“In your twenties, birthdays should be a combination of unique, stupid and memorable, It’s an easy order for someone accustomed to embodying all three.” – Old Sen
Birthday Blues
It’s time, of course, for another road trip.
Behold, once again, as I recruited my younger brother to celebrate his 21st birthday. True to impromptu form, I messaged my brother from my semi-quarantine in Dallas and recommended a trip to Austin, Texas for his birthday.
Previously that week, I had been working a scrapping job for my friend’s cookie factory, hauling painful, twisted lines of heavy metal into a steep dumpster while whittling my nights away playing gratuitous amounts of Halo 3.
It was from this sleep-deprived state my brother gathered me up from Plano and we began our drive south.
The trip to Austin from Dallas is probably the second-most-familiar route I’ve ever driven. I’ve made the trip for spontaneous visits, birthdays, parties, Halloweens, ill-advised adventures and casual tours. My brother has remarkably less experience driving this direction, so I took the reins on planning this particular expedition.
Texas Tours
First, on the way south, we loaded up on heavy doughnuts and coffee, while bobbing our heads to a wide array of Spotify music throughout the drive, our song recommendations growing gradually more obscure and outlandish.
Wolf Totem by the Hu had Mongolian throat singing. Rasputin – Vladmir Putin – Love the Way You Move became the defining animation video for conversation. Deler Mehndi’s Tunak Tunak Tun was our homage to meme culture. And the recently discovered Dschinghis Khan – Moskaw concerned and astounded us in equal measures with the most colorful dancing and committed annunciation I’ve ever loved being slapped by.
Regardless, we breached Austin territory early in the day, passing the iconic solar-powered sunflowers as we trundled down Highway 35. I had some friends in the city, but one of them was unfortunately getting tested for COVID at the time, nixing any plans for an improvised meet-up.
Instead, my brother and I visited the Hope Outdoor Graffiti Gallery. This was a location I had visited on previous trips. It’s a series of staggered cement walls, facing open-air on cliff-like intervals with an immense amount of colorful graffiti plastered across its surface.
Unfortunately, I’m old and my previous tourist icons have eroded. The Hope Outdoor Gallery is now permanently closed. Though still currently visible, a chain link fence prohibits scaling and cameras dot the perimeter. Undaunted, my brother took a picture and we hopped back in our car for my next mild failure.
Austin Artwork
I wanted to show Ryan the Yippee Kay Yay Stick-Work Sculpture, an interactive, walkthrough series of small towers in Pease Park that’s crafted from the corpses of tons of invasive saplings.
Unfortunately, this structure has been removed, resulting in a muggy, hot walk with my camping propane tanks (too explosive to be left in hot cars) while my brother was introduced to Austin’s prevalent jogging culture.
This, however, is where my failures ended. I next directed my brother back north after gathering some sunscreen and water bottles. We made our way to Walnut Creek, where my brother spotted giant dragonflies and we walked down the dry riverbed that was, once-upon-a-rainstorm, a very wade-able watering hole.
For now, however, the creek is a mere dribble, where tight schools of minnows squirm through narrow waterways creating rapids within the trickles.
The hike itself was quite fun. My brother and I skipped stones, clambered on crumbling cliffs, hopped across boulders, dodged immense puddles, listened to Toco’s Outro Lugar and shuffled through large, well-worn trails before finally returning, once again, to our vehicle.
Austin Seeks and Eats
At this point, hunger had begun to gnaw at us and the heat of Austin in the summer was in full-swing. Unwilling to brace against the temperature any further, I suggested a drive-thru mural tour of Austin’s streets as we worked out way towards food.
This turned out to be an interesting scavenger hunt for city walls.
We saw a vibrantly red whale, a pizza astronaut, the serene gaze of Mr. Rogers, techno-colored poison-dart frogs, a wall with vibrant black American icons, kaleidoscope restaurant decorations, a series of flowery words proclaiming us “Strange,” bluntly prevailing graffiti shops, the odd features of the slightly worn 6th Street bar ally, proud Austin advertisements, and the extremely famous “I love you so much,” sign located directly on South Congress Avenue.
My brother was given a knife to pose for the photo while I spiced the image up with finger-guns. I’m sure the ladies taking our photo were extremely impressed.
On South Congress, we stopped at Home Slice for a truly fantastic and perfectly crispy slice of New York-style pizza, eating outside beneath the sun-bracing shade of a horizontal tree. We also managed to find a fair treat of mint-Oreo ice cream at Amy’s Ice Cream. Of course, passing through South Congress Avenue without mentioning the bat symbol for the South Congress Bridge Bat Colony or visiting the outlandish costume show “Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds” would be an untenable sin. So we did both.
21 and Up
Stomachs sated, we wandered to the East side of Austin, where a large warehouse hanger known as Central Machine Works offers beer options in an open-air hanger.
I may have mentioned, but the purpose of this trip was to celebrate my brother’s 21st birthday. As such, I had the honor of buying my brother’s 3rd and 4th legal drinks. I selected a Pilsner and a Cider for a couple of attempts, which my brother sipped contently, but didn’t quite finish.
That’s alright though. Alcohol is an acquired taste. Like Stockholm syndrome for your taste buds. Regardless, I also ordered some street corn for the table, which is steamed corn-on-the-cob with bacon bits and sauce over a bed of spiced and buttered popcorn.
Healthy? No. But worth punching an alligator for? I certainly think so.
Not that I had the option to prove my valor in such a way during this particular trip.
Regardless, my brother and I clambered back into the car, this time with Sober-Old-Sean at the helm. We drove into the countryside to a brewery I had been trying to get to for years now.
Supernatural
Jensen Ackles, a lead character in the long-standing dark-fantasy television series “Supernatural” owns a brewery fondly known as “Family Business.” While the interior is currently closed, I did manage to place a curbside pickup order, which I loaded with local specialties.
Thank you, Family Business. I was extremely sated with the treats I brought home for friends.
Following this detour, my brother began to snooze in the passenger seat (typical) as we went toward Mel’s house. Mel is a long-standing friend of another friend of mine, the illustrious Tim. He managed to call ahead and arrange a place for my brother and me to spend the night Additionally, Mel had a desk station where I’d be able to work in the morning.
This turned out supremely well. Mel had made some splendid apple pie and her two year old daughter continually served us bits of plastic food from her kitchen set.
She also kept sneaking fake dollar bills into our pockets, which isn’t quite how the service industry operates, but as the recipient of three fake dollars total, I’m not complaining.
My brother and I spent the night snoring and punching one another in our sleep before I arose at an unholy hour to perform my normal online teaching duties. Afterwards, we bid Mel and her daughter a farewell, promised pictures and wandered off to our next miniature adventure.
Park Pals
That adventure, of course, was Zilker Park. Though the miniature train has been removed, the swimming hole was not. My brother and I abandoned our shoes on the shoreline and waded around the chilly water, watching kayakers, other swimmers and hordes of morning dogs meandering through the morning light.
We ended up playing a rock tossing game, trying to land flat stones on tiny stone islands to little avail. I won, six to four.
Not that it matters. I’m just supreme.
Not that it’s important, of course. However, I intend to send a copy of this link to my brother for standing bragging rights.
So he can fondly reminisce, I’m sure.
Regardless, my tossing skills proved too good, because upon tossing my brother his socks in preparation to return to the car, one arced over his head and landed in the stream.
I laughed, my brother grumbled and I crowed about it to some friends because when you chuck someone’s clothes into public water, you might as well pretend it’s part of your insidious plan.
It’s the little things in life, really. Shoeless, my brother and I soft-toed our way back to the car, where my brother cracked the back window and dried his sock by clamping it shut, half the fabric drying in the morning wind as we began driving again.
Cloud Coffee
Our next step was a novelty food I was smitten with, found at the Black Sugar Caffe. Cloud Coffee or Mellow Coffee is a beverage I had heard about in Shanghai, but the shop I desired had been closed down when I tried to visit.
But Cloud Coffee is an interesting construct: A frappe with a billowing cloud of cotton candy on top, with a narrow hold poked in the middle. The steam of the coffee causes the sugar to drip, sweetening the beverage with each passing second. We ordered two from a cute, blonde waitress and sipped while surrounded by odd lightbulb sculptures along the wall.
Feeling the spike of hunger, my brother and I drove back to downtown Austin for lunch. Since my brother had never tried Ethiopian Food, I honed in on Aster’s Ethiopian Restaurant for curbside pickup, which we ate at a nearby park.
The food, while excellent, is very dense. Most of the leftovers are proud additions to my fridge at my current residence. One meat-dish order should normally be enough for two people.
Back North
This was to be our second-to-last stop in the city, though we made an artful array of wrong turns as we left town. Part were due to my faulty directions, part were due to my brother’s arrow-based dyslexia while driving, part were due to Austin’s odd winding roads and sudden turn-offs and a few were due to our tiny vehicle’s inability to accelerate in a timely manner.
Regardless, we ended up looping through a lot of strange areas throughout this trip.
Unfortunately, these detours showcased Austin’s extreme homeless problem. While Austin has always had a rather colorful community of pan-handlers spread throughout the city, the urban environment has entire tent-civilizations now.
Coronavirus and economic factors continue to strafe the country and I would be remiss not to mention them here, as one of the most heart-wrenching features of bridges and grassy slopes.
Upon getting back to the main road, my brother and I made one final stop at a Karate-themed café with a live music stage known as Kick Butt Coffee (though I humbly recommend renaming the place Coffee Chop). This was the best coffee we had on the trip, and we managed to nab a rather delicious pretzel as part of the deal.
Road Trip Conversations
Finally, our time faded and my brother and I felt our energy flag. We decided to drive back to Dallas, calling the two day Austin visit a resounding and eventful success.
My brother managed to enthrall by enlightening me about the legality of cannibalism. (Apparently, it’s not illegal to be a cannibal in the United States, just simply illegal to obtain the source-flesh. So when a man had his leg amputated, it was completely legal for him and his friends to nibble at it. Neat and concerning, huh?)
We rolled back to Dallas, stopping at Ari’s house to say hi to her kittens and return a laundry basket I borrowed.
We made one final stop at Braum’s in Bonham, where we were unhealthy as possible before my brother finally, finally dropped me back off at home.
So here I am, after a month and a half of traveling, back where I began. But the addiction of wanderlust has stirred within me, and I expect that this visit will not be the three-month stay of 2020’s spring. I sense another skip, hop and wander on the horizon.
So until then,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
P.S. Happy Birthday, brother. Enjoy your beer, brag to your friends like you’re Irish and keep those eyes clear and feet level on your path.
Written August 27th 2020
Read more about visiting Austin and seeing the world by visiting Leftfade Trails Blog.
Affiliate Disclosure: Leftfade Trails contains affiliate links, so using services or products through these links supports the website, at no extra cost to the user. All links are to tested services and products designed to aid travelers on their journeys. Some links specifically connect to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate this website earns from qualifying purchases.
I bought this Horizon Hound Trek Blanket for a late-autumn trek in the United States. Since then, it’s gone everywhere with me. The blanket is lightweight, stuff-able, warm and durable. But my favorite features are the buttons. The blanket can be buttoned up the sides, turning it into a long thermal poncho when I don’t want to leave the warmth of my bed.
