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It's been a while since the last post so here's a catch up. I'll be brief hopefully. Starting in nawlins, I broke my cardinal rule and paid for a nights accomodation. I deeply regret it and I promise it won't happen again. I suppose I paid for the hostel dorm room because i had recently been informed that new orleans has the highest murder rate per capita. which i ironic because the place i stayed at apparently had 5 murders the week before.  anyways got to the hostel, no one there, so i blogged. then someone showed up showed me to my room and gave me a tour the rest of the facilities. found a naked woman in the back... yada yada yada i bought her dinner dt. caught some great music downtown, met a guy who had a house and a job etc. and was now homeless due to katrina. sad stuff for sure. yada yada yada went back to the marriott the next morning where i had valeted my  bike the day before. rode out of there and onto tex to meet up with reilly and go to schlitterbahn! well i stopped by the gas station to fuel up and noticed my tire looking a little bare. so while on the road, my mind started to dwell on this tire and i decided i had better stop and get a new one before it blew out on the highway. now i was in baton rouge, land of the rebels, and succesffully looked through every tire store before finally finding the right tire 3 hours later. they could not balance it for me so i had to take it to a local bmw motorcycle shop. the guys in the shop there were awesome. they balanced my rear wheel for 20 bucks and sold me a brand new front tire for 20 bucks. as it turns out, my rear tire had at absolute most 50 miles left on it before it blew out. probably would not have made it the 400 miles to austin. at that shop i met a character named jack something. he had come into the shop trying to get one of the mechanics to come crew a boat in the gulf of mexico with him. he kept talking about this so i said i'll do it. took him off guard, but i told him my story and he came around. the only problem is that he is quite sure that obama is poised to destroy the us. I asked him how he thought obama would pull such a feat and he replied: "reform healthcare." maybe he and i have different definitions of the word destroy.  anyways good thing i had those new tires on my bike because by the time i left baton rouge the sky was poised to open up. and it did. this was the biggest rain i have ever ridden through. the drops were huge and for a bit it hailed. rain hurts when it hits you at 70 mph riding a motorcycle but hail is somethin else. the other moto riders on the freeway felt the same way because they pulled off under the overpasses to wait out the storm. this wa the point when the truck in front of me was generating a 10 foot rooster tail of water behind him.  too bad for them because i was loving it. it was intense but the payoff was i saw a bolt of lightning hit 50 yards ahead of me just 10 ffet off the freeway. the accompanying thunder shook my body. it is truly an impressive feat of nature. i just wished i had put on my windbreaker. the sun was about down and i was absolutely soaked. but it wasnt bad.  so i road for the next 8 hours or so and got to austin late into the night. met up with my sister rebecca and hit the sack. 

woke up early the next morning to meet up with reilly, paige, and kyla. We headed to schlitterbahn and had a blast. saw many of the worst tattoos on this planet (i hope) and tubed all day. lot of fun. yada yada yada, ive been in austin for the past week. loving it. took a few days to go visit my other sister shavahn and her husband dean and my niece tyler. Changed my oil there, helped dean and ashley out with and engine they are rebuilding, but more importantly fed the chickens with ty. she is a cute 3 year old that could pass as 6 based on her height. shes got volleyball written all over her.  next morning i woke up to her jumping on my chest yelling "wake up uncle woot." then she found some cow that moos far too loud to be legal in city limits. i was up. just as im getting up she had tucked the cow into the sheets and told me to be quiet because he was sleeping. of course. oh yeah, dean and i and ashley got a steak at some local steakhouse, and when they ordered the small steaks I was a little disappointed because i wwas very hungry. anyways the steak came and it didnt even fit on the plate. overflowing on all sides i wondered how you could get away calling this a small. texas lesson learned. it was damn good though. feeling a bit comatose i decided no more work today.

so much for being brief.

headed back west with a planned pit stop in austin. said id be there for a day or two, still here 6 days later. too much fun here that isnt blogworthy. but i did meet a great person name Luis through Rebecca. Luis is a retired accountant that now follows his passion of building and designing lofts. he is also very spiritual, something that i have never read much into because i cant use logic to rationalize it. However, he is very intuitive and was able to pick up on some obscure details of my life that few have before. the next day i told him the exact time and place i was born and he gave me a 3 hour long lesson on my life. it was quite intense. i'll spare you the details but i am more interested in the topic now and want to know why historically so many civilizations have based their beliefs not on the story of gods, but rather the alignment of the stars. lot to learn. 

leaving luis' place i saw a guy with a pv544, the very same car i have been working on practically my whole life. i turned around and followed him to his spot. talked with him a bit ( i have only seen one similar on the street a handful of times in my life). he was a  music bum, gave me his card, and i'll send him some pics of my frankencar. went to the bookstore after to get the book Luis told me i must read. they had it in stock, 15 bucks tho, i balked at the price but remembered how adamant Luis was so i walked to the counter to buy it. Fate happened and i had luckily left my tab open the night before, so after trying to haggle for the seven dollars in my wallet, i put the book back. i'll buy it another day. 

that night met a bunch of new UT faculty at a mixer with my sis. some were smug, some lacked basic social skills, but most were great people. had a great time with them all. over pizza that night with some of the more social, talk came to the show cheaters, and being the academia crowd, quickly evolved into a much deeper discussion.

alright thats enough, i get another post sooner. maybe. now i just have to decide if i am heading east or west...