I'm in a radio class this semester, and we get the opportunities to tour a few radio stations in different markets around Texas. We had a tour scheduled for Friday in Austin at Emmis radio (home of 101X, BobFM and KLBJ), and I also had a friend who needed a ride to Austin for the weekend. Enter: Courtney Bishop; best friend, twinkie and all-around greatest person in the world.
Courtney and I met in freshman year at Texas A&M University at Galveston. We were in the same beginner's yoga class. We bonded immediately, probably because I saw parts of her that not many people have seen.
I fell in friendlove with her passion for life and her carefree, don't-give-a-shit attitude. She is my idol and hero, and I would be in no place enjoyable without her in my life.
That being said, I would do anything for her. This includes driving from College Station to Galveston and then from Galveston back on up to Austin....Twice. That is a lot of driving. A LOT.
Math, people, I'm going to do math. From College Station to Galveston is a two and a half hour drive. Galveston to Austin is another four hours, and then I made both trips once again today, to drop Courtney off in Galveston and then to come back to College Station. Cumulatively, I have driven around 13 hours (give or take an hour or so for travel within Austin), and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Friday's tour at Emmis radio went well. I am sad to say that I was not on my best sarcasm trip because I had only gotten around four hours of sleep the night before, but that is perfectly okay with me. The station was a good learning experience. It is a very different thing to have bits and pieces of information fed to you by a professor, then to have the same information presented to you in live format. It was difficult for me to grasp different aspects of a radio production project, but Emmis was a great place to learn. We met with program directors, a couple of on-air personalities for 101X (Jason and Deb from the morning show, one: British, both: hilarious), plus promotions staff for the station. Needless to say, I enjoyed myself and was very thrilled to leave the station with a free t-shirt, a couple of coozies and a business card that labeled the owner a "chronic masturbator." I. Am. Amused.
The remainder of the day was spent lounging around Courtney's house in Round Rock. We played with her cat, Diesel, then went to the grocery store with her mom to pick up a few things for dinner and a couple of movies. The rest of the evening comprised cooking salmon with a jalapeno dip, baked rice with zucchini and squash, and a spinach salad for dinner. We watched Megamind and Inception, then enjoyed some homemade rice krispie treats with a dark chocolate-caramel drizzle. I'm fairly certain I ate three within a matter of minutes.
After a baby shower on Saturday, Courtney and I jetted off to downtown Austin. The two of us walked around for a solid two and a half hours. We tried on clothes we couldn't afford, people-watched, walked up to the capitol building and stole a couple of beautiful roses from a yard before heading out for some dinner. For those of you who enjoy a good beer and a burger to match, please check out Dirty Martin's.
"In 1926 John Martin opened a little restaurant named Martin's Kum-Bak which served hamburgers, shakes and other popular items of the time. It was a small place with a dirt floor along with just eight bar stools inside and a small drive through. Up until the 1940s and 1950s the majority of Martin's business was done in the parking lot with car hops. Through those early years, the dirt floor was responsible for Martin's Kum-Bak eventually being nicknamed "Dirty's" or "Dirty Martin's". Though a concrete floor was added in 1951, the unofficial name of "Dirty's" stuck with the patrons and, years later, was adopted by Martin's. The original Martin's was neighbored by a local gas station until 1957 and sometime after, a bar named The Friendly Tavern. But in the mid 1960s the walls between the two were knocked down and the two buildings were joined to create a back dining area for the restaurant giving more indoor space to patrons. This same building has been providing a comfortable, friendly atmosphere to our loyal customers to this day." (http://www.dirtymartins.com/1/Home.htm)Holy crap, did we have some fun. We both got a D.H. special and shared a basket of homemade fries, then proceeded to split two pitchers of Austin Amber. Thank goodness for happy hour. Those pitchers were only six bucks a piece! Then, thanks to me being all friendly and whatnot, the waitress gave us another pitcher for free. FOR. FREE. We sat around the restaurant for a few hours, occasionally chatting with some of the other patrons or a waiter/waitress. We witnessed a kid throw up twice because his father let him eat a huge bowl of chili and then had two malts, and I flirted heavily with the British waiter/manager named Morgan. All of this fun was topped off by the fact that we got a handful of flowers from some arbitrary guy sitting down with some of his buddies. I don't think this night could have gone much better. We rode back to Round Rock, singing "Pachuca Sunset" and "Nine in the Afternoon," ate a couple more rice krispie treats, then passed out on Courtney's bed around 1:30am.
If I don't end up living in Austin, I will be sorely disappointed.
