Austin June 1-4

We got to Austin in time for a late dinner in the downtown area. We went down to 6th Street to look for a restaurant upon recommendation of Jason’s friend who lives in Austin. We parked in the middle of the long downtown strip of bars and restaurants because we weren’t entirely sure where to go. We walked around until we found Z Tejas, which was a really cool looking restaurant…it was actually in 2 sections connected by a bridge. We got some good chips and salsa (guacamole based), salad with grilled chicken (for Jeanette), and pork tenderloin stuffed with chorizo (for Ed). We walked around downtown some more and saw the strip of bars for “young folks”. It was really nice. As we were walking, we heard lots of live music coming from the bars. There was also a really good band playing on one of the rooftops. We continued walking and eventually walked up to the state capitol, which was really nice. While walking, it was pretty windy, and Jeanette pulled a Marilyn Monroe with her skirt going flying up. Luckily, she caught it quick and wasn’t too embarrassed. We then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we woke up and ate crappy hotel breakfast. This hotel offered the worst breakfast so far, especially since there wasn’t southern gravy anymore. We drove to Scubaland to pick up our scuba equipment for the day. We’re surprised that they thought that we would show up as we called only a week in advance and scheduled our open water dives in mid week. However, a really nice worker, Kerry, set everything up for us and sent us on our way with our scuba instructor, Robert. We had four tanks, wet suits, BCDs, regulators, weights, and, overall, lots of equipment. Our first three open water dives were completed at Texas State University – San Marcos Aquarena Center, which consists of springs. We had a lovely picnic in the parking lot consisting of pretzel, cheetos, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bananas. We took a walk through the wetlands while waiting for our class to begin. We saw gars (which Ed correctly identified, thank you The Great New York State Fair), which are extremely hard to see, turtles, bass, and a bunch of fish. Jeanette got completely freaked out because it was a very swampy area and was scared to go diving in the swamp. Luckily, we saw the spring area before diving. It was crystal clear, about 20 feet deep, and very clean. Although we were a bit apprehensive of diving and scared our instructor would think we were horrible as we completed the pool portion in an extremely condensed one day, we met Robert and were immediately put at ease. He is definitely one of the nicest and most patient people we have ever met. We got a tour of the Aquarena center, including looking at the aquarium and seeing the bottom glass boats. This center used to privately owned and super cheesy. There was a mermaid show complete with swimming pigs. The area we were diving in had some remnants from the show including an underwater viewing station that we swam around. We then suited up for the dives. We re-learned how to put the gear together, put our wet suits on, baked in the sun for a little bit, and then dove in. We could barely walk to the platform because it was so hot and sunny. We don’t have the fins with booties, so it was burning our feet like crazy! The water was 72 degrees because it was from a spring…people even dive here in the winter….and it was wicked refreshing. While we were swimming around, there were different types of fish between 12-24 inches, crawheads, prawns, turtles, fountain darters (which are pretty tiny), etc. The fish were not scared of us at all and swam right up to us. We practiced some skills on the other dives including clearing a flooded mask, regulator recovery, buddy breathing, controlled emergency swimming ascent, maintaining neutral buoyancy, cramp removal, tired diver tow, etc. Robert was nice enough to take pictures of us underwater with his underwater camera. It was really cool. Around 7 pm. we started to wrap us and filled out our log books. We got out around 8, were starving, and went to dinner at a place called Threadgills, known for its home-style cooking. There was a live band there (we think it was called Jeff and Friends) consisting of three guitarists, a fiddler, a keyboardist, and a lady singer. Almost everyone in the band sang a song or two. They were good…a country jamboree. We were real creative in our menu selection…chicken fingers for Jeanette and buffalo chicken fingers for Ed. Ed noticed everything in Austin was spicier than in other places…everything from salsa to the “regular” buffalo chicken sauce. Ed watched the hockey game through multiple overtimes as Jeanette fell asleep.




Photos courtesy of Robert, our scuba instructor.

The next day, we woke up early for our next open water dive. Robert was nice enough to allow us to go out on his boat, a pontoon boat, called The Giant Stride. We learned how to set up our equipment again, this time on a boat. We went out to a place called Starnes Island at Lake Travis. We jumped into the water, at which point, Ed noticed he could barely see his feet. We descended down 50 feet and were freaking out a bit as we could hardly see around us. As we descended the water dropped from a warm 82 to a cool 68. It was scary being down there and not being able to see anything. It was okay once we settled at the bottom. We did a complete mask removal and clear and practiced hovering some more. Luckily, Robert held Jeanette’s hand for a lot of it so no one got lost. He also had a strobe light attached to the back of his BCD so we would be able to find him should we have gotten lost. We couldn’t find a sunken boat in the area, so we started to ascend. We stopped for a safety stop, which Jeanette didn’t know what we were doing. Ed signed the word safety to Jeanette and she wanted Ed to do the safety dance for the sign instead. Ed found an empty bottle of beer and pretended to drink it underwater. We brought it up with us to surface and recycled it. We then headed out to another spot, where a sunken boat was guaranteed. We descended another 45 feet, this time a little less scared, and saw the boat and a few fish (perch). It was cool to see, even though you couldn’t see that much with the poor visibility. We got back up on the boat, docked, and schlepped all the equipment to shore. We then loaded the equipment into golf carts and drove it to our car. After thanking Robert for all his help, we headed out to lunch. We got to a highly recommended BBQ placed, called County Line, at 2:30 only to find that they stopped serving lunch at 2:00. Ed was highly disappointed, so we headed out towards a park in the same area with the hopes of finding food on the way. We ended up eating at the Hula Hula on Lake Austin. Ed had a Hawaiian style hamburger with pineapple, bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, and peppers…it was okay. Jeanette had a grilled chicken sandwich with cheese…go figure. We decided to skip the park on the lake as we had just eaten on the lake, despite the promise of peacocks in the trees at the park, and opted to return our equipment instead. We returned our scuba stuff, got our temporary Scuba licenses, and went back to the hotel to shower. We headed back out and went to a place called Ziller Park and Lady Bird Johnson Lake. After a quick drive thru, we headed down to the South Congress shopping area…it was nice, but most stores were closed because we got such a late start (it was 6:30). We headed back downtown and got some pictures of the capitol while it was still light in downtown Austin. On the way to the capitol, Jeanette was interviewed by a local TV station, called KVUE, about the presidential election. She didn’t want to go on TV, but the reporter begged, and she somehow spurted out a logical answer. After visiting the capitol, we stopped at Jamba Juice as it was still 95 out at 7:30. It was quite windy, so it didn’t feel quite that hot. We walked around 4th Street, which is the bar section for the older people and heard some more live music. We walked around 6th Street again, checked out some movie times at a place that had beer, food, and movies, but it was sold out for the entire night. We walked down to a local music store and bought Ed the new Weezer CD. We walked back to the car and drove back to the hotel. We watched a little Office and Sex and the City reruns and went to sleep.





Overall, we really liked Austin. It seems like a really fun place to live…lots going on. It was really clean and the people were really friendly…they said “howdy” and “y’all” a lot.