27 March: Traveling to Texas

Late last month came the very unexpected news of the sudden passing of a dear friend. I was unable to attend his funeral, but last weekend there was a Memorial held in his honor down in Austin and I knew I had to be there. So, on Thursday I flew down to Albuquerque, New Mexico and had a two hour layover before continuing on to Dallas. When I got into New Mexico, I looked at the clock and checked the distance to the nearest cache and glanced over at the security lines and decided to go for it... so I hoofed it about 2/3 of a mile to the nearest cache, found that sucker and walked back, getting through security and back to my gate in 40 minutes total. Not too shabby and it gave me the state "souvenir" for New Mexico on my Geocaching account page. Yay!

I actually almost had too many photos to choose from for this day. I got some great shots at Sea-Tac of planes taking off as seen through the giant windowed wall in the main concourse and some fantastic shots out the plane's window and a few really good ones of things inside the Albuquerque airport. ( But I finally settled on the metal horse sculptures I spotted outside the airport on my way back from finding a cache. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

28 March: Unexpected Velvet Yoda

On Thursday, I flew into Dallas, got my rental car and drove over to darthdoggie's house, where I was able to crash for the night. In the morning, we got ready and she rode down with me to Austin... making for a really enjoyable roadtrip. It was wonderful having someone to talk to and to help me figure out the convoluted highway system in Texas, since this was my first visit to the state (seriously, they have highways that straddled their freeways and tollways, with lanes for the highways on either side of the other roads... plus these loop things that let you turn around and go the other way. So easy to take the wrong turn there!). I spotted some signs on the way down for The Czech Stop and Little Czech Bakery and DarthDoggie told me it was a fairly famous place that sells kolaches (Czechoslovakian pastries) and I decided I had to give them a try. Just as she'd warned me, the place was hopping, with lines out the door... but the kolaches were definitely worth it! Yum!

When we finally got down to Austin, we met up with several other friends at a neighborhood barbecue place. The food was tasty (and they had fried okra, yay!), the company was fantastic and it didn't take very long for someone to notice that, despite the general Country Western theme of the restaurant, they had a ( Velvet Yoda painting hanging on the wall. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.