austin: day one

first of all thank goodness for southwest and direct flights to austin! and our slight ocd got us checked in early and allowed us to get some pretty good seats. i hadn't flown southwest before and was a little surprised by the casualness of the flight attendants. and the guy announcing everything on our flight was a little bit of a comedian, however i've since been informed that it's the whole southwest shtick - lame.

we got to austin safe and sound, picked up our festival wristband and hopped on the shuttle to our hotel. we did a quick turnaround and decided to hit the town. we were starving (read: indecisive) and didn't know where to go so we just asked the concierge for a good mexican recommendation. walking downtown we got to take in the sights and ended up on sixth street for some dinner. first order of business was getting a nice cold adult beverage. and seeing as we were out "west" they had fat tire! mmmmmm beer.

the hostess must have read our mind because she seated us at a table by the window so we had prime seats for people watching! let's just say they're pretty spot on when they say "keep austin weird." try and visualize this: a crazy homeless man in camoflauge get up, dreds in a ponytail with the rest of his head shaved and a spelunker light on the top of his head. we ended up seeing him around town all weekend, but tragically never could get close enough to get a picture (but you can check out all of our other pictures here).

lots of other crazies walked by, but there's too much to even get into here. instead let's talk about how we saw carson daly(!) walking down the street in front of the restaurant. i mean he's pretty much a nobody these days, but growing up in the heydey of trl (r.i.p.) i'll always have a special place in my heart for carson daly.

from dinner we figured we should get a feel for austin. we walked around sixth street for a bit before settling in at a bar that was essentially a big deck. needing another adult beverage we headed to the bar where we discovered they only had cans of beer and liquor. clearly, this was a very classy place. keeping with the mexican theme we got two cans of tecate for a whopping four dollars. and the best part about this bar was the giant projector screen they had. so we watched usc lose and befriended a crazy oregonian in the process. overall, a pretty successful first night in austin.