Mary Beth and I lived in Austin for 6 years up until we left for Germany in ’99 so I was anxious to go back and visit with some old friends. In the 7 years that I’ve been gone it has grown tremendously. There are a lot of parts of Austin I still like, but I don’t think I could live there any more. The traffic has gotten ridiculous and the construction is awful. I stayed with Andrew and Stephanie Lochbaum. I think they were a bit nervous when I said I might stay for 2 weeks, and were probably relieved when it was “only” 10 days. They have 2 huskies so I wasn’t sure how it would work out with Abbey. They were real excited when Abbey first came in the house, and Zoe, the younger one, had to make sure Abbey knew who was boss. After a minor incident on the 2nd day, they actually got fairly friendly, and Zoe tried to get Abbey to play. We even caught them sleeping on the same bed one day. 
Every time Abbey and I would go out and come back in, Zoe would sniff her up one side and down the other. I’m not quite sure what she was looking for, but she was definitely pretty thorough.
I didn’t end up going out downtown a whole lot. I mostly hung out and visited friends. We did manage to see the Cowboy Junkies at this real cool, intimate theatre which wasn’t there when we were. It reminded me of the good things I liked about Austin – good music, good restaurants, and an eclectic mix of people and places. A favorite Austin bumper sticker is “Keep Austin Weird