The Wedding
Okay, so to start off, I was originally a little put-off Wednesday night because I thought we were leaving the next morning. My dad just thought I worked Thursday so when he said "after you get off work, come over and we'll leave the next morning at 3 or something," he really meant Thursday, not Wednesday. Mreh... allrighty, then.
So we left in my uncle's big, bloody friggin' Hummer. Great idea. It's not like my fuel economic car doesn't seat three people. Instead of 3 in the morning, we went even earlier, at 2. No big deal though, since I didn't get any rest at all that night and slept most of the way going to Austin. That wouldn't have changed had we left later.
Austin has way more hobos and beggars than I remember. They were all over the place. It was swarmin' with them, like the love bugs down south, except we didn't hit any with our car (or did we? Fufufu...) I swear, this one lady we saw had since lost her leg all the way to her hip, and she was meandering around on her crutches with a sign hung from her neck saying "On my last leg," and for some reason, this really freaked my dad and uncle out. And here I just thought it was amusing ^_^;
Day before the wedding at my cousin Shane's house (he's the one getting married, to Melissa, who he shares the house with... so technically I should say Shane and Melissa's house) they threw this get-together and his dad, my uncle Bob, had picked up at least four or five bags of crawfish. Now, Melissa's family doesn't come from anywhere around here, I think from Colorado or somewhere up north, so they had absolutely no idea how to peel the crawfish. Plenty of them went to waste, which was kinda sad to see. Then again, I didn't eat much, myself (once you take them out of the cooler after boiling them, and start peeling them, you have to go at it fast if you want to eat them while they're still warm, and I'm slow at this). Good to see most of the family who were able to make it, with the exception of a couple cousins because of work (one has military duty, so that's definitely understandable).
Most of the time I spent there was driving around to and from the wedding and the reception, and wasting time in the hotel. So this trip could hav ebeen more fun considering there was no way my uncle would let me drive his precious baby... not like I'd want to drive an H2 anyway. I wanted to take my Cobalt. So I was stuck with two guys who didn't want to do anything.
So, towards the end of the party, some other members of my family that I didn't travel with wanted to go see the bats fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge. Austin is home to, I think, the "world's largest urban bat colony," and around this time of the year, Spring and Summer, I believe, every night at dusk they fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge. Well, it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be, but it was fun to see. Next time I do this, I'm getting on top of the bridge and looking down. You could only see the bats against the sky, but from above seems like a better vantage point to me. They also had some weirdo with no shirt on and suspenders entertaining the crowd before the show, like some street performer, juggling knives and axes and flaming wands.... he wasn't entertaining at all, really.
Allright, so after that, we head back to the hotel. My dad had left earlier because he was tired, so when we got back, I started wondering why we were stopping so close to downtown since I remembered we were further uptown than that... But it was the same hotel, so I convinced myself that was the place. It wasn't. There were two Fairfield's in Austin and they both looked exactly the same. And we heard from the front desk that my dad also made the same mistake. I called this one the Bizarro Fairfield, while my dad thought he was in the Twilight Zone. Anyway, so I had to show my uncle where our further uptown location was since he didn't make sense of the directions he got from the counter. I knew, though. That was something....
So, the next day...! Yeah, the wedding. Oh, it was nice and quaint, and at a very pretty location... although we were late; by a mere few minutes, and boom! It was over! Get that. Had some trouble finding the place with the GPS, but when we arrived, the Justice of the Peace who performed the ceremony had left. They sure didn't waste any time, but we got to stay around and get in all the pictures. I don't have any... Though I'll try to get them sometime. Talk about laid-back, though. I was over-dressed, and I didn't even wear a jacket since it was so hot out. Shane even wore blue jeans and a tweed jacket over a white dress shirt and tie. It was really.... bohemian. Which I should have expected from Shane. I'm the same way.
