If Everything Goes Right, Then Everything Has Gone Wrong

Austin TX

The advice I've been given before is that taking the Greyhound in the North of the US is not so bad, but then in the South it gets horrific. We stopped in the most desolate God-forsaken place in New Mexico, at a combination of laundrette, post office and general store with no sign of the town these services were supplying. The shop was barren and had even less items of nutritional value leading to the beginning of 26 hour's eating of a Mars bar, a pack of Skittles, and a pack of M&Ms. Putting up signs to not put paper towels down the toilet is a good incentive, but needs some work as some people don't understand the difference between paper towels and toilet paper creating a smell wafting from the bin of which the Golgothan shit demon would be proud. Back on the bus, a family had got on having been rejected from an earlier bus due to some dispute about the age of their child or something. The T-Shirt with the cheesy picture of a wolf and fat guy with a Swastika tattooed on his chest pointed to only one thing - rednecks.

After arriving in Austin and meeting me CouchSurfing host it was back onto a bike for the Thursday Night Social Ride; about 100 cyclists cycling around the city in the dark, trying to avoid parked cars, moving cars, street furniture and, more difficultly, each other.

Many people say that Austin is the only good part of Texas and with it being a university town, it's a bit of a party town. Did nothing Friday afternoon (I'm blaming the timezone change as well as the previous night's drinking) but then went out again for the evening. Met a load of Ray's friends and had a few drinks and then went to another bar to experience a bit more of Austin. We went to some bar that's notorious as an easy place to pick up women. Even I had me arse slapped walking through the place and we were only in there for 2 minutes. Straight out of that place and headed next door where there was some live Country music happening - amazing when you're drunk.

In the supermarket attempting to get food, me credit card was declined. Not the end of the world, probably Halifax being a pain in the arse again. Logged into me account and there was no connection to the account: credit N/A, available balance £0, no recent transactions. Weird, but seems as though the system is temporarily down. After a night of drinking logged back on to find that things are back up and normal, except me card's been cleared out to tune of £2000. Card cancelled, I'm now on cash or having a £1.50 charge for each and every transaction.

The weather has continued to be ridiculously hot, but we have had some rain at last. There was a bit of a storm in Flagstaff with it being monsoon season and then we've had a couple in Austin. Still hot and humid, but at least it's a change.