DAY 71
Week 11
AUSTIN (Texas, USA) to SAN ANTONIO (Texas, USA)
Wednesday August 30th, 2006
TODAYS MILEAGE – 106 miles or 171 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 8633 miles or 13893 kilometres
Off to San Antonio again!!! 
Today started out as a slack attack day in which I only wanted to go and check out the Boomerang's Gourmet Veggie & Meat Pies as I'm a bit of a maggotbag aficionado.
I started with a "Traditional Beef Pie" which is advertised as "High quality ground beef, onions, Worcestershire and seasonings combined in delicious gravy". As pies go it was a pie. The meat was ground too fine, the onions were like little flakes and the sauce was a bit dry for my likes.
I followed up with a "Steak & Mushroom" pie which was advertised as "Grilled steak, onions and mushrooms in our Traditional sauce with a touch of Thyme". It was better than the first pie, but suffered from the same onion issue and had a miniscule amount of mushrooms.
To escape an afternoon thunderstorm, I ducked into a cinema to have a look at Mark Wahlberg's new movie Invincible. It's a good yarn of a out of work teacher in Philadelphia, who goes from being a part time barman to playing for the Eagles in the late 1970's. Well worth a look.
While I was in the movie, the panel shop called to say my Trailblazer was ready for me to pick up. At $2875.50 for the repairs (it was $550.00 more than the quote I got in Dallas) I was thankful that I only had to pay my $500.00 deductible and be on my way.
Several months ago a good mate of mine, Jordi Duffy, sent me an email informing me that he would be heading to the United States of a Miracle. As it turns out, he was going to land in San Antonio (Texas) which is only an hour from where I'm staying in Austin (Texas).
A quick stop at Dash & Christine's for a change of clothes, my camera gear & a laptop and the Trailblazer was headed South to San Antonio - again.
A bit over 3 years ago, Jordi was center punched by a vehicle while riding his Harley in Australia's capitol city Canberra. To know what he has gone through over that time (i.e. hospitalizations, surgeries, rehab) just seeing him walk made me humble in his presence, as a lot of people simply would have given up and stayed in a hospital bed or wheelchair.
We were both a bit on the fang so headed over to Dick's Last Resort for a beer and a feed. After a couple of hours of bouncing "who, what, where & when's" off each other saw us mosey on over to Mad Dog's British Pub. As it happens, we hit San Antonio the same week as Toyota's National Dealer Conference and a fair few of these participants were in the pub on karaoke night no less.
We were having a good giggle at some of the patrons efforts, especially the William Hung sound alikes. Some sheila in the crowd suggests to Jordi that he should get up and do a tune. He said he only knows two songs Happy Birthday and The Hokey Pokey and we both thought that would be the end of it. The highlight of the night was seeing Jordi's dragged up on stage as the backup singer doing the Hokey Pokey, as the sheila had called his bluff. Talk about funny.
A good time was had by all!!!