Armadillocon Day 1

Day 1: pre-con

Up at 5am for final packing and departure. Out of the house a little after 6am. I make it to the turnoff that leads to Taylor and finally decide that the kolaches in Taylor are worth the 34 mile detour. When I get there they still have poppyseed kolaches available. w00t!

Back on the road again into Austin. Whip out the GPS and spot a geocache I want to find. Spend the next 1.5 hours or so searching for caches. I find most of the ones I look for, but not all of them.

Next stop: Aikido of Austin at 5501 N. Lamar. I sat and watched their mid-day practice. They are quite a bit different from my dojo. They have a mat about double, or more, of the size of ours but it looks a lot less pleasant to fall on. They all practice the same technique at the same time. One tori and everyone else ukes for said tori. No warm-up ukemi. Nice folks.

Next: drive down to Driftwood to have lunch at Salt Lick BBQ. Mainly for their legendary beef ribs. It took me a while to find them and it ended up not being worth the effort. The brisket was dry and they only offer beef ribs on Sundays. Bummer. The potato salad was good. The BBQ sauce was ok, honey-based instead of tomato-based. I video-taped the drive back to Austin and hope to get it uploaded soon.

Back to the convention hotel, check in and go chill in the lobby. Chatting with Julia, Renee and Elizabeth for a spell. Julie Czerneda came walking in and I was introduced to her. Such a sweet lady. Shortly thereafter we headed off to Los Portales for dinner, then back to the hotel to assemble the Art Show. We finished that around 11 pm and I collapsed into bed shortly thereafter.

tag : Convention :: Travel :: Geocaching :: Aikido