Anyway, the reception was the same, except everyone dropped any semblance of dress attire and went casual for a picnic at Pedernales State Park. I got to talk to Shane and my cousin Zach, and it was just a relaxing, fun, nice time. Nothing special, just a generally good time with family (new and old).
Speaking of the reception though, we were 30 minutes late. Before the reception, we were all getting hungry, and since we wanted burgers, I thought I'd take my dad to a burger joint on Guadalupe where Zach once took me. So we crossed over on 12th Street or something when I brought it up. Well, we didn't get to the place since he was hungry as all hell, so we stopped at a Chilis and then went back. Apparently he was totally unaware of, or forgot, that Austin is shaped like a box and he could cross over to I-35 practically any time he wanted. But he chose 5th Street... And as it turned out, there was some festival or something goin down on 6th Street, which was closed, so we were locked in traffic. That's when we got into an altercation with this "tough guy" who tried to ram us because he wanted to get in, but we had already let two guys get in ahead of us... screw this jerk, it was our turn to move forward. The fool got out of his truck after almost slamming into us, on purpose, several times, and tried to start some crap. Well, after my uncle rolled down the window and exchanged a couple words with him, the guy backed down and we moved forward, pulled away, and got ready to take the next street out (one street was one way towards us, where the jerk was coming from, and the next street was a one way outta that mess). That's when we met another guy who was near the jerk, and he told us that the moron was fixing to call the cops on us... for some reason... and he gave us his number so he could help out a fellow Louisianian as a witness to what really happened if the cops did come and chase us. But of course they weren't going to, and neither was that "tough guy" going to actually call and complain, so we had a good laugh at that thought. Actually, the rest of the time we were in Austin, when we saw a policeman or a cop car, we joked that they were finally gonna get us.
So, that was probably the most interesting thing that happened (also since it was in downtown when it happened, I had a nice opportunity to take downtown in first hand, which I hadn't really driven through). Even still, later on that night, I wanted to see what was happening on 6th Street, but... eh, nobody wanted to do anything.
That's... about it. I want to get pictures, but I'd have to get some from... whew, plenty people. I'll see what I can get soon enough and maybe I'll make another post with them.
So we left in my uncle's big, bloody friggin' Hummer. Great idea. It's not like my fuel economic car doesn't seat three people. Instead of 3 in the morning, we went even earlier, at 2. No big deal though, since I didn't get any rest at all that night and slept most of the way going to Austin. That wouldn't have changed had we left later.
Austin has way more hobos and beggars than I remember. They were all over the place. It was swarmin' with them, like the love bugs down south, except we didn't hit any with our car (or did we? Fufufu...) I swear, this one lady we saw had since lost her leg all the way to her hip, and she was meandering around on her crutches with a sign hung from her neck saying "On my last leg," and for some reason, this really freaked my dad and uncle out. And here I just thought it was amusing ^_^;
Day before the wedding at my cousin Shane's house (he's the one getting married, to Melissa, who he shares the house with... so technically I should say Shane and Melissa's house) they threw this get-together and his dad, my uncle Bob, had picked up at least four or five bags of crawfish. Now, Melissa's family doesn't come from anywhere around here, I think from Colorado or somewhere up north, so they had absolutely no idea how to peel the crawfish. Plenty of them went to waste, which was kinda sad to see. Then again, I didn't eat much, myself (once you take them out of the cooler after boiling them, and start peeling them, you have to go at it fast if you want to eat them while they're still warm, and I'm slow at this). Good to see most of the family who were able to make it, with the exception of a couple cousins because of work (one has military duty, so that's definitely understandable).
Most of the time I spent there was driving around to and from the wedding and the reception, and wasting time in the hotel. So this trip could hav ebeen more fun considering there was no way my uncle would let me drive his precious baby... not like I'd want to drive an H2 anyway. I wanted to take my Cobalt. So I was stuck with two guys who didn't want to do anything.
