Austin/Dallas Trip Report (long)

I spent Friday through Monday in Texas and had an amazing time hanging out with Mike and Adam. Here's a long trip report:

Friday Mike and I arrived in Austin on different flights a few minutes apart around 11 a.m.. Adam picked us up. We immediately went to this BBQ place called Rudy's to get the day started. Mike was totally out of his element here (and the whole trip for that matter) since he's from New Jersey. We had a lotta really good food and washed it all down with a couple Bud Lights. From there we headed to our hotel at The Radisson downtown to check in. We got settled in and then headed over to Adam's parents house to say hello. They have a really nice place in a neat area in Austin. Lance Armstrong and U of Texas head football coach Mack Brown both live nearby. After we left the house we headed back to the hotel for a while before heading out to dinner at this nice Tex/Mex place. Finally, we came back to the hotel to shower and get ready for a night on the town on legendary 6th street. Mike and I were really looking forward to this because obviously we love nightlife and the Austin bar scene is supposed to be sickkkk. It did not disappoint. We bar hopped for several hours before the bars closed.

On Saturday we woke up with no particular plans. We originally planned on going to the Texas/Arkansas football game, but obviously it was cancelled. Instead, we spent the day hangin' out at this house party with a Hurricane theme. We polished off some keg beer and watched some football before heading out a few hours later. We swung by this all-you-can-eat pizza buffet to watch the first quarter of the USC/OSU game. Adam talked this place up, but I personally thought it was awful :) After dinner we went back to the hotel to watch the rest of this game at the TGIFs bar in our hotel. Next, we went up to the room to get ready for another night on the town.

Our poker buddy Hunter "HEMIpowerSWT" Frey was in the area and decided to get bottle service at this really hot bar/club on 5th street called Canvas. This place was great. We had a blast for several hours before closing time.

Sunday we woke up ready for a long day of watching football. I planned on heading back to Alabama late Sunday, but my flight was actually cancelled due to the weather and gave me a great excuse to skip my Monday classes. Mike and Adam are in a big Fantasy Football league, so they like to sweat every single play of every game. I should've played Fantasy but I'm too lazy to put in the time necessary to do well. We ate lunch at a deli and then headed down to this really cool pool hall on 6th called Buffalo Billiards. We called ahead to make sure they had the Sunday NFL ticket. We watched atleast some of every single game that ran Sunday. There was some great football. Perhaps the sickest finish was the Denver game where Mike Shanahan went for two at the end of the game instead of the conventional extra point for the tie. While we were there we also played several games of bar shuffleboard. We all played pretty even in our warmup 100 dollar per game affairs, but when the real money came out Mike beat me for a laughable figure. This was a microcosm of the whole trip as I lost lots of flips and other prop bets :(

After we left Buffalo's we headed out to dinner at this really cool place called Ranch 616. I had a really great Beef Tenderloin dish. We sweated the SNF game there. Finally, we headed back down to the bars to get in one more night of debauchery in Austin. We have two friends in Austin, Cristina and Claudia who joined us on Sunday night. Cristina happens to be a top ranked amateur/semi pro pool player, so we were kinda eager to see her in action. After a couple of drinks we walked across the street to the venue we'd been at all day, Buffalo Billiards. Cristina embarrased us but was nice enough to teach me a few things which was awesome. I am pretty fascinated by the world of professional billiards, and I think it would be fun to get really good at the game. I've played a fair amount over the last couple of years and like to think that I'm quite a bit above average.

After we got tired of playing pool we headed down the street to a place called Betsy's Bar where I think we set a bar record for most Soco/Lime shots consumed in a 15 minute period of time.

Monday we woke up around noon and had to get on the road to Dallas where we now planned on attending the Monday Night Football game. Needless to say, we were unspeakably excited. We grabbed some lunch and then headed out. On the way we stopped off at some gas station to use the restroom. Mike and I saw lottery tickets and felt like we'd be doing ourself a disservice not to create some sort of prop bet out of them. We bought the last 35 dollars worth 5 dollar tickets that the guy had in the roll. We agreed to split the wins or losses from the cards but we bet 100 on the side on who would win more money on their tickets. Amazingly, we turned profit on the tickets when we won 40 bucks (5 dollar profit), but I had to pay Mike 100, sigh.

We finally made it into Dallas and checked in at the Embassy Suites. We headed over to Texas Stadium. The parking situation was pretty insane as we had to wait for like 90 minutes as we snaked our way through to the back parking lot. Luckily, we'd left really early. We got into the stadium at 6:55 for the 7:30 kickoff. We grabbed a few beers and made our way to our lower level seats which were conveniently right in front of a group of Cowboys' cheerleaders, bink.

I'm sure a ton of you watched the game. WOWOWOWOW what a game. It was easily the most entertaining sporting event that I've ever attended. There were a couple of long passes, a Kickoff return for a touchdown by Felix Jones, and a bunch of other great action in this interdivision game. How about the DeSean Jackson "fumble" on the 1 yard line? This play will be on blooper reels for centuries to come. The game was back and forth but thankfully Dallas rallied in the final minutes and scored to take the lead. They were able to fade a late drive from Mcnabb and the Eagles to hold on.

We decided to check out the Dallas bar scene after the game. Not much was going on since it was a Monday night, and I guess most people work on weekdays. Still, we had a good time hanging out in this place called the Greenville district.

We made it in around 2:45 a.m. and to my chagrin I had to be awake at 5:15 a.m. to catch my 7 a.m. flight out of Dallas. This early flight was necessary in order to make it to my 11 a.m. class in Tuscaloosa. Somehow I made it, and here I am in Tuscaloosa. The trip could not have gone better, and I'll remember it forever.

I've gotta shower and go to class. Bama is at Arkansas this weekend. I will not be going, but I might go to Auburn this weekend for the Auburn/LSU game.

SS