Hello from Austin, Texas. I'm on a complimentary computer terminal at Schlotzdky's Deli. Just had a terrific "original" sandwich...smoked meats, ham, cheese, olives, lettuce, tomatoes, onions on toasted sourdough...yummy! Browsing some restaurants on 6th Street for tonight. About 100 venues here have live music. Think I'll go to the Friday morning tour of the studios of Austin City Limits. Saw "pork shanks" done ossu buco style...also whole crayfish...so many choices so little time. BTW, Jim's sweating it out in the library.

We've been very favourably impressed with Texas. People are wonderfully friendly, especially that state trooper who pulled Jim over for speeding 15 minutes after we left the airport. He gave him a warning and almost apologized. Guess who's been doing the speed limit since! We ended up with this rather hot looking car (only one available when we went to pick up our rental...well, the other was a mini van) so I think the guy expected to see some kids when he pulled us over. I think he took pity on us when he saw we were a couple of jet lagged old fogeys.

Our B & B in Austen is terrific. Beautiful old house with porches all around. Our room enters onto our own little private part with a wooden swing for two. Seems almost all the houses around here have at least a small porch complete with wooden swing and often rocking chairs. The B & B is a rather grand house but there are lots of small bungalows that look like mini Arts & Craft houses. Seems some developer in the early 1900's made a point of making these lots available for the "working man or woman"...the advertising pitch was "Have a house for the price of two beers a day". People built their own for the most part so there's quite an interesting variety.

Weather's great...sunny and in the 70's.

Bye for now.