Burritos are a constant

One way trips are a bit peculiar. With round trips, you have this sense of duality - sitting next to a different stranger on the way back, finishing a book you started on the way over, perhaps eating lunch in a different layover city (polish sausage in Chicago, crab cakes in D.C. (maybe?), etc.) - but one way trips give you a sense of finality. Finality is not, however, a frozen state; it can be as fluid and inventive as the time between the start and end of a round trip. In that spirit, here are my first couple of journal entries from Austin (at some point, I'll catch up (with life?) and post "present" thoughts):

2/26/09, 1am
It's good to be back in Austin. Really. Even before stepping out of the airport, it smelled good - the grass and plants and trees - and I could feel the fresh air through the cracks in the windows. Then the neon lights, strip clubs turned into Mexican taquerias, the familiar H.E.B. supermarket, and back to Phil's apartment... wearing a T-shirt and wish I was wearing shorts. I learned two things from Phil right off the bat:

1. You'll never see less than two cop cars pulling someone over. It's often at least three.

2. Regarding the sketchier joints and saloons on the outskirts of the city: "There are all kinds of serious people in Texas."

Ah, this should be good....

2/27/09
Just as I still use chop sticks for Asian food and still get some of my meals from 7-11 (a throwback to Taiwan), I'm still walking everywhere in a state that doesn't like to walk, still watching Flight of the Conchords, and still playing pool at the Dirty Dog. The great Las Manitas Avenue Cafe has disappeared (thanks to the specter of redevelopment that's haunting Austin, perhaps even more than most other major cities), but my beloved Jaime's Spanish Village is still here, rock garden patio and all. I plan to keep walking, and seek out all of the Jaime's Spanish Villages that this city has to offer.