austin, tx

bad weather on the east coast friday night delayed my flight out of boston just enough to make me miss the connection from houston to austin. i turned up after midnight, grouchy and bleary, at a cookie-cutter hotel in north houston and left again, still grouchy and bleary, too early on saturday morning.

after finishing up at the conference centre on the UT austin campus (no internet access!), the plan was to find the bed and breakfast i'd been a no-show at and leave my stuff there for long enough to find a bookstore and a cup of coffee before heading to the airport again. as it turned out, i was more than a mile from where i had to go. jon, the final year law student who was passing by and gave me directions walked off, then stopped and turned to offer a ride. (this has never happened to me in san francisco.) when i got to the austin folk house, there was no-one at the desk but a post-it with a phone number was stuck to the back door. i called it to try my luck and chris, one of the owners, said to come over to his other place just round the corner. i stopped in at the star of texas for long enough to be shown the passcodes for the doors and have a large mug of coffee and a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie pressed on me. austin gets two thumbs up.