4 Conversation Fragments Overheard at 2011 Austin Kite Festival + Analysis

 

1. Tall and scruffy hippie dude w/ saucer eyes and patchwork pants, directed towards young female passing with leashed dog: "Is it all a dream, or what?"

Analysis: 50% chance failed pickup line, 50% chance genuine drug-induced wonderment.

2. Middle-aged, graying-haired, "normal"-looking female, accompanied by middle-aged, graying-haired, "normal"-looking husband / partner / brother / friend / accomplice, directed towards small leashed dog of two young prepped-out females w/ quickly progressing sunburns: "Ohhhhh!!!! Is your baby, a, a, baby!!! Or, a..."

Analysis: No conceivable estimation as to meaning of utterance can be reached.

3. One of aforementioned pair of young prepped-out females w/ quickly progressing sunburns and small leashed dog, directed to other, possibly in reference to C., standing at distance of approximately one meter: "Dude, I dare you to jack that chick."

Analysis: High likelihood subjects of analysis refer to partially exposed wallet protruding from rear pocket of C., unaware of wrath that execution of said "jacking" would unleash.

4. Unseen male, possibly late 30s, possessed of strong surfer accent, directed to second unseen male of indeterminate age / background: "Yeah...I can land a backflip."
Second male of indeterminate age / background, responding with strongly incredulous tone, almost to point of challenge: "Really?"

Analysis: Given recent meteorological warming trend in Austin area, and gender / age / inflection of interlocutors, determination is 60% chance said "backflip" refers to wakeboarding experience of previous day (Saturday), undertaken at Lake Travis. Also 22% chance topic of conversation is recent snowboarding trip to Colorado, Summit County. Percentage chance of alternative topics diminishes rapidly from this point, rendering further speculation unproductive.

Notes on the Jackhammer

* I had an MRI today.

* The MRI lady had me lie down on the slidey bed and put my knee in some kind of brace. Then she closed the brace up tight and put a sandbag on my ankle to keep my leg still and said I couldn't move it at all, not even wiggle my toes. I didn't know if I'd be able to do it, especially now that all I was thinking about was wiggling my toes. She also put some headphones over my ears. "To protect your hearing," she said. "It's loud, like a jackhammer." She offered to pipe the radio through, and I said yes, but then I thought about it more and said no. I thought maybe I'd like to make this a dramatic experience, and background music would kill the mood.

* I thought about meditating. I was lying directly below a junction in the ceiling tiles, and looking up at it, the tile lines ran out to the four directions like a cross or medicine wheel or something. I tried to meditate on that, stare at the lines till they shimmered like stared at things do, but after a few seconds my throat started to clench up and make me swallow, like it always does when I'm trying to be self-aware. Like my own personal mara demon or something.

* But what I could see clearest of all--because I was only stuck in the MRI machine up to my waist, with my top half sticking out--was the big SIEMENS logo stamped on the front of the machine. I just lay there staring at it, wondering if it was some ingenious advertising tactic on Siemens' part, to have millions of people every day strapped in and staring, an audience captive and prostrate to their brand, or whether it was just an unintended consequence of rather straightforward product labeling.

* At first, the only noise I heard wasn't loud or like a jackhammer. It sounded like a pump, but like a cartoon version of a pump. Like the MRI machine was some steampunk contraption gone wrong or a forgotten prop from City of Lost Children. After listening a while I wanted to laugh at it, but there was no way I was going to risk jiggling my leg this soon into the game.

* When the imaging finally kicked in, it was loud, but it still didn't sound like a jackhammer. It was like that Flaming Lips song "Fight Test," where it says "The test begins...now-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow" with the word all chopped up and drawn out. I didn't think of the melodic part of the song, the bits Cat Stevens sued over, just that first part, and I lay there wondering what kind of drug makes the world sound like that.

* Further in the noise changed, faster now, and yeah, it sounded a little like a jackhammer. But more like a jackhammer effect on a synthesizer. And at one point I even heard a piano in there, like a three-note chord played high up on the keyboard, hitting on every fourth jackhammer beat or so. It was weird and musical, the way any patterned noise can be musical if you want to think about it that way.

* It reminded me of this guy from UVM, tall guy with a beard who sold mushrooms out of his dorm room. The guy who always called me "man" in an awkward way that made me pretty sure he didn't know my name. But I always remembered his name, because it was Pascal, and how am I going to forget that? One time it was like 3 in the morning, and someone had pulled the fire alarm again, and all us guys from the first floor and all the girls from the second were jammed into one of the stairwells in Chittenden. Just standing there, slumping on the stairs, no one talking, the alarm squawking, pounding echoes really loud in this hard, narrow space. And Pascal says, "dude, if this was a Phish show, we'd all be jamming to this shit," and a couple people laughed, and I thought he was right on.

* Thoughts I didn't have during the MRI but am having now: 1. I wonder if anyone has been in the MRI and been meditating on the ceiling tiles and slipped into some sort of shamanic state and been jackhammered straight past the four noble truths and ascetic suffering and directly to enlightenment. 2. I wonder if all the MRI machines in the world were going at once, if their jackhammering would synchronize into some kind of sonic wave deep in the earth, and this giant p-wave would explode out and wash over the whole world.

* When it was done, the slidey bed slid out and I felt pretty damn proud for not fidgeting or wiggling my toes and making the techs redo any of the imaging series, at least as far as I knew. I wanted to ask how often they had to redo stuff because of fidgeters, and I really wanted to ask how often someone just lost it in there, like big-time freaked. But they seemed pretty busy, so I just went into the dressing room and untied the gray hospital robe and tossed it in the dirty bin and put my street clothes back on.

* At the parking garage exit, I gave the ticket booth guy my validated parking ticket, and when he asked how I was doing and I said "fine how are you" he got happy and excited, more than he should have, I thought, and smiled real big. But I didn't say anything else. I looked away and waited for the gate to swing up, and then I drove away. I didn't remember that part of the day till right now.

Free Beer in Unexpected Places

There's a phenomenon in Texas called Lone Star Beer.

The brand promotes itself as the state's "national beer." I know lots of states have their own homegrown Budweiser alternative, but given the population of Texas, Lone Star is probably the most-drunk. The "nationalist" label obviously appeals to die-hard locals, including those who advocate (with varying degrees of tongue-in-cheek) for secession.

But Lone Star also seems to be the brew of choice among the Austin hipster set. Walk into one of those consciously designed dive bars on E. 6th (Shangri-La, Rio Rita, etc.) and you'll see a whole lot of skinny jeans and whole lot of red and gold cans.

My take: Sure, Lone Star's cheap, but I don't care to drink it unless it's free. And there happen to be a couple places in East Austin where that's the case:

1. Birds Barbershop - This local chain (four locations, one on E. 6th) doesn't take appointments, so you typically wind up waiting when you get there. But it's cool, because Lone Star cans are on the house. (Haven't had cause to test this, but I'm assuming it's limit one per customer). Mohawks go for $15.

Note: Best to chug it if your number's almost up. Drinking while draped in that black sheet thingy is kinda awkward.

Photo: Design Crisis

2. I Luv Video - Another Austin chain, I Luv's Airport Blvd. location is probably the biggest video store I've ever been in. It's easy to spend half an hour wandering the two stories, searching for off-beat sci-fi movies I've never heard of. So it's pretty sweet that on Tuesday nights they give out free Lone Star--and at this place it's kegged.

Note: They ID everyone and are pretty serious about not taking beer outside. Brew flows till the keg floats.

Photo: Austin360

Taking the Online Offline in 2010

I'm sick of "year-end wrapup" posts. And here it is January 4 and I'm writing one. I feel like a tool.

But I was inspired by one of the dozens I read over the past week, so much that I wanted to copy it. It's here: 11 Traveler Meetings in 2010, written by travel blogger Ekua who, incidentally, I met in 2010.

I like it because the travel blogging community is almost exclusively a virtual community. We email and gchat and skype and come to know these avatars of real people, which usually aren't 100% representations of those people. To actually meet them feels subversive, and very satisfying.

Here's how my year in the real world went.

February
A Matador intern in my hometown--small world? I met Cathey Franke at one of my all-time favorite hang-out-and-work coffeeshops, Madhatters in Southtown. It was a great start to a year of meetups.

March
It was cold in Austin towards the end of SXSW. I drove up from San Antonio in the gray rain to the Hyatt Regency, where then-Matador Nights editor Tom Gates was staying on an annual music-industry junket. Matador Sports intern Lindi Horton was there too, and Tom found us with a big smile and a big hug. Then he bought us breakfast while a bat flew around the massive 10-story lobby. It was awesome.

May
Early May was spent driving up to Maine the slow way, which included an overnight in Brooklyn and a long-overdue handshake with my partner in Matador Trips crime, Carlo Alcos. I got to crash at his place near Prospect Park, and as a super added bonus there was another way-delayed meetup with Julie Schwietert Collazo, her husband Francisco, and 7-month-old Mariel. A year and a half after staying in their Mexico City apartment for five weeks, we finally got a face to face.

Early July
Out West on an epic summer roadtrip. After a day on deserted central Nevadan highways without A/C, I pulled into Mammoth Lakes, where the amazing Trips intern Sarah Park overlooked my stink and generously put me up for the night. A beautiful welcome to the Golden State.

Middle July
Next was San Francisco, which is kinda like Matador headquarters--homebase for CEO Ross Borden. We met up in the Mission for tacos, and I got to hear some incredible stories from his trip to Madagascar. A few days later, there was an even grander Matador gathering at Bissap Baobab, attended by long-time Matador editor Juliane, talented contributors Valerie (check out Houston Har Gow and 5 Reasons Why I Want to Travel To Taiwan Right Now) and Lauren (check out My Hometown in 500 Words: Oakland, CA and 5 Views of a Lesser-Known Morocco), and Matador aficionados Naomi and Ekua. Huge!

Late July
The journey's northern terminus was Seattle, where MatadorTV captain Joshywashington hangs his hat. Meeting him and his awesome wife Bridget for a beer at the Garage was the perfect bookend to the trip.


December
Tim Patterson was my first editor at Trips. He's been all over the map in past years but is now landed in his home village of Craftsbury Commons, VT, an easy detour off the route from Maine to Burlington. I met him there and got an extensive tour of Sterling College, where he works, his under-construction home, which is going to have the sickest sunset view ever, and his parents' 100 acres. A couple nights later, we shared some craft brew at the Farmhouse and impromptu jams at Nectar's in Burlington.

2011, bring it on!

Woodstove

The house is noticeably colder when we get in, though the digital thermometer reads 68.4. December rain means highs in the 40s, even 50--not cold enough to keep a 24-hour fire in the stove. Colors along the backroads were all green and red. Green of lawn grass, that faded ruddy brown of dying-back marsh grass and leafless beech limbs. Still waiting for the white to cover it all.

I crank open the side hatch of the stove and a little cloud of ash and campfire perfume whirls out. I take three pages of newspaper, crumple each into a loose sphere, and lay them in a row across the primary airflow vent. Then I step out onto the side porch and reach into the box of thin, splintery wood shingles. I break one of the shingles in half lengthwise, leave one half in the box and bring the other inside. I half it again and rest both pieces on top of the paper. Next, I take two quartered pine logs from the bag by the door and set them as gently as I can on either side of the newspaper-shingle architecture.

The box of matches has a home on an upper shelf of the hutch by the chimney. I remove a stick and hesitate a moment, anticipating the satisfyingly analog rasp of phosphorus on sandpaper. It flares when I strike it, and I quickly jab the stick under a protruding corner of paper before it settles down. The flame spills out onto the paper like maple syrup, and I shut the hatch and twist the handle to lock it.

My part is done. I spin the living room recliner around to face the stove and watch what happens. Usually, the superbly engineered design of the woodstove takes over now: a draft of just the right intensity carries the fire from newspaper ball to newspaper ball. The splintery shingles catch, popping, and within minutes the flames have wrapped around the logs, growing until the entire cube of stove is one big orangey-yellow kaleidoscope.

But it's been stubborn lately. A buildup of soot is clogging the metal flue, cutting airflow, or ash has blocked the vents. Anyway, my best fire-starting skills yield only a crapshoot.

I sit in the recliner and, through the glass panel on the front of the stove, watch the flame reluctantly crawl along the row of newspaper. There's a pop or two from the shingle. And then nothing. A flicker. Then nothing.

I see gray on the bottom of the glass, the hardened, chalky accumulation of ash from past days, weeks, winters. But beyond that is dark, as black as the black glossy paint covering the exterior of the stove. I wait for two minutes, still nothing. Nothing.

There's no fire in there.

Another flicker. Five seconds of black. Then another.

It's coming faster now, flashes of flame from the back of the stove, somewhere underneath the pine log. It looks like lightning in a night sky. Lightning in a black box.

Maybe it'll catch.

A Different (Better?) California Wine Valley

Photo: PhliarShamim

It's 3:30, and I'm stuck on 29 between Napa and St. Helena, waiting for the several dozen vehicles ahead of me to get waved through the second stretch of construction in five miles. My car is black, and the A/C is broken. On the passenger seat, a tourist bureau map is folded open, showing the road I'm on and the 100 or whatever wineries/tasting rooms that line it. How the hell am I supposed to choose which 2 or 3 are worth my $5-$20 tasting fee this afternoon?

Napa Valley sucks.

But grapes grow elsewhere in California. Quite close, actually. Head north. Not to Sonoma--maybe it's better, but I've never been and it sounds like more of the same. No, keep going north till you hit the 128, another of those surprisingly mountainous and windy CA highways that cuts through the gold-grass-covered hills and scraggly trees. Keep driving till Boonville.

Now you're in Anderson Valley.

There's only about 20 wineries here, and not all are open to the public. I went to one last month, Foursight Wines, because it was the closest to town. I loved it. One of its four employees was too busy doing her twice-daily "punch-down" (thrusting a large blunt metal punch into a fermentation tank full of a juicy grape mixture to stir it) to give us a tasting right away, so she invited us back to watch her, and to have a sample of an aging white right out of the barrel.

"Laid back" is a good descriptor for Anderson Valley.

The General Store is where you go to eat, that bar on Main St. across from the hardware store to drink. There are multiple camping options right up the road (I stayed at Indian Creek, the closest), and if you keep going towards the coast, you'll come to Pacific Star Winery, one of my favorites anywhere.

Perhaps best of all, Anderson Valley Brewing is located in Boonville, with tasting room and 18-hole disc golf course. I mean, you can't drink only wine all day.

 

Photo: JoePhoto