I’ll try to cram a few things together for the first post.<\/p>\n
The flight from Heathrow to Houston was excellent. I dozed some of the way, watched a couple of films and was force-fed two hot meals (not at the same time, obv), coffee and a couple of rounds of ice-cream.<\/p>\n
The flight from Houston to Austin was brilliant, the cabin-crew were\u00a0hilarious, and perked me (and everyone else) right up.<\/p>\n
The less-good things were passport and baggage controls in Houston which had obviously been organised by a committee that comprised the Marx Brothers and Benny Hill. It was a joke, a long, sad, wholly disorganised, painful, needless joke. And all travellers, not just non-US citizens, were the butt of the joke.<\/p>\n
The taxi-ride from Austin airport to my hotel continued the joke theme. My cab driver couldn’t speak English, couldn’t spell ‘Waters Edge Circle’ to type it in to his Satnav and the ‘control’ on the other end of his radio just didn’t care about him (probably because of his utter inability to string a sentence together). When he used his mobile phone to call ‘his friend at home’, and speak to him (in Arabic), to get him to read Google Map directions over the phone to the driver, I started looking around the cab for a hidden camera. I found none. When he asked me if the street number had to be typed in to his Satnav in number or in letters I almost cried with laughter.<\/p>\n
However, time passed and $80 later we eventually got here.<\/p>\n
Here is a hotel outside Austin (because if you think I’m booking accommodation in town this week, you are seriously mad).<\/p>\n
I ate at a Bar and Grill last night and, actually, had a great time with a bunch of very friendly good ol’ boys and girls. Really, it was brilliant.<\/p>\n
Alcohol was drunk. I ended up drinking pints of draft Belgian beer. In Texas. Because that’s what we do. I was less sure about the custom of putting a fuck-off-sized slice of fresh orange in the beer.<\/p>\n
The hotel suite is the size of Cardiff. I’m thinking of asking for roller-blades to get me to the bathroom which is over there somewhere *waves* far in the distance.<\/p>\n
I slept really well.<\/p>\n
Must be all the Belgian beer.<\/p>\n
Ahem.<\/p>\n
The bad news is that I have had to cut short my visit to Austin; I either need to be in two places at the same time on Monday, or I have to drop everything and return to the UK this weekend.<\/p>\n
Sadly, I shall be doing the latter.<\/p>\n
Anyway.<\/p>\n
Now I have to get on my bike and cycle over to the far side of the suite to find the bathroom.<\/p>\n
And then I need to get me to the Austin Convention Centre.<\/p>\n
Have a good day boys and girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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