Austin, TX

I'm in Austin, Texas, for the next few days. I could say why but if I did I'd have to kill you! j/k. No, the truth is that story is so uninteresting I reckon I'd fall asleep writing it and I'm *sure* you'd fall asleep reading it. Sufficient to say that it's work related.

The flight over was ok and would hardly merit mention were it not that I found myself stuck in the middle seat, row 15. The guy on my right was ok at first but the bloke on the left was built such that he really needed two seats. Instead he spilled over on both sides!

I could have coped with that. After all, it's only a 2 hour flight but nope, half an hour into the air the bastard opened a pack of Teriyaki flavoured beef jerky! Aromatic stuff to say the least! Not only that but he didn't even have the decency to offer any to all those within nostril-shot of it. Mind you, had he done so he'd have found himself offering to the entire planeload methinks. And then, as though encouraged by the thought that the aroma of a salami sandwich couldn't make things worse, the bloke on my right whips out said sandwich!

It's hard to say which was worse; the beef jerky or the salami sanger!

Austin might be a nice city; I haven't seen enough of it to comment though I do note that, seen from the air, it seems to have a much bigger downtown area than Phoenix. I may have enough time to check it out; if so I'll probably write about it.

On the other hand, I've just returned from a trip to the supermarket for various things I forgot (such as razors). You'd reckon I've done enough travel to not forget such obvious things but apparently not. I also took the chance to get some beef jerky and salami to go with my saltine crackers! :-)

But if the trip to the supermarket is anything to go by I'm going to give downtown Austin a big miss; four years of Phoenix traffic has made me incapable of the sort of driving patience one evidently needs to navigate Austin. In short, driving around sucks. It'd probably be a little different if I knew the place well enough not to miss turns but only marginally better. It feels as though the entire layout of intersections and the traffic light patterns are designed to make driving as slow and annoying as possible.

So I reckon the next time someone complains to me about 'what a bitch it was driving to work today' in Phoenix I'm going to laugh the bitter laugh of one who remembers driving to work in Melbourne and has survived peak hour in Austin and Chicago. We forget just how good the road system is in Phoenix!