Austin City 1

I'm Austin on a layover to Shanghai right now. I spent the day visiting an urban farm, walking around the hike and bike trail, and doing some last minute errands via borrowed bicycle. I love this city. Its green and warm, people are friendly, and there's an excitement over the newness of everything that's tempered by a proper amount of skepticism. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos, but there are some nice scenes I witnessed that I'll have to come back to sometime.

BOGGY CREEK FARM - an all-organic farm a 15-minute bike ride from downtown. They have hens, pick-your-own strawberries, tons of greens and vegetables, as well as a healthy does of politics over food transport. Standing in line today I heard Carol Ann, the owner, talking about the way Chinese garlic has ruined local production. Her garlic seems 'expensive' by comparison, but it actually juices when you cut it. We bought potatoes, cilantro and eggs laid that morning to make breakfast tacos and salsa, plus some beets for dinner. Lots of kids and older folks walking around, being friendly Texans.

HIKE AND BIKE TRAIL - a big wide sidewalk that follows nearly every creek running through the city. In San Antonio they paved over all their creeks. In Austin they turned them into linear parks for people to walk or bike along. They link to one another via other parks or the part of the Little Colorado River that runs through town and is officially called Town Lake.

We hiked down the Shoal Creek trail to the river. There were all kinds of new condos going up all along, like most everywhere in Austin. We also saw a bridges being repaired, with huge scaffolding erected in the middle of a dry part of the creek. We saw about fifteen turtles ome sun-bathing, some swimming slow, some scared and haulin' ass. There were also fish, and we wondered where all the fish go when the creek dries up mid-summer. At one point along the creek there was this long black flexible plastic tubing snaked around the base of a tree at one end, and around the side of a bridge at the other. At the bridge end, the snake was spewing out some orange mesh. Near Town Lake we saw where this big wall had fallen down and taken a huge tree with it. There were some people surveying the land at this spot, some on land and some on a canoe in the water near the fallen wall.

Well, gotta run for now, gotta catch a flight in the morning. In 5 hours actually. Post more later: river and joggers and the park-and-run, spiral ped risings for bikes, not wheelchairs., also LIVE OAKS.