Day 17: Austin part II

What is the worst thing that could possibly happen when you wake up in a van, with a bit of a headache from the night before, and a fairly desperate need to use the bathroom? Flat battery. It turns out I somehow managed to leave the stereo on all night, or atleast in the “on” position. To make matters worse, we had used up our phone credit and had not bothered to recharge it yet. We quickly suited up and headed out in search of a payphone and a toilet. Luckily a short walk down South Congress found us the latter. The former took us a little while longer. The first payphone we came to didnt work, so we wandered down a street on speculation. Luckily after about 20 minutes we found a phone. I'm really glad I joined AAA when I arrived here. I had a towing service dispatched, and by the time we walked back to the car, the guy was already there.

This guy kept talking about all the tips he got the night before. I don't know if you are supposed to tip these guys, but I gave him $5 anyway. So glad I joined AAA.

After that, and considering it was lunchtime already, we headed to an Applebees for a steak. The waitress was really nice, and told us all about her plans to move to Australia. If she ever makes it she can look us up. \With lunch over, we didn't really feel like doing much. More sleep sounded like a good idea. I looked at the map and saw a park by the Colorado River in the city. It was yet another sunny day, and this park was definitely a nice place. You know how you see artists impressions of public spaces, with all the space being used by people engaged in various activities? This park was exactly like that. Joggers, canoers, people with their dogs, people kicking balls, people having picnics. It was kind of perfect really. I'm wondering what the downside to Austin is really. It seems like a nice friendly place to live. Still, two days in Austin was all we could really afford, and once we had read the paper and had a nap in the sun, it was time to have some dinner and continue on our way.

I had heard about a cool chain of theatres in Austin called the Alamo Drafthouse. They serve dinner during movies, and since I really don't know of anything like that in Australia (apart from the overpriced and totally not worth it La Premiere), we thought it might be a fun thing to do. Every other row of seats in the cinema had been removed and replaced by a long table. To order food or drinks you wrote it down on a little piece of paper and put it in a holder like a little flag. The server would creep along, grab the paper and bring what you wanted back. It was really nice food and the service wasn't distracting at all. The movie we saw was “Where The Wild Things Are”, based on the Maurice Sedznack picture book. It was a very engaging film, pulling off what many people probably thought could not be done. It's a movie that's really worth seeing.

I didn't really feel like driving too far, and after drinking the night before, we were due a shower. Checking our guide book, we located a Love's truckstop about 100 miles South in Luling. When we were about 10 miles out, Alex detected a burning smell. Soon I smelled it too. It smelled like burning oil, and looking down at the gages, it seemed that our oil pressure was fluctuating. Not two problems in one day! I nursed Ruby into Luling at about 10 Mph. Once we arrived, I popped the hood, but I couldn't smell the oil anymore. The levels looked normal. After our showers, we pulled into a parking area just near the truckstop for some sleep. Hopefully either the problem would go away by itself, or we could figure it out in the morning.