Spring Break, Austin Style

My best friend Winnie the Flight Attendant got five days off in a row that coincided with my Spring Break from teaching, so we took off Monday morning and drove to Austin. We headed straight for SoCo – that’s South Congress for you uninitiated, where stylish cafés and second hand boutiques and psychedelic costume stores with names like Lucy in Disguise With Diamonds line the avenue. We shopped happily among the hepcats and dudes before eventually checking into the downtown Hilton, where we nabbed a $250 room for 90 bucks a night thanks to priceline! Shazam.

A nasty storm blew in overnight, but that didn’t stop us from setting off on foot Tuesday morning for the Whole Foods at 6th and Lamar, which could just as easily be called Nirvana. Not only do they have the most glorious grocery displays and an organic produce section I want to kneel reverently before, but they have the equivalent of a mega mall’s food court, just for health nuts. They’ve got sandwiches with names like “The Barton Springs” – free-range smoked turkey and brie on an organic whole grain baguette with sprouts and organic greens and a nutty fig sauce. They’ve got a sushi bar where all the fish is certifiably sustainably caught. They’ve got a healthy taquito bar and an organic fair trade shade grown coffee bar and a brick oven pizza kitchen and a salad bar and an Indian buffet and … well, I'm ready to move in, right into that store if they'd only let me.

By the time we finally got out of Whole Foods, the dark clouds were roiling and looming again. Winnie wanted to find the Buffalo Exchange, the be-all-end-all of thrift stores. After inquiring as to its whereabouts and being undaunted by the checker’s disbelieving stare when Win said we’d be walking, we set off.

Four hours and approximately five miles later, we got there. In between, we summited the highest peaks in Austin (compared to flat Corpus Christi, this is significant), trekked across the UT campus (where we decidedly did not blend in with the pierced and dyed 20-somethings), and endured the arrival of a cold front (an hour-long deluge with 30-knot gusts that we sat out in a Jack-in-the-Box watching drenched college kids try to make it to class despite being underdressed and disumbrellaed).

After the rain subsided, the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees, yet still we trekked, not unlike zealots on a religious mission. As the sun began to sink low on the horizon, I finally stopped dead in my tracks and said, “Winnie. I’m cold and I’m done. Let’s go back.”

She turned around with a gleam in her eye and said, “But we’re here. We’ve found it.”

And we were and we had.

Perhaps the arduousness of the journey tinted my view, but man, did that store have some cool clothes in it! Over the next three hours I was able to completely revitalize my wardrobe with highly original skirts, utterly unique dresses and distinctive tops that altogether cost less than $200. The store is so progressive and PC that they rewarded us for bringing our own shopping bags. We gave our 5-cent tokens to a spay-neuter nonprofit organization that also cares for abandoned pets. (Austin, you're my people! I'm telling you!)

To celebrate the success of our venture, we drank Chianti and feasted at a Mediterranean restaurant, took a bus back to the Hilton, warmed up, changed outfits and headed to 6th Street, where we barhopped and listened to some really good blues. At a bar whose name I can’t recall, the band’s harmonica player insisted on buying me shots of Jack Daniels which I insisted on drinking. Eventually, the bar closed, and the harmonica player and drummer tried to talk us into breakfast. But the harmonica man’s suggestive wink was unappealing, so Win and I gracefully declined, walked ourselves back to the Hilton through the rain and soaked up the alcohol with granola bars and giggles.

Maybe the two best things about spring break as a newly single forty-something are (1) the amazing capacity for endurance sports I’ve developed over the years (need I insist that hiking four hours through inclement weather to try on clothes for another three falls into this category?) and (2) the guiltless knowledge that all the free Jack Daniels in the world deserves nothing more than a “thank you and good night.”