riding in a broad town

3/9/6, 10:05 CST

I’m in a cafe that has wifi, but I can’t get an IP address. So once again I’m “blogging” in OpenOffice. 😉

This morning is unbelievably gorgeous. Sun, blue skies, a nice breeze. I didn’t get to sleep until after midnight, but I was able to wake up reasonably well at 7-ish. My hotel room is plain but comfortable, and I slept like a rock.

Austin is like nowhere else I’ve been. (Then again, I haven’t really traveled all that much.) It’s not exactly flat (not like North Dakota was flat), but it has a feeling of flat-ish-ness. Broad is the word I’m looking for, I think. H keeps joking that everything is bigger in Texas, as seems to be the usual saying. Half-Price Books, which we drove by, is freakishly ginormous. Not Powell’s-class ginormous, but damn big.

I picked up my rental bike this morning – a Trek Navigator. It has normal bike geometry, unlike my Townie, so I’m still getting used to the feel of it. C would tell me to put the seat up a couple of inches, and I bet I will by the time I’m done with it, but I’m not quite ready for that yet. A ride along the river took me from the bike shop to downtown. The river glistened and glittered in the morning sun. Joggers crunched along on the path, and I flew by. Damn I love riding. That walk probably would’ve taken me an hour, instead of 15 minutes.

Last night H and I went out for a bite to eat and then walked in that same park. I love having a break from gloves and layers of sweater, to be able to walk at night in a light shirt & capris. There’s a spot near a spring where a group of benches under a wisteria looks out over the river, and we sat there & talked for a long time. The moon is so much farther up in the sky here, and it hung faintly blurred by cloud through the wisteria vines.

After I went to bed, I was briefly woken by the flash of lightening, a passing thunderstorm that dropped just a tiny bit of rain. She says it’s been far too dry here; the TV news yesterday afternoon featured a brush fire out in the country someplace. It feels a little bit selfish to be so glad of the clear weather.

I imagine I’ll briefly head back to my hotel. The laptop in its sleeve is too damn heavy to carry around on the bike, in all honesty. Then I’ll come back downtown and ride around, orient myself to the place.

With a chuckle, I think of that trip to SF nine years ago…then I was wanting to get the hell out of Dodge for a bit, and the friend I was visiting (hi, Greyson!) was working days, so I spent most of the time by myself, wandering and taking pictures. Now here I am doing the same thing again, only to the place I was avoiding going to then. (If that makes sense!)

ps: when I got online back at the hotel, ForecastFox informed me that it’s 34 degrees, light snow & fog, in Olympia.