I enjoyed the drive west out of College Station because the live oaks disappeared, the trees thinned out considerably, the land became large ranches, and the road began rolling up and down a bit. It was a real pleasure to get to the top of a rise and actually be able to look out over some country for a change. Texas seems to be on a program to restore the old downtowns of the small towns along the way, and they are looking sharp, true to their 1880’s origin. And trains! I’ve been missing those. It feels good to be back in the West.
The Corps of Engineers campground here is the usual excellent facility overlooking a nice lake, paved roads and parking spots, half-price with my pass, and 3 miles from a large HEB grocery. The lake itself feels and looks like it’s out on the prairie, but in reality Austin and suburbs have grown up all around it. A wilderness COE campground in the middle of an urban environment.
And Austin is an urban environment, heading towards Mega-city status. Traffic is the biggest problem here. I-35 runs through the center of the town, has already been “stacked” (one freeway built above another to add lanes) and “spaghettied” (interchanges stacked higher and higher). I studied my options for using public transit this morning before venturing out and rejected their pitiful attempts to appear they have such a thing.
I did my bookstore tour, using first the freeways, then the arterials, with much better luck on the surface streets. Drivers here are aggressive (I’ll miss the Southern hospitality) and accidents are common. South by Southwest started up today, but it’s downtown, impossible for me to get to because of the parking.
SXSW is music, film, technology, and gaming, thousands of presentations over ten days. It’s an insider festival, those performing and showing things are their own audience to each other. It’s an industry convention, not a public festival.
So I had the wrong idea about Austin, and about SXSW. And it’s rainy and drizzly, with my “favorite” Southern weather forecast for tomorrow: severe thunderstorms. With usual heavy rainfall, possibly damaging hailstones, and left unsaid, possible tornadoes. Great.