Austin was fun. It really always is.
I rode in, kind of last minute, for an event being held by IAVA. It’s pretty easy to get me to come out with promises of free food and beer. It was a good opportunity to finally meet the founder, Paul Rieckhoff, and network with other Texas veterans.
While I was talking to some other guys, stuffing my face, and drinking free beer another veteran walked by and I swore I recognized him from somewhere. After we went through the whole list of units we’d had interactions with, years we spent in Iraq, when we went to jump school, we finally determined where we recognized each other from: high school. That makes the encounter even more strange, because we went to a huge high school (811 in our graduation), were in Iraq at the same time with the same division, and ended up drinking beer at the same event 150mi away from where we went to school a decade after we graduated. Small world. I also met Rudy Reyes (think Generation Kill) and he’s a hell of a nice guy.
Once the IAVA event was over, I led my new friends across the block to The Ginger Man – Austin where we met up with one of my good friends from my Malaysia (and Texas State) days. Beer was consumed, though I kept it sane and cut myself off far before the night ended to switch to water. Motorcycles and insobriety do not mix. Dinner came in the form of ridiculously good hot dogs from Frank. I’d never been there before, but I will certainly be going back on my next trip.
About 28 frames of 120 film were exposed during the trip. I tried some photojournalistic stuff with the Isolette III loaded up with Velvia 100, shot some general city stuff on expired Velvia 50, and did some random bar photos with Delta 400 and a flash. No idea how any of it came out, but I’ll see eventually for sure.
