Off to Austin
Route 66, baby. The Main Street of America. From Chicago, Illinois all the way down to Santa Monica pier with one million diners, dives, and roadside rip-offs in between. How can you possibly say you went cross-country without taking to this illustrious roadway for a spell?
Well, we were on it for maybe fifteen seconds. That counts as a spell right? What is a spell? I don’t think anyone really knows.
At some point in our long sojourn from Santa Fe to Austin the GPS chimed in, “In two miles, make a right onto Historic Route 66.” I perked up. It was finally time to get my kicks.
Well, we made the turn, then next thing we knew the legendary route was vanished and we were on some other random road passing miles and miles of absolutely nothing at all. No diners, no dives, no World’s Largest Oven Mitt or Paper Airplane Museums. Just pure nothing. I swear at one point we passed a sign welcoming us to a new town, drove several miles through empty green fields, then came upon a new sign welcoming us to another new town. Easily the most monotonous drive of the whole trip.
After night had fallen, that creepy air returned. Endless miles through the middle of nowhere. Not another soul on the road. Not a single streetlight to guide the way. I thought a lot about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
One flat tire and your face is part of this guy’s new duvet.
We were aimed at a Walmart in San Angelo but Gabby grew weary a few hours out and coaxed me into booking a cheap hotel in Snyder, about an hour away. It was a fine experience other than the woman who joined in right behind us on the check-in line at one in the morning. She was very friendly and very loud. With about seven or so hours of driving weighing us down, I’d rather have shoved a freshly sharpened no. 2 Dixon-Ticonderoga in each ear than to have listened to her speak. I think she picked up on that fact after I looked over at her with my Santa Fe zombie face once or twice because she eventually began using her inside voice.
Anything but your jovial chit-chat, lady.
The following morning it was off to Austin. We stopped at a gas station where I saw a few different archetypal Texas characters. Big, bold middle-aged men with well-groomed grey mustaches and big American trucks, ten gallon hats and sharp-looking boots. I don’t know, it was kind of cool.
Pretty sure we saw this exact guy several times.
I’d heard a lot of good things about Austin before. Mostly that it’s hip and fun and an outlier from the rest of the Lone Star State. I like outliers. We’d already seen and done so much on our trip, though, that it had become hard to expect anything mind-blowing to occur, no matter where we went. Well, it turns out that was a foolish notion.
While we were en route, Gabby began to look into the different sights to see and restaurants to hit. Austin City Limits music festival was in town for the weekend, which would have been a lot cooler for us if Paul McCartney hadn’t already played the night before. Being absolutely massive Beatles fans, we were disappointed at this unfortunate timing, but it turned out we weren’t completely out of luck.
Our other favorite band, Arctic Monkeys, was also in town.
These guys haven’t smiled since ‘09. So cool.
Not only that, but they were doing a taping for the Austin City Limits television show the very night we were arriving in town. Also, it was free. We just had to wait in line outside the venue beforehand and we at least stood a chance at making it inside. Arctic Monkeys are a massive band, so it seemed unlikely, but what did we have to lose? We grabbed dinner at a sweet little punk rock spot called Holy Roller and went over to wait in line around 4:50.
The Golden Rule at Holy Roller.
The show was set to start letting the line in at about 7:50, so the wait was rather long, and so was the line. At some point a woman walking by recognized a girl a few spots ahead of us and began having a spirited conversation with her. Turned out the woman walking by worked at the venue and she let her friend know that she’d get her in no problem. The lucky lady wandered off to some bar up the road to celebrate and everyone else sat there, envious.
“That was pretty cool,” the young dude sitting next to us in line said.
“Would have been better if she was our friend,” I returned.
“Can’t argue,” he laughed, and suddenly Gabby and I had made our best friend of this entire trip.
Michael Hiney, his name was. 26 years old from Dublin, Ireland. We bullshitted with him the whole time we sat on the line and it felt eerily like we’d known him our whole lives. He was on a work visa that was about to expire but he’d spent the past year in Austin and had come to know the place well. He described to us the coolest bars, the places to avoid, the nature of the massive cockroaches that were scurrying around the sidewalk beneath us. He also let us know that Arctic Monkeys were closing out Austin City Limits the following evening and that he was planning on sneaking in for free using a security guard’s outfit he borrowed from a friend. We bought tickets on the spot.
A few hours into our wait, a random guy came walking by, calling out for anyone on line who had showed up alone. Michael raised his hand and the guy handed him a ticket. He shrugged his shoulders and turned off toward the venue, giving us a parting wave.
Eventually, a few women came outside with a small handful of wristbands and commanded the line to stand at attention. They were set to start letting people in. We watched nervously as the line moved forward and the wristbands dwindled. I began counting the wristbands in the woman’s hand and then counting the people in front of us. It didn’t look good. When it was just about our turn to get our wristbands I had finally decided we were about to get cut off and sent packing. Then, suddenly, another woman stepped out to the line with another handful of wristbands…and we got in.
More to come on part two…
