Keeping it weird

Trail of Lights

After speaking with my Dad, I realized there was an important part of our travels that I missed out. How, I don't know as it was more than a little amusing. While we were in Kingman we thought we were going to be able to tow the rig over to a dump station as our site didn't have full hook ups. We used the toilet on occasion because of this. It soon dawned on us that this was not going to happen, but we had to empty it out! We chose our day wisely - Thanksgiving, when all the staff were off. We were pretty sure we'd be told off for what we were planning. We found a site close enough to us that was empty and had full hook ups. The job was to slowly empty the black water tank into a bucket, carry it over to the vacuum hose sized hole and pour. As Dave's constitution isn't as strong as mine in matters such as this, I volunteered to do most of it. To be fair, it mostly my, um, product, that we were trying to get rid of. So I started carrying very full, very stinky buckets full of piss and shit over to the hole and chucking it down. While I'm doing this, a gentleman who has hired a cabin starts to come in and out tending his BBQing turkey. He catches me mid-dump - there was very little doubt over what I was doing. Our eyes catch, I look away and hurriedly finish the bucket. From that point on I had to coordinate my bucket dumps with his retreat back into the cabin. In the end, the tank took about 30 bucket loads to empty. Dave finished it off once my arms started to get tired. Mission successful albeit shitty.

Now, back to the present...

We are now beginning to get familiar with Austin. We have been on a bar crawl down South Congress where we had amazing pizza from Home Slice. Before this amazingly drunken pizza experience, we went to a fried chicken place called Lucy's. We decided the chicken was too expensive, but tried their fried deviled eggs. Incredible. More than incredible, I nearly cried. Anyone who comes to visit will be dragged along to Lucy's to try these heart stopping treats.

Don't get me wrong - we're still not employed. I've had an interview, which went well but they decided to promote from within. I was told I made it a very difficult choice, which provides some solace, but not as much as a job would have. Dave is being thrown offers left and right, but we're trying to find jobs that will make us happy as well as put food on the table. So, Dave is now currently waiting to hear back about a job as a driver for a moving company. I've got a couple things in the pipeline, but moving over from the service industry into anything else is a challenge. It is one I'll win though, by hook or by crook!

We tried to get some proper Austin BBQ. We looked up the reviews, made our decision and headed out only to find the bloody place was shut. Just down the road was a BBQ fast food joint - I'm still tickled that you can get drive-thru BBQ! It was infinitely better than anything you get in the UK, but I'm pretty sure it's scraping the barrel around these parts.

Christmas came and went in a very drunken style. We decided last year that bloody marys upon waking is a fairly sound tradition to start, so we kept it up. It was a fun day of trying to feed the meowing cat on the balcony above ours by throwing treats at it, drinking, cooking and I don't remember quite what else...

New Years was much of the same. New Years to me is an occasion to celebrate with good friends. As we don't have any of those here yet, we made do with each other and headed down to the local bar. We ended up chatting to some people and nearly went on to another party with them. We were then informed that the woman driving didn't want to take us, so we left a bit dejected. We went home, had a quick chinwag with the neighbours below us and went about our drunk business. It was the fireworks going off that alerted us to the dawn of the New Year.

We finally sold the RV. We took a bit of a hit on it, but it feels good to have that over and done with. It was a sad moment when we realized we would never see Damon again. We loved that vehicle like a family member, despite only a brief encounter. I guess sometimes that all it takes. It shared an important part of our history, so thank you Damon. We forgive you.

So far we like Austin. Apart from not having jobs, which makes things a little stressful, everything else is going well. We have an obnoxious neighbour above us who likes to turn her music on between 12 & 3 AM, and that is our biggest complaint. People have been more friendly here than in Seattle, and I have a feeling we will have a much different experience here. It'll be harder to save money as there is always something to
go out and do. Austin has something like 140 people moving to it every day. A lot of locals are getting pissed off at this mass migration, but there is very little they can do to stop it. The place is drowning in hipsters, admittedly. But hipsters never hurt anyone. If anything they provide an infinite amount of comedy as they constantly parody themselves without realizing the irony with which they do things ironically. Oh hipsters, how I love to hate thee.