So, towards the end of the party, some other members of my family that I didn't travel with wanted to go see the bats fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge. Austin is home to, I think, the "world's largest urban bat colony," and around this time of the year, Spring and Summer, I believe, every night at dusk they fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge. Well, it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be, but it was fun to see. Next time I do this, I'm getting on top of the bridge and looking down. You could only see the bats against the sky, but from above seems like a better vantage point to me. They also had some weirdo with no shirt on and suspenders entertaining the crowd before the show, like some street performer, juggling knives and axes and flaming wands.... he wasn't entertaining at all, really.
Allright, so after that, we head back to the hotel. My dad had left earlier because he was tired, so when we got back, I started wondering why we were stopping so close to downtown since I remembered we were further uptown than that... But it was the same hotel, so I convinced myself that was the place. It wasn't. There were two Fairfield's in Austin and they both looked exactly the same. And we heard from the front desk that my dad also made the same mistake. I called this one the Bizarro Fairfield, while my dad thought he was in the Twilight Zone. Anyway, so I had to show my uncle where our further uptown location was since he didn't make sense of the directions he got from the counter. I knew, though. That was something....
So, the next day...! Yeah, the wedding. Oh, it was nice and quaint, and at a very pretty location... although we were late; by a mere few minutes, and boom! It was over! Get that. Had some trouble finding the place with the GPS, but when we arrived, the Justice of the Peace who performed the ceremony had left. They sure didn't waste any time, but we got to stay around and get in all the pictures. I don't have any... Though I'll try to get them sometime. Talk about laid-back, though. I was over-dressed, and I didn't even wear a jacket since it was so hot out. Shane even wore blue jeans and a tweed jacket over a white dress shirt and tie. It was really.... bohemian. Which I should have expected from Shane. I'm the same way.
Anyway, the reception was the same, except everyone dropped any semblance of dress attire and went casual for a picnic at Pedernales State Park. I got to talk to Shane and my cousin Zach, and it was just a relaxing, fun, nice time. Nothing special, just a generally good time with family (new and old).
Speaking of the reception though, we were 30 minutes late. Before the reception, we were all getting hungry, and since we wanted burgers, I thought I'd take my dad to a burger joint on Guadalupe where Zach once took me. So we crossed over on 12th Street or something when I brought it up. Well, we didn't get to the place since he was hungry as all hell, so we stopped at a Chilis and then went back. Apparently he was totally unaware of, or forgot, that Austin is shaped like a box and he could cross over to I-35 practically any time he wanted. But he chose 5th Street... And as it turned out, there was some festival or something goin down on 6th Street, which was closed, so we were locked in traffic. That's when we got into an altercation with this "tough guy" who tried to ram us because he wanted to get in, but we had already let two guys get in ahead of us... screw this jerk, it was our turn to move forward. The fool got out of his truck after almost slamming into us, on purpose, several times, and tried to start some crap. Well, after my uncle rolled down the window and exchanged a couple words with him, the guy backed down and we moved forward, pulled away, and got ready to take the next street out (one street was one way towards us, where the jerk was coming from, and the next street was a one way outta that mess). That's when we met another guy who was near the jerk, and he told us that the moron was fixing to call the cops on us... for some reason... and he gave us his number so he could help out a fellow Louisianian as a witness to what really happened if the cops did come and chase us. But of course they weren't going to, and neither was that "tough guy" going to actually call and complain, so we had a good laugh at that thought. Actually, the rest of the time we were in Austin, when we saw a policeman or a cop car, we joked that they were finally gonna get us.
So, that was probably the most interesting thing that happened (also since it was in downtown when it happened, I had a nice opportunity to take downtown in first hand, which I hadn't really driven through). Even still, later on that night, I wanted to see what was happening on 6th Street, but... eh, nobody wanted to do anything.
That's... about it. I want to get pictures, but I'd have to get some from... whew, plenty people. I'll see what I can get soon enough and maybe I'll make another post with them.