A Time For Everything

Image Courtesy of Austin Pride.

It's official! I've attended my very first Pride Parade and I had a blast. The whole weekend was so much fun.

I met one of my oldest and dearest friends down in Austin and not only did we attend the Pride Parade, but we did some whirlwind sightseeing as well.

Weekend started Friday (08/09) with dinner at a local sub shop. Shout out to ThunderCloud Subs and their delicious sandwiches. I had the Lady Bird sub--chicken salad with avocado, bacon, and jalapenos--and it was fantastic. Highly recommend.

After dinner, Donny and I scoped out the launch point of our bat watching cruise, which we located easily, but then we had a couple of hours to kill. Rather than go back to the hotel, we walked along the Ann and Roy Butler Trail on the south side of Lady Bird Lake aka the Colorado River aka Town Lake, stopping often so I could give the knees and the hips a breather.

The bat watching cruise itself was also fantastic. Another shout out-- this time to Lone Star Riverboat for bat watching and comedy show. Captain DJ piloted the boat and Captain Mike was our tour guide. He was a font of knowledge of both the skyline and the bats and was very funny. Donny and I had a fantastic time and we got one of the best bat excursions of the season, according to Mike.

Not only did we see bats, but we also got a lightning show as weather sort of circled the city as the cruise was coming to an end. Overall, it was a fantastic evening.

Donny and me!

Here's one column of bats taking off...

We saw five or six of these curly-cuing columns at least.

And all of the bats are female!!

And here's the video:

They eat mosquitoes and moths and tend to fly downriver to the farms to dine. But they do keep the mosquito population along the river in check.

Saturday dawned sunny and warm...it's August in Texas, so duh. :0) We found a Target to buy bottled water for Saturday night's parade along with a few other things I decided I needed.

Then we did some sight-seeing. First we visited the LBJ Presidential Library and that was suuuuper interesting. I wasn't sure how to feel bout the man, but I think I like him and I certainly appreciate all the things he did to facilitate Civil Rights.

After lunch, we then went to see the Neill-Cochran House Museum. The house was lovely. Smaller than I expected from a footprint perspective, but the rooms were large with high ceilings as well as  airy with very tall windows and wide doors. Aside from having to dust the high corners, living in a house like that would be amazing. Every window had a pair of dark green shutters. Both floors had four rooms, two on each side with the wide foyer / hall / staircase in the middle.

The upstairs hall was big enough to be used as shared living space and there was a large door or set of doors that opened onto a balcony. That must have been a lovely spot to sit in the shade of both the overhanging roof and the tall trees.

The real draw of this place was the authentic slave quarters on the property. It, too, was a two story structure although not as tall as the house. It was maybe twelve feet square and had a square hole in the ceiling of the first floor with a rudimentary ladder for those sleeping on the second floor. * I * would have struggled to shimmy through that hole. In one corner downstairs there was a -- I don't even know what to call it -- it was like a small brick oven at the base for the fire and over that was a large metal basin for heating water. it had a chimney to carry the smoke up and out and provide no doubt limited heat to the upstairs.

Very eye opening and sad, quite frankly. Our nation was built on the backs of the slaves we dragged from their homeland, and we treated them like shit.

*sigh*

So after that we went back to the hotel and chatted for a bit before attempting naps in advance of the parade. I slept a bit, but not as much as I'd hoped.

By a quirk of luck, our hotel was situated at the launching off point of the parade. It was on a corner and one of the streets was where the floats and other parade procession organizations.

We walked two blocks west and took our spot at the base of the Texas Capitol building.

But the parade itself was amazing. I had so much fun seeing all the floats and organizations supporting the LGBTQ community. My only beef was that I felt it lasted a little too long...probably an hour and half. At the hour mark I was ready to be done. Maybe that's just me. Maybe was because I was standing the whole time.

My favorite group was a group of Middle-Eastern men--I have no idea what organization or business they were representing--but it was so very cool to see these men who'd have dealt with a fate I hate to imagine in their home country--dancing and singing and celebrating this part of themselves without fear of judgement or reprisal.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all. Donny and I will do this again--thinking about Denver next June.

Here are a few pictures:

Catch you in two weeks!