Day 7 - Miles to go...

After the massive congestion of bikes and bikers yesterday, I was hoping the end of the weekend would clear out some of the bikers. If the weekend attracted 60k bikers, then 59k of them must have left first thing Sunday morning because there were only slightly more bikes on the road than I would have thought was typical. It was good because it made getting around much easier, but it was a disappointment because I really wanted to get some shots of the sheer volume and the quality of bikes the rally attracted. In the end, the only two-wheeled vehicles I saw in any abundance were these weird tour groups all rolling around on Segways. Not really satisfied with that alternative I went on to breakfast at Maria's Taco Xpress. Yes, I had even more Mexican for breakfast.

Maria's Taco Xpress is very popular with the locals, enough so that I ended up waiting a little more than half an hour just for breakfast. The thing is, I've waited a whole lot longer for a lot worse food - Maria's tacos are worth it. I tried a sampling of tacos including carne guisada, a vegetarian that included green beans and eggplant, a standard chalupa, and a breakfast taco of potato and chorizo. They were all fantastic. It wasn't as cheap as the $3.50 taqueria breakfast the day before, nor anywhere near as quick, but I would definitely do it again.

Filled up and fueled up, it was time to try and make up for lost time with the Austin attractions. The first stop was the Cathedral of Junk, a secular shrine to all the stuff we throw away, is built in the back yard of a flamboyantly decorated house that sticks out in the otherwise normal middle class neighborhood. The cathedral used to be much bigger, taller and with more rooms, but after years of fighting with city inspectors, he's hung up the gloves. Talking to the junk architect, Vince Hannemann, he says city council has thrown various laws, regulations, and anything else they could think of and keeping the Cathedral up became constantly shifting tug-of-war. They would win, he would appeal and win with conditions. He'd meet the conditions and think he had a clear victory, and then they would find loopholes and technicalities and tell him to tear it down. It went back and forth for quite a while, but he said he recently lost hope of ever winning outright and has given in, though he's taking his time. Sadly, the fact remains that he is slowly tearing down the cathedral. It's still impressive, it's amazing to see the endless variety of discarded consumer products and how they've come together to form a true work of art. I asked Vince what he would do next, knowing that a person like him couldn't just stop making things., He said didn't know what it would be, but whatever it was it wouldn't be public...not this time.

Somewhere not too far from the Cathedral is supposed to be the Museum of Ephemerata. I did eventually find it, but I had to drive past it 4 times before I realized it was a small house in a small neighborhood. Even if it hadn't been closed, I don't know if I would've stopped. It just didn't look right...it looked too normal. And then I passed on the Worlds Largest Longhorn when I found out it was on the University of Texas' Austin campus, where there were hundreds of tailgaters supporting their baseball. Disappointed again I decided to go back downtown and walk around for a bit, where I stumbled across the Museum of the Weird. The museum was more of an homage to the history and legends of dime shows of the past, but it had some interesting exhibits and was well worth the stop. There may have been more gems along the main drag, but after another 30 minutes of walking around in the intense heat I had to call it quits. I was also calling it quits on Austin in general. After the overpriced hotel, the heat, and the evening before wasted because I couldn't get around I decided to move on.

By the end of the day I put another 260 miles behind me, ending up in the tiny town of Anson, TX. It's one of those small towns whose sole identity revolves around their high school football team, the Anson Tigers. Everything is tiger named or themed. But Anson was just the end of the trail. Over those 260 miles I was treated to a wide range of landscapes, surprise towns popping out of nowhere, and then disappearing again just as quickly. The most interesting of those was Llano, TX. I initially stopped because the towns courthouse seemed surprisingly ornate and well preserved, as did a lot of the old 1800's buildings and store fronts. It was the intriguing art of Kathleen Smith that really surprised me. Kathleen makes bottle trees. The concept of the bottle tree is fairly simple; make a tree-like structure made of welded iron and stick colorful bottles on the limbs, wine bottles seemed to work the best, and you have yourself a uniquely eye catching work of art. According to Kathleen, the idea started when she picked up a hand-me-down coat rack from the antique shop and in the process of fixing up stuck some bottles on the pegs on a whim. Long story short, a coat rack turned into a hand made, hand welded tree of iron. Kathleen is a pretty tough woman; aside from having raised her own two children and four foster children, she was outside in 95 degree heat in a flame retardant smock, with welding sleeves and helmet working on her latest creation. She's quite prolific, as her front yard is full of her absolutely amazing creations. At her request I didn't take any pictures, but to get an idea of what these things look like check out her site, though the pictures there don't do her works justice.

And then I ended my day in another cheap, $40 roadside motel. The funny thing about having stayed in several of these on my trip, I'm surprised at the difference in experience between $40 and $180. In every one of the roadside inns there has been free internet, a refrigerator, and the beds were simple but functional. The hotel in Austin tried to charge me $10 for crappy internet, which I had to argue with to get for free, and while the decor was much higher class and the bed was exponentially more comfortable, I didn't feel like the service or luxuries increased at the same rate as the price. You could request a fridge, but you weren't guaranteed one, as I overheard a diabetic woman justifiably raising hell because they "ran out" of refrigerators and she was promised one to keep her diabetic medication chilled - a necessity for her. Oddly, I think I'm more comfortable in crappy hotels.