RoadTrip - Day 5

Mexican brunch- We wake up in Austin and find a cool authentic mexican restaurant where we have the best meal of the trip to this point. It proves itself to be authentic, based on the quality of the food and the bathroom habits of its patrons. Jake explains that in Mexico most plumbing is really really bad and can't even handle toilet paper, so people throw the used paper in the trash can instead of flushing it. Same thing was going on at the restaurant. I know, disgusting, but excellent food. Win some loose some. Anyway everything was delicious except the cactus. It looks like a string bean and tastes like vinegar dipped in vinegar and then lightly sprinkled with salt and vinegar. Not something I'll be trying again anytime soon.

Alamo- Next up we head to San Antonio to see the Alamo and check out the famous River walk in the city. The Alamo is pretty small, but very impressive. It's a nice mix of historical museum and beautifully landscaped park. I got yelled at in the nicest way possible for taking flash photography indoors of Davey Crocket's musket. We start the first of many raids on tourist trap gift shops where we all buy "remember the alamo" t-shirts.

Riverwalk- On the way to the Riverwalk we continue our impulse shopping looking through the local flair of downtown san antonio, which ends up almost making one of our dreams come true. A little back story, for the last day and a half Jake has been talking about getting a taxidermized (probably not a word, but we like it) armadillo. He's already picked out a name (Wallace) and pontificates on how we can take him into all the bars with us. In fact, he romanticizes the idea so much that now Tim and I are fully in support and have gone to the lengths of looking up places we can buy one. We even contemplate driving a few hundred miles out of our way to get one. . So we're walking through San Antonio and see a jackalope store. We go inside and low and behold we see a not one but 5 taxidermied armadillos. A couple are drinking bottles of beer, another has a cowboy hat and six shooter. They all have one thing in common, they are all hideous. Oh well, it was a fun fantasy while it lasted. Jake drowns his sorrows with and oversized cowboy hat and pop-gun.

We finally make it to the Riverwalk and find a nice spot on the river to have some dinner. The riverwalk is basically a canal that winds through downtown, that the city has built walkways around both sides with restaurants and stores filling the landscape. They did an excellent job and it seems like it would be a really fun area at night, but we have other plans... so we gotta go.

Go spurs, go- Before the day started we weren't even sure whether or not we wanted to stop in San Antonio. Then at the last minute we decided to drive through and see the sights. On the way there we remember that the spurs are in the NBA playoffs and decide to see if they are in town tonight. Not only are they playing tonight, but there are tickets available. Gotta love stub hub. We head over to the game and become spurs fans for the day against the hated phoenix suns. The stadium is cool and Jake makes some lovely new friends. We bought our seats the day of the game for $30 bucks each, so we knew we're not going to be courtside, but as we're walking up into the upper deck we start to get worried. Every row ends with seat number 20, but we have 21-23. I have no idea how this is going to work out but I'm stressed we somehow bought counterfeit tickets, and then it all becomes clear. We are in the absolute last row of the stadium. Literally our backs our against the outside wall of the stadium. We are as far as you can possibly be from the action. The way the roof is inclined in the center we can't even see our counterpart seats across the way. We have to look down to see the fan-0-vision board, and we can't really hear anything announced because the sound waves have to bounce off 7 structures before getting to us. On top of all that, the spurs handed out little white rattles to every fan with instructions to shake incessentantly from start to finish. With all those ingredients the game added up to probably the funnest basketball game I've ever been to. Go spurs, go!

Drive all night pt2- we drove all night...again. This time with new mexico in our sights. I pull the late night duty this time and somehow manage to hit a bird and a bat before my reign of terror comes to an end. Sorry my wing-ed friends, but that's what happens when you dance with a minivan in the pale moon light.