Austin City Limits

The 7th through the 11th of October, Kyle and I ventured back to TX for the music festival, Austin City Limits (ACL). In 2009 we went to ACL by ourselves, but for 2010 we convinced a few friends to go with us: Dave, Tim, Reyna and Terry. It was awesome to be with friends for the weekend. Reyna found us a great condo, right downtown, to share for the grueling 3 day concert fest. Thanks Reyna!

Reyna and Terry

Tim, Kyle and Dave

Everyday we hacked, which drew random people to our group.

Reyna and Terry took the free shuttle to the park each day, but the rest of us walked to the park along the river. On this day we walked on the farther side of the river and found this Stevie Ray Vaughan statue.

The flags are used to help people find their group.There were some very entertaining flags, which I can't describe here.

We stayed clear of the group with this flag.

The Flaming Lips, one of Kyle's favorite bands, performed. Their lead singer went out in the crowd in his ball.

We were in the bottom right corner of the photo somewhere. This photo doesn't come close to showing how many people were in the crowd. ACL draws about 65,000 people.

One of the best moments of the weekend, for me, was when Tim and Kyle blew my mind during the Eagles concert. They taught me two tricks that helped me enjoy the music more. We were pretty far from the stage and Kyle showed me how to cup my ears to block out most background noise and increasing the volume from the stage. Then Tim showed me how to improve my sight of the stage by creating a small circle around one eye with my hand. Both tricks worked excellently! I even use the eye trick daily to read the time. Kyle uses the ear cup when I am on the phone so he can hear the tv over me. I loved our science hour at ACL. Thanks guys!

http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/ear/hearing1.htm, for the eye trick you can look up pinhole glasses.

We spent a few nights closing down the bars, playing shuffleboard. Kyle and Reyna were obviously the best out of the group. I specifically needed to improve, much to the dismay of my partner, Kyle.

Thank you Reyna, Terry, Dave, Tim and Kyle for a memorable weekend. You guys rock!

Love you all,
Julie

Our first guest!

The first weekend in October, Ralph, an old college friend, came to visit us for a day. We started our day by going to Walden Pond. We wandered through the woods wondering why no one else was there. There were other cars in the parking lot, but no people around the pond. We walked around the whole pond, taking in the fall colors and looking for animals. When we made it back to the parking lot we noticed the signs for Walden Pond pointed in the opposite direction. Apparently, we had visited Goose Pond. That explains why our little hike landed us in many back yards. Oops.

Walden Pond was much larger than Goose Pond. One of the information posters told us that at one time 20,000 people visited the Pond. Luckily, they restrict visitor numbers these days. There were people in wet suits enjoying the really cold water.

We walked around Walden Pond. The trail we followed wouldn't let us get off the path, which is probably a good thing considering our first pond excursion.