Trip to Austin, Texas by Carol Bolen

Dan and I took a trip to Austin/Dripping Springs, Texas to visit my sister, Miranda and her husband, Blake. Well on our way there we took kind of a detour. Not really, it was on the way towards our destination. All the way down 71 are theses huge billboards for this place called Joel’s BBQ. Daniel has been there before and said that we should stop there for a bite to eat and to rest a bit. We get there and it looks like this.

It’s practically a barn but on the inside it looks more like a cabin and the people that work there are really country, they wore whatever they wanted from camo shorts, cowboy hats, and overalls with a wife beater. I guess they owned the place but they put off a really creepy vibe, think of a rural town like something out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We got our beef jerky and got out of there fast, Daniel swore they had the best beef jerky and I admit it, it is pretty tasty.         

Two hours later we arrive to my sisters’ house in Dripping Springs. They had bought all of us tickets to go see a movie at the Drafthouse on 6th street. The Drafthouse is a theatre that serves food and drinks and sometimes has special guests such as directors, actors or actresses. We drop our stuff off at the house and get back on the road; I let my brother-in-law drive my car.  We are on the outskirts of Downtown Austin on some highway and we hear this popping noise and we all just think it’s the road. I get this really weird feeling and I make Blake pull my car over on an overpass. We all get out and my front passenger tire is blown out.  Never in my life have I ever had a flat and I’m so happy it wasn’t just with me in the car because I have no idea what to do. Luckily a cop sees that we are changing out a tire and he puts his lights on and lays cones around the shoulder. Getting a flat didn’t deter us from seeing a movie so now we're looking like scrubs rolling on 6th street to get to the Drafthouse. Just as we get to the theatre and walk into the auditorium and there was nowhere to sit. It was so packed; the only seats available were the very front row and we decided it wasn’t worth it so we headed to Pinballz.

Pinballz is an arcade with tons of novelty pinball machine and arcade games like driving, classic and new, shooting, also redemption ticket games like skeeball, darts, hoop fever, air hockey, and foosball tables. It’s great fun because there really aren’t too many people or kids that go there, it’s fairly new. You can bring your own alcohol, hang out and play as many games as you like. Unfortunately we all have short attention spans and decided we were going to go to a skating rink down the road. I haven’t skated since I was 7 or 8 years old and knowing that I would be a newbie at skating, I decided I’d try out the four wheel skates. The hardest physical workout I have had in my entire life, I was the only one out of us four that could not turn the corners. It was so embarrassing; there were toddlers who could skate better than I could.  After skating we headed back to the house and went to bed.

The next morning we got up early and traveled down to Lake Travis, the prettiest lake ever. We rented a pontoon boat and found a nice spot to settle. We swam, had some lunch, and hung out on the lake for the majority of the day. It started getting late in the afternoon and we headed back to the house to shower and have dinner. I couldn’t really relax on the lake because I was really concerned about how my car would do on the drive home with the donut replacing my passenger tire. I went ahead and just bought two new front tires, not too happy about that and Daniel and I headed back to Houston. I like going up to visit Miranda and Blake because they always find something new and fun to do and most of the time it’s pretty cheap.

http://www.pinballzarcade.com/