out and about

Austin Texas, Week 1

We arrived in Austin Sunday night after a pretty interesting adventure with our tail lights. They had been out the last week or so and we finally decided that driving around at night with either emergency flashers or (this is the best) an electric candle and bicycle tail light in the back window (yes, as tail lights) wasn’t going to work for a city to city trip the way it did for the movie theater or grocery store. Before dark Sunday afternoon, after an adventure with a car wash couldn’t fit into, we hung out a Pep Boys with the sole intention of leaving with tail lights no matter how. We picked out some round LED ones intended for a trailer and proceeded to wire the lights to the exposed wires of a removed indoor lamp next to the back window. After testing the connection and picking out wire, we spent the next hour trying to figure out why only 2 lights came on – of the 40 or so LED’s inside each new tail light. Ross took the lights back inside where they tested fine and it became clear that our electrical problem wasn’t only with our tail lights – but several items at the back of the RV. The problem was not only most likely responsible for the tail lights not working but the faulty light and the water pump we struggled with so long. Luckily there are 2 lamps at the back of the RV so we just disconnected the other, wired it up, taped our new tail lights to the rear window with duct tape and on to Austin we went!

We found a spot at Pecan Grove RV park. Apparently the “hip” RV park in Austin – I guess because it’s within walking distance of downtown, bars coffee shops and movie theaters, basically a really nice change. So far it doesn’t look “hip” at all. Several middle aged men and women living in trailers – long term residents – drinking beer at 11am and abusing the already unsightly bathroom. There is no water pressure in the shower and no picnic table outside (as if it’s going to be warm enough to work outside soon anyway) but the neighbourhood is cool. There’s several restaurants, coffee shops and bars within a block. The park is $195 a week – and they have no website and dont answer their phone so this may be the only way for anyone to find out their weekly rates. When we arrived they only had 2 spots open so we got pretty lucky I think.

In other news, this is the 4th week that Chena has been sick. It started in Fredericksburg with swollen lymph nodes where the local 20 year old cowboy vet prescribed her 10 days of amoxicillin. She was on these until San Antonio where her right lymph node was even larger after we ran out of pills. We took her to yet another vet who almost immediately suggested cancer. Not exactly the first diagnosis I was hoping for but we agreed to a biopsy and $500 and 4 hours later, she was returned to us with stitches in her neck, dopey from sedation and completely uninterested in everything and everyone until the next day (Chena donation button ton the right hint hint .

After a week of stressing out about the results, her lump started to go away and I started to get more annoyed that the doctor had just jumped on the cancer band-wagon before trying anything else. He called Friday to tell us she didn’t have cancer but thinks it might be something fungal. It was hard to sit on the phone and be happy it wasn’t cancer while at the same time being offered a remedy I should have been offered first. We left for Austin without the pills but picked them up in Downtown Austin Tuesday morning. We were also out looking for a new dity water inlet which we didn’t find. The good ending to the story is that we did get a good parking spot downtown and right across from some nice graffiti.

I’m hoping to be able to walk more places with some good graffiti. Portland was always so deprived of it.

Of all the places we’ve stopped since Santa Ana, Austin is the first place where we actually know someone. Ross’s long time friend Olivia took us out last night to dinner at Titaya’s Thai, a pretty good restaurant with a really squeaky waitress. After we went to her house to pick up some mail, one of which was a film swap from Kuwait and another my Christmas package from my mom. She sent me homemade fudge, probably the best you’ll ever never have, a leopard bathrobe which I’ve decided is my new snuggy, a couple movies, purse, wallet and some stone jewelry. Ross got a card from his mom in England and his rest deposit from the apartment in Portland.

After an exciting visit with Olivia’s dog Rain and package opening, we went to a couple bars. First was Rio Rita’s, a hipster bar completely full of amazing old Victorian couches and chairs – and a stoned lady with a baby in a sling (at 11pm – whats with the kids in inappropriate places Texas?). Rio Rita’s had some pretty great looking fruit infused vodkas but I stuck to whiskey cokes all night, except for the one rum and coke – the first time I’ve had a few drinks in months.

The second bar, Longbranch, was about as hipster filled as the first with some really funny art on the walls – paintings made with children’s lion masks and a deers head painted in multicolored spots with a fake flower crown. Men with v-neck shirts and their nasty hairy chests and handlebar stashes riddled the bar stools. When we walked in there was no music, about the lamest thing you can walk in on in a bar, so Olivia played some Van Halen and I played Alice Cooper.

Plans for the week include dinner with Olivia and her roommate and watching Forrest Gump at the Alamo Theater with stand up comedians making gags at the movie throughout.

Last weekend in San Antonio

Published on January 11, 2010 by Katya in the category food, out and about | Leave a comment

Last weekend we finally went out a bit to see some of San Antonio. We could have taken a bus but – oh so inconvenient on a Sunday, so we drove the beautiful Brougham instead! Destinations planned – Food at Green, where we had some pretty great and interesting vegantarian (vegan/vegetarian) dishes. Ross had the homemade sausage/peanut butter & habanero jelly sandwich and I had a buffalo “chicken” sandwich. We then ordered a giant cookie and java cupcake which we took home and gorged on later. The waitress was really nice and atmosphere interesting. Between the random kitsch decorations of things like a 50s light cover collection, were photos from local photographers; mostly landscapes of the southwest. It was the first place since Portland that felt a little like Portland – nice in a way since what I liked most about Portland was places like that. (excuse the iphone photos.. please).

I wrote a review on Yelp for them, apparently my new thing, as well as for The Cove, another vegantarian friendly place we went to our last night in town.

After eating we headed to the Japanese Gardens, an oddly abandoned looking place. No one supervising, slightly under maintained and some wild kittys living in the bamboo but this made it even better. It was small but the space was really well used. There was a great old building being renovated there but not much chance for a good photo without construction tape in it. I have some Holga shots that I’ll develop eventually.

After that we went to the second oldest park in the US which was pretty but not enough to take photos of. Looking forward to going to Austin, we hear its pretty lively and vegetarian friendly.

New Years in San Antonio, TX

Published on January 9, 2010 by Katya in the category out and about | 2 Comments

So when nothing really happens, I dont blog. I suppose I can and should find things to blog about – even though they wont be that interesting to many of you, it will keep me blogging.

The last 2 weeks we’ve been at Travel World RV Park in San Antonio. It’s a pretty regular RV park with some fairly nice to fairly rude little old ladies working the counter. They have a little overpriced store in the office and spots run average $228 a week. They didn’t ask us, so I had to mention – that I read about the economy spots on their website – $150 a week. The lady looked rather annoyed and I asked what the difference was. “Cable” she said, “the economy spots don’t have cable”. I liked having cable at the last place. Having a TV to watch forced me to get away from the computer for 30 mins to watch some cartoons or news but charging nearly $80 a week for cable TV, digital or not = horrible. She failed to mention though that the economy spots also only have 30amp plugs as opposed to the usual 30 and 50 which allows us to (more conveniently) charge our batteries that all the 12 volt lights and car stereo (w/speakers, our house stereo too) use. We also had to buy a new drain hose because there was no way to park close enough to the drain in the ground. This however did not help us much – we bought the 10foot hose for $12 because, although we needed a longer one, the 20foot foot hose was $44 for some reason in their pricey little shop. Neither came with attachments so we also had to buy one of those – and after 2 weeks of stretching the hose as tight as we could, the attachment to the RV broke. It’s now held on with duct tape – they’re easy enough to get and cheaper than a new hose but.. well they’re about 60 feet away and that’s just too far in this cold.

Yeah.. cold. I always thought the south was warmer in the winter, and I guess sometimes it is – of course in the desert during the day, but it has been colder lately than Portland and even the mountain range my mom lives in in New Mexico. Tap is running and going to the bathrooms is a constant battle. We just happen to be parked about as far as possible from the bathrooms, another perk of the economy spot, and the other night when it was about 20 degrees, the locks to the bathrooms – some sort of metal key pad – were frozen and I couldn’t get in till the next day. Ross of course managed to get in somehow – I say he broke a window or used some kind of voodoo magic (I punched and pulled at those doors for 20 mins). Last night, the coldest so far, we were out till 2am eating at one of the several restaurants in town with vegetarian food, then going to a midnight showing of Daybreakers. A movie I would recommend the whole family go see. If you don’t agree, tell the woman with the 3 year old above us in this gore fest of a film (that’s a good thing – the gore not the lady and her kid). I seriously considered yelling at the lady to leave before the film started but really, what do I know about raising kids right. He didn’t cry once is all I can say about that – when I was that age I would have been crying and had nightmares for years. I once saw the cover of a horror movie at a video store when I was 9 – and believed in toilet monsters till I was 12. True story, from just the cover.

So.. speaking of procrastination- New Years. What did we do? We actually didn’t do nothing! We instead took the bus that’s right across the street downtown and walked around the waterfront. The waterfront here is far superior to the waterfront in both Portland and Spokane for many reasons. Although it is practically still canal water, it is accessed by walking down stairs to a water alley of cool old buildings and restaurants and absolutely no railing whatsoever to save you from falling into the cold, bacteria filled cesspool; But it looks cool and that is what matters. Along the canal there are stone bridges above periodically that you can access with stairs in order to get to the other side of the canal – most of the bridges are busy streets in the city above. In the water, there are cute little boats similar to gondolas and how appropriate, because it looks like a miniature Venice. I really have no good photos of this because it was night time but I would have liked for you to get the idea of how fearfully close we were forced to the water in the New Years crowd. A constant stream of locals and tourists shoving past you on a narrow piece of sidewalk and crowding outside restaurants waiting for their names to be called made the experience pretty frightening really. I’m not sure (if) how the night was pulled off without at least 40 people in the canal – especially since most of them were drunk.

San Antonio Water Front

After trying 3 different restaurants and being told that there would be at least an hour and a half wait, we left the canal for less populated eateries. We found Rio Rio – which actually happened to be on the canal as well we later noticed – just on the other side and downstairs. We were surprised it was so empty but after ordering their vegetarian burrito and veggie quesadilla – I mean the spinach on spinach burrito and spinach on spinach on cheese quesadilla we understood. This was the second time we’d ordered a “vegetarian” item in Texas “non vegetarian restaurants” and the second time our food was stuffed to the brim with soggy nasty canned spinach. Apparently Vegetarian and Popeye are synonymous here to restaurants who don’t specifically care about people who don’t eat meat. It’s really a convenient enough addition to any menu, how can they screw it up? food but without meat! What a wacky concept!!!! YET they still cant pull it off. Here is a good veggie burrito for you – Spanish Rice, Beans, Cheese, Pico de Gallo and FRESH spinach – here is a veggie quesadilla – Cheese, Black beans and FRESH spinach. I KNOW that you have those things in your Mexican restaurant kitchen. I think what the problem is, is that they just hate us and want us to never eat at these places again. Done and done.

After that we went towards the funny space needle wanabe thing where the fireworks would be going off, and near our last bus. We made the mistake of asking a police officer where the bus mall is and he kindly directed us to the largest and most packed group of people since Black Friday at a Walmart. It seemed there may be a through way but we were duped and spend the next 20 minutes smelling armpits and stepping on push chairs trying to get out. I cant tell you the number of thick leather, heavily cologned jackets were shoved into my face nor how we survived but eventually we burst forth from the mass. I wanted and planned for most the time to run like hell as soon as we were free but the crowd of people leaving also bogged us down all the way to the bus stop.. which was a block back. The cop made of go through the crowd for nothing.

New Years was also a blue moon I was told. What does this mean you ask? NOTHING of any SIGNIFICANCE! It means there were 2 fill moons in one month, apparently rare, but mind you these are human months – concepts of time written down by man so for nature, its probably no big deal at all. If you told nature “hey that’s freakin cool!” She would say, “oh that? eh, I guess” and not because she’s modest. Nature has no concept of a 30 day ‘month’ nor a 28 day one. (That was an existentialist rant if anyone was wondering what that was).It was pretty anyway, although not at all blue and not at all special.

We arrived home with no problems, except for the lovely man on the bus listening to music loudly on the world’s worst cell phone/mp3 player.

We have since been working and little more. I should write about work more and probably will. I am officially the only one writing blogs so if you all come here for Ross, you will be disappointed.

Weekend before Xmas proves ok!

Published on December 22, 2009 by Katya in the category out and about | 1 Comment

This is one of the first weekends we have actually stayed put. We don’t usually stay anywhere longer than a week before we are rushing off to the next unknown location, spending our weekends on the road and parking in Walmarts.

We made it to Central Time (nice to sleep in a bit before work), we made it to a state I’ve never been to and we were both tired of pouring all our money into the next jump east so we decided to stay a while and slow the trip down. The first thing we’ve learned about the south so far is that is is NOT warm in the winters. Apparently this is an “Arizona. California and Florida thing” and only small parts of those states as well. We have had our heat on pretty much every day all day and night since we ran out of propane and thought we would freeze to death a few weeks ago. Luckily it only gets down to about 30 here at night and up to 65 during the day – with a breeze that says “keep your damn hoody on outsider”.

This Saturday we got up at the crack of noon and took to the town. Our first stop Denny’s for garden burgers, probably the only restaurant in town with those, then the Cemetery. I thought… well, assumed it would be old and awesome – therefore photogenic – but it wasn’t, so we hung out long enough to find a smelly orange berry fruit – which turned out to be a Kumquat (the most stupidly named fruit ever). I didn’t eat it but if I see more I may.

Brougham at the Cemetery

We then looked for a post office, being lied to horribly by google maps (on iphone) we walked around downtown a bit looking for it when we finally found a blue box and dumped our Christmas cards in it – with Edgar Allen Poe stamps haha.

Then the Gun Show. I found out about that by looking up “Fredericksburg Texas Christmas” in an effort to find out why they spend so much on their Christmas decorations – like maybe they hold a fair, parade… party? I found the official Fredericksburg website and found it is the home of Lady Bird and possibly Lyndon B Johnson and they have a holiday party at his house. They also had an events calender with the Gun Show listed directly next to that on the same day. Rather than rub elbows with the local elite, we decided to see what Texan gun enthusiasts were like and boy, it was…. something.

We got there late so they only charged us a single fare, $5 and I think it was worth it. It was the smallest gun show I’ve been to (I used to do security at the Portland Expo Center Gun Show) but it did not disappoint. One of the first tables we came to was a hate filled cesspool of “kill liberals, kill cats and obama is a terrorist” stickers next to books about surviving the coming apocalypse, killing your enemies and gun defense for women carrying babies.

I lost almost all my photos of the gun show today when my iPhone crashed and I didn’t back them up lately. Luckily I uploaded a couple to facebook – though not the most offensive.

Saturday, while playing with our tomtom GPS, I found out we were really close to some interesting sounding places. Balancing Rock (which we never found), Pilar Rock (which we traded for a movie) and the Cave Without a Name.

Hilmar Hung street, where we got lost looking for a balancing rock. Notice the measure stick in the background? Notice that it says 5 feet ABOVE the road – fun with flooding!

We drove about 56 miles without first researching much aside from their hours of operation. When we arrived we found they charged $15 a person and tours only. After a round trip of over 100 miles, gas was enough of a price so the weekend began playing makeup for all the weekends we.. well.. spent lots of money on gas driving.. hmm.We had somehow imagined the cave would be free and without a tour… now we know for sure that anything people can make money off of, they will.

Anyway, we went. It was pretty cool. It looked more to me like a cave people should live in than one people should tour. I imagined it succeeding greatly as a restaurant for people who would love to eat in caves, like me. There were only 4 people on the tour, the other, a Chinese couple from Houston who were twice asked how and why they came from China – both having been born and raised in Texas, this was a little odd and funny to watch. People weren’t rude to them just really curious.

I managed to take some photos at iso 1600 with my digital, didn’t even bother bringing film because of the lack of light (and I only have 50 and 100 speed film). The walls look like parts of mud monsters and had a certain glitter to them, apparently having a crystal content or some kind – to which the guy in the other couple stated “looks like Edward”. I tried so hard not to bust up laughing.

white grapes at the cave without a name

All in all the tour was a little less perilous than I wanted. We weren’t allowed into the section where they dive under water in the cave to explore it. Apparently there is 3 miles of cave so far but people only get to see about 1/4 of a mile of smooth trail, floor and concrete stairs.

After the cave we were going to head to Pillar Rock outside Kerrville but after seeing photos on Wikipedia, we decided it was boring. Instead we went to see Avatar in 3D! It was nearly a 3 hour movie but totally worth it. The graphics were not the slightest bit annoying or unrealistic – and while in 3D you really started to feel like everything about the world was completely possible and after a while, normal. It was a pretty big disappointment leaving the theater and coming back to earth – seeing trees that don’t glow and animals that cant swallow your head. I was quickly reminded after the film where we were when a kid behind us said “damn treehuggers”, repeating a statement from the military in the film who were set on stealing the planet’s resources. I suppose if you hunt and every member of your family is in the military, you may take the military side in the film but I think the main purpose of the plot was to attempt to visually explain the importance of appreciating your resources and the destructive results of stealing from – destroying and remaining ignorant about other cultures. Also understanding your right to abuse the environment, especially for something so temporary as money. Anyway, great film! See it! (in 3D if possible).