ATX III: Spicy and Delicious

'Ello

From August 3rd until the 13th I was in my own little piece of heaven, on a vacation in which I was able to relax, hang out, and make calls to an almost unprecedented degree. From the 3rd to the 9th I was down in lovely Chatham, MA, on Cape Cod, that bastion of Masshole vacationers. Little of note to relate, and that's a good thing - the bulk of my time was spent on the beach, book in hand. There's now a backlog of book reviews that I know you are all salivating to read. The weather was superb for the most part, with only one rainy day. Some highlights from the trip: hanging out with my Texan relatives, who were staying practically right around the corner from us; breakfast at the Chatham airport (Crabcakes Benedict, people, while watching Pipers & Cessnas take off); Kream & Kone onion rings (best on God's green earth); the most wonderfully magically delicious, perfectly seared (a brief smooch on the grill) tuna steak ever at the Chatham Squire; $3 T-shirts at Ocean State Job Lot; Ridgevale Beach.

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Mom drove me back to Boston on Thursday. Friday morning I boarded a jetBlue plane headed for Austin, TX, for Captain Dunndee's Surprise Birthday Weekend Extravaganza, courtesy of his Commanding Officer. Dunndee has his own account of the weekend, which contains my impromptu audition for my Travel Channel series, Grimming It Up. Mean Rachel talks about her brief foray into the realm of A-side. Thanks to Nichole for a fantabulous weekend that included the following:

Our first stop after Dunndee picked me up at the airport was lunch at the Hula Hut. This is a fantastic establishment on the water that I had actually been to back in early January. A mojito and a comically large shrimp enchilada smothered in queso blanco served as a delicious first meal in the Lone Star state.

We rolled to Austin and got a room at the Hampton Inn on San Jacinto, which is in a prime location, right across the street from the Mongolian Grill. We chilled at the pool for a minute with la bala de plata and then headed to the Mongolian Grill, where I have eaten no fewer than three times. It was spicy and delicious.



We headed to the Ivory Cat to take in the percussive stylings of Joe the Drummer. I won a free drink from Joe, correctly answering his triva question, "What is the actual title of the 'Pina Colada song'?" I went with a Sapphire & tonic. After a while we left to meet up with Mean Rachel and Martha, and proceeded to bounce around every bar in Austin before ending up back at the Ivory Cat. Dunndee won a free drink for excessive showmanship, a decidedly foofy blue tropical affair. We hung out for a couple songs before the ladies disappeared on us.





Improbably Hot Girl struck up a conversation with me and then got called up onstage for the "Joy to the World" dance with JTD. In brief, this involves the guy and girl standing one behind the other, making gestures at the respective anatomy for the "all the boys and girls" part in the song, and then switching it up. When Improbably Hot Girl got behind JTD for her turn, she didn't just make a gesture at his junk, but instead latched on to JTD's crotch with a two-handed death grip of which I was admittedly a tad jealous. She definitely went past the point of "Haha, this girl is drunk" to "Wow, she's not letting go of JTD's boys." But good times were had by all!

We arose early on Saturday and hit the road for Gruene, TX, which is home to the oldest dance hall in the U.S. as well as the Guadalupe River! We didn't go to either. Instead we headed for the Comal River, located in nearby New Braunfels. Evidently there have been torrential downpours in Texas over the last couple months, and the Guadalupe was at a raging flow of diluvian proportions. We rented a couple inner tubes for us and a tube/cooler combo, loaded up with sunblock, water and Bud Select, and launched into the leisurely-paced waters of the Comal along with every other person in the state of Texas. It was an incomprehensibly vast throng of bodies and tubes, an almost imperceptibly moving mass of intoxicated young people, laughing, splashing and just generally hanging out. It was awesome. It was just a big party.







Dunndee and I were floating along, and I quite literally floated right into someone I had graduated with from Dartmouth in 2002. I, visiting from Boston, met a fellow alum of my Hanover, NH alma mater on the Comal River in New Braunfels, TX. Go figure. Turns out Caroline is in grad school down in Austin, and she was with a bunch of her classmates. Dunndee and I hooked up with that group and floated the rest of the way with company that was, let's be honest, rather more interesting than us talking to each other for an hour and a half. I also met another Dartmouth alumna, a '01 in the same group. Small world. After a couple hours we hopped out at the designated landing area, took the rental company's ride back to the parking lot, and checked out the biker bar on the edge of the Guadalupe. Dunndee and I were a couple of the few people there who were not wearing some combination of the following: leather, bandanas, handlebar mustaches, motorcycle company/metal band patches, death's heads, boots, grim miens.

We rolled back to Austin in an attempt to shift our scene to the classy. We showered and gussied up, and Dunndee took me to the Driskill Hotel, the oldest in Austin. We sat at the bar in the fairly swank lounge and dined on their delicious steak sandwiches, accompanied by a bone dry Sapphire martini and the brogue-inflected quips of our Irish bartender.







Dunndee then took me to my new favorite spot in Austin, and possibly on the planet at the moment: the Belmont. It's a restaurant/lounge with a big open outdoor area, two levels, a stage where some excellent live jazz was playing. It's a stylish place with a stylish clientele, from what I could tell; for some reason they let us in. I think it must have been the military ID 45 flashed. It was the perfect scene for a certain kind of evening - some beautiful people, well-dressed; properly-made drinks and shots served in actual glasses; a chill live music vibe. This is the spot in the video Dunndee shot. 45 said it was a popular pregame spot, which I could understand, but I could easily chill there for a night. Too bad it's a million miles away.





True to form, we left the Belmont to meet up with a fellow ex-officer of 45's and his wife at the appropriately named Chuggin' Monkey. We stayed there for the remainder of the night; I believe one or two beverages were consumed.



Sunday we hightailed it back to the house in which Dunndee is currently squatting in Harker Heights. Having purchased some ribs, chicken and steak from Cospers Meat Market on Friday and having left them to stew in their various rubs, we were all set for a birthday BBQ. We went and acquired supplies (guac ingredients, beer, cake) and proceeded to BBQ. The guac was a big hit. I dominated at Beirut. Approximately 800 beers were consumed between us. Good times had by all.





Monday was departure. Beef tacos at Matt's El Rancho at the airport; read a ton of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay on the plane; thought longingly of my vacation; rued my imminent return to Faeces, Inc.

A tremendous vacation all across the board. Everyone down in Texas seems immeasurably more friendly than people in the Northeast. People seem to genuinely want to meet and talk to you. It's a nice experience.