JB and I winged on over to Austin, Texas this week to jam with the Beastie Boys and get in a little vacation time. Granted, Texas is not my number one vacation destination, but reliable sources assured us that Austin was "a blue city within a red state." Still and all, I felt like we were walking into the lion's den.

We stayed at the Hyatt on Town Lake. One of the guest services they listed were bike rentals, so we decided to rent a couple of bikes and see the sights on two wheels. D'oh! The only bikes they had were some cruiser bikes that had coaster brakes, two-inch cranks, and long, sweeping handlebars that made technical hi-jinx all but impossible. Not that I didn't try.

We rented the bikes at the Concierge stand, but had to wait for about 15 minutes for Engineering to come around with an adjustable open-end wrench so I could reposition the seat to something other than the "Butt plug" position. While waiting, I pondered the Orwellian evolution of titles for minimum-wage positions from Janitorial to Maintenance to Operations to Engineering. It sure sounds better, but I bet they got the elevated title instead of the raise.

From the hotel, we turned west on the Town Lake trail, a nice network of cement and crushed limestone paths that parallels both sides of the Colorado River (not the Colorado River) and linked up to numerous other green belt trails. Austin really has its head screwed on right when it comes to urban trails. If I had been on Blue or the Hoo-E, I could easily have gotten in a 30-miler, most of it not on pavement.

Coaster brakin' it old school	JB crossing the other Colorado River	Cball still in training for the Filbert St. stairs

Along the Town Lake trail, we passed the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue and headed into Zilker Park. We then detoured over to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden for some tourist action before returning to Zilker and crossing the Colorado. Once on the north side of the river, we headed east looking for the Shoal Creek trail, which we hoped would take us all the way to the University of Texas campus. No such luck. Well, we found it, but it had long ago been washed out by Shoal Creek floods and abandoned as lost by the City of Austin.

Not a problem. We continued east along the north bank down to Martin Park, where we decided to pull a U-turn, crossed the Congress Street bridge (the bat bridge) and headed back to the hotel. It was a solid ride, but even though Austin is pretty flat, we both were longing for our MTBs. It was also pretty hot -- about 90 degrees and cloudy when we left the hotel and about 95 degrees and clear when we got back. I loved the heat; JB not so much.

We saw some huge swans swimming in the river, and four green parrot-looking birds hanging out in some trees near the hotel. The highlight of the day though were the turtles. The lagoons on the north bank of the river were rife with them. At one stopping point, we counted about 25 turtles swimming around and sunning themselves on rocks.

Later in the day, while we were touring the LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Research Center south of town, I got a call from Bonzai. Bonzai and fam' are doing well in Portland, and Bonzai now has a home trail that he can ride from his house. Personally, I feel that an easily accessible home trail is critical to keeping the enthusiasm and the skills finely tuned. Bonzai's trail is the Presumpscott River Trail. In addition to the PRT, a fellow Mainite recommended that Bonzai get the fattest tires possible and a snowmobile trail map to get him through the winter. You gotta adapt, improvise, overcome.