull out a binder full of maps and begin leafing through it to see where they need to bring you. Seriously, seriously. It’s a small city, figure it out or at least look like you live in this century and buy a GPS unit.
Thursday: Boots and Booze
When you wake up in Texas and decide to go for Indian food in the middle of the day you should expect to be disappointed. Mike recommended an Indian place on the corner, fancy for us it was closed. A bit of iPhone scoping later and we descended on our second closed Indian restaurant. Want Indian food between 2:30pm and 6pm? Pity, you lose. Consolation prize: a delicious bowl of thai curry and some spring rolls.
Curry down, our next stop was a CVS/Walgreens around the corner. Fifteen minutes of wandering through an industrial park next to a Coca-Cola plant and we determined that Google Maps played a good trick on us and we gave up on that idea.
Cavender’s Boots. Gina was determined to get me into a pair of boots. If I was in Texas I was going to get some cowboy boots. So she said. When I managed to find a pair that were decent and I struggled to extract my foot from them later she pointed to this hunk of wood with a U cut into it. It was a boot jack.
It was explained to me that you jam your heel into the U and with the other foot planted on the board pull the boot off. This was a recipe for disaster. I could just see myself with one foot planted on the board yanking the other foot back and finding myself ass end up with a boot and jack flying towards my head.
Thankfully I have more coordination than my imagination allows for and removing the boots was swift and painless. I tried on a score of boots yet didn’t find one that I liked and could justify spending $150 or more on. What I managed to do was figure out my size, 8.5, and the brand I found most comfortable, Ariat. I may order a pair online since they have a much larger selection on their site or I’ll just have to wait till I go back to Texas.
Gina however scored herself a pair of Ariat’s Lady Daisy Boots that were really slick. Blue uppers with white stitching, studding and crackled brown leather. The crackled leather and style of toe are two things I’ll look for when I get some. My opinion: hot damn. Lady in boots. I am jealous of her boots.
Now that at least someone had boots, our trip to Cavender’s was fulfilled.
We gathered back at the house and then hit up Kerbey Lane Cafe for dinner. We split enchiladas and queso. I was quite content with the mix of rice, beans and cheese before me.
Post-queso we went to the Fed, The Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, for the regular Thursday night dance. The Fed is a gorgeous old mansion with more rooms and wings than we were allowed access to. A band called the Kats Meow played. They were an eccentric mash-up of characters. The lead singer was a younger woman, petite with a solid vocal range and variety. There was a woman on violin, the bassist was an older woman with pink hair, the drummer an Asian woman, the piano player wore cowboy boots and hat and the guitarist was an elderly man with a long white beard and bright red fedora. They played a nice chunky swing.
Once the Fed wrapped up a group of teachers, out-of-towners and locals carpooled it on up to 6th St. to continue the party. We started at a downstairs club with sternum shaking bass. Ordered a round of drinks and took over the roped off V.I.P. section. After conversation kept getting drowned out by techno we called for a move.
The Chugging Monkey was our next stop and we had to move fast. Last call in Texas is at 2am and it was 1:45. We piled into the bar and started dancing and grooving. Andrew proceeded up to the bar, did a rough head count, and then ordered 20 shots of whiskey. The bartender did a double take and then while Andrew dug out a card to pay, looked at me and confirmed with hand signs “2″ “0″. I nodded and in a flurry of activity 20 shot glasses lined up in front of us and the bartender went to work.
The most entertaining fact: there were probably only 14 of us at most. Shots went around and we danced the last ten minutes till the bar closed shop.
Unconcerned that the night had not actually ended we hopped into our DDs car and waited while two cops blocking us in administered a DUI test to a man in an SUV. The man walked a straight line, held his foot out off the ground, and probably did things that would have been difficult for a sober person. They let him go.
We rode to Scott’s place up in North Austin where we hung out and listened to hilarious and occasionally horrifying stories of sexual mishaps and misdeeds.
Post drinks and rabble rousing, as we nearly slipped into sleep on the couches, we called a cab and rode back to Abbey Road on Penny Lane.
Next time on Austin, TX – Werewolves, Vampires and Whole Foods.
