In Austin, we had a house to ourselves. Martin, an old school buddy of ours, let us stay in his house, in which he no longer lives since he moved in with his girlfriend. Now, I have to tell you that sitting out on the shady porch of your house, under a fan, with a cold beer or a glass of bourbon in your hand, is a very pleasant experience. But don’t get me wrong, Austin was no lazy days. I played golf for the first time in my life. I think you can imagine how that went, but it was great fun. We also played pool, bowled and went for a real Texas BBQ. Man, that stuff is good. I think we ate half a cow.
Austin has a big university. So we thought hey, let’s go to some random lecture, to see how those are here in the states. First, we stalked some people with backpacks, who seemed to be in a hurry. That led us to dark hallways, restrooms or in some cases nowhere. So instead, we tried to find the auditoriums. We finally did, and we now know more about accounting and first-order logic. We did not blend in as well as we thought we would. After looking at us nervously for the first ten minutes of the lecture, the logics teacher finally asked us: who are you and what are you doing here? She unwillingly bought our explanation (that there was no particular reason), after a short speech to the class about Virginia Tech.
Our first visit to a national park would be to Big Bend, right on the border to Mexico. It was spectacular. But also hot. So hot, in fact, I thought we might die. 45 degrees Celsius in the shade is a lot. And shade is a rare thing in a desert. Even so, we managed to make a hike in the dusk, and one in the dawn. In one of them, we had a close encounter with a mountain lion. Ok, we didn’t actually see the lion, but hearing it was scary enough for us to pick up some big rocks to use as weapons and hasten away.
As I write this, I’m in a motel room in the middle of nowhere, Texas, enjoying an air-con more than ever before.
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