Peace out Austin,.. It's been Rad!

Austin, Texas is awesome! nuff said.  Been here for about 4 weeks now hanging out with Dana in our extremely posh pad on 6th street, HUGE thanks to her Aunt for hooking us up with a place to stay for a month while I rested some sore legs and worked only a couple odd jobs, but that was only because of my own laziness. I did however explore a large portion of this great town by car, feet, canoe, but mostly by BMX.  Which all of you know is the absolutely the best way to do it.  I don't have a ton of pictures of the sights and experiences I've had in this short time I was here, mostly because I was having too much damn fun to take a picture, but hey isn't that how it should be?.  

Hamilton Pool, this place is in the hill country about 40 miles out of Austin and is super cool.  It's been in a few blockbuster movies and rightfully so.  The picture doesn't do it justice but this place is magical, made me feel like I was already in Hawaii.

Surprisingly I have hung out with some good friends while I've been here 2000 miles away from home, this picture was at another awesome spot in the hill country called pedernales falls. It was a rad time with some rad dudes, for a ton of more photos of this spot check out brad pucks album on facebook. 

Lots and lots and lots of music here, really is the live music capitol  of the U.S.

I love cooking, probably my favorite past time second to riding little kids bikes.That said it was really nice to have a full kitchen to work with after 2 months of only a camp stove and limited ingredients.  Made a few banging ass meals while we've been here, This is a picture of some red curry chicken I made from scratch for Danas'  birthday.

Tons of awesome stuff everywhere you look while your riding around town, check out this graffiti castle!

I Love Bmx!

You know I had to get out on the water at least once while I was here.  Lake Austin which is really the colorado river runs right through town, kind of like Richmond minus the rapids.

Austin has a sick new concrete skatepark with a great bowl. It was only about a mile from where I was staying. This made it easy enough to get up and go to early in the morning and pump around the corners at mach 10  before the rush of kids showed up who would rather practice their flyout whips.  Watching Chase Hawk ride this in person was a pleasure.  

FBM

Dana is really good at making awesome jewelry. She even got some of her stuff in a shop here on south congress(the hip part of town).  Yea Dana!

Before Austin I was in Houston where I met up with Danas' aunt Pam and her cousin Wendy.  Saying thank you to them would be an understatement for how much they helped me out to keep going on this adventure. Here is a cookie cake Wendy got for us before we left. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!

Iv'e come to realize that when your in Texas everything is 100% Texan, even the beer. Drank quite a few of these things while I was here. I wonder if busch would sell better in Va if it was logo'd Virginia Busch?

While riding through hundreds of cities throughout the southeast, I've seen/participated in my fair share of OCCUPY  movements.  Austin is the first city I've seen having almost open arms towards the movement, no tear gas, no billy clubs, no rubber bullets, letting it be what it should be,  A PEACEFUL protest.

Mid day occupiers, yes some are bums, some are college kids who go home at night, some are hippies who just wanna smoke weed, but most are people who want a change in this bullshit thats going on in the world. Like their tactics or not at least they are doing something.  I say rock on.

Awesome cactus greenhouse we found in the hill country.

The infamous 9th street trails. I think its really cool the city lets this happen,  Dont know of any other place with city sanctioned dirt jumps............ Oh wait Ipswitch trails in my hometown of chesapeake,VA.

I could do a whole blog about street spots in Austin,TX,  but I'll leave it at this one. Rode it quite a few times while I was here, the damn Mazda never moved, either way it was still awesome to haul ass and carve around.  I call it the miata berm.   

Gunna miss this lady while I'm on the road.