Austin Improv Festival
Here’s a detailed itinerary of my activities in Austin as well as some pictures from the trip:
Thursday:
Depart DIA after parking in Pikes Peak long term parking lot.
Arrive in Austin after short 2-hour flight.
Drive to Omni South hotel in rental car with Steve, Aubrey, Chris, and Meredith. My seat was consistently the rear left passenger seat in the white Ford Escape. The rear seat made the flight seated next to a very tall man seem like a lot of space. We got the vehicle from Alamo car rentals: I thought that was appropriate.
Walk under I-35 to IHOP for dinner.
Walk back to the Omni from IHOP in light rain and piles of now-wet bird excrement covering the Omni parking lot, sidewalk, and grass.
Track bird feces and mud back into hotel rooms. Find spot of bird crap on jeans. (Great, my only pair of jeans and it’s only Thursday.)
Friday:
Drive downtown to scope out Hideout Theater (in back of a coffee shop) at 7th & Congress. Nobody’s there yet, and there are no show credentials or T-shirts for us. Didn’t they say there would be T-shirts for us? I packed one less T-shirt on that expectation.
Eat lunch at Murphy’s Deli. Chicken quesadilla. Mmmm.
Buy snacks at CVS pharmacy.
Head back to Omni hotel after checking out music store and haberdashery on 6th.
Clean up & change at hotel.
Head back downtown, park on 6th st, but learn that our festival IDs are at a different theater not within walking distance. Also, they don’t have shirts for us. Where are our T-shirts?
Walk down to Moonshine Patio Bar & Grille for best salmon dinner I’ve had in a long time. Chirs & Meredith leave before dinner to catch cab to other theater to see a friend perform.
Walk back to the car and drive to other theater to pick up Chris, Meredith, and festival IDs.
Return to downtown and park in lot at 10th & Congress on parking tip from festival local.
Walk back to Hideout theater for that evening’s Hit and Run performance in improv festival. We did a great job. There was one song for which I was totally confused (I didn’t know where the beat was, what the meter was, or what the line length was), but I kept playing anyway.
Go out to absinthe bar after show for drinks.
Go to pool bar on 6th street for more drinks (it’s getting very late and loud now). I put in earplugs to save my hearing from destruction. 6th street is crazy on Friday night.
Finally get back to hotel, asleep at 03:00.
Saturday:
Breakfast at the Kettle restaurant at 12:15.
Park downtown at same 10th & Congress lot.
Walk down to 4th & congress for closed art museum.
Walk back up to 6th to buy gift (spotted on previous day) for K at music store.
Meet up with Mark & Natasha, walk up through capitol building and tour, then walk to art museum on south end of campus (19th St)
Walk back to 10th St to car.
Drive to Hula Hut for awesome Shiner Bock chicken & steak fajitas.
Drive back to hotel.
Sunday:
Chris’s snoring wakes me up three times during the night.
Breakfast at Denny’s just East of downtown, taken to go and eaten in lobby of Doubletree.
Aubrey drops Steve & me off at theater for workshop and takes the rest to the airport.
Do workshop. Favorite song is “Birds of Paradise.” Ask one last time about our T-shirts.
Drive to airport, return car, check in, board plane, fly home, drive Steve & Aubrey home, go home. Glad to be home.
What I’ll remember the most about this trip, aside from the humidity, is the excellend albeit expensive food I had on Friday and Saturday nights. Moonshine had a great salmon and the fajitas at the Hula Hut were an experience. There was also a lot of walking involved in this trip, but I got to know downtown Austin and a bit of 6th Street. They also like to put stars everywhere, like a logo. It’s like the Texas trademark. There’s even a gigantic metal sculpture of their 5-pointed star outside the state museum just North of the capitol building. …Just so you know you’re still in Texas.
Here are some pictures from the trip. Note that none of them are actually of the improv festival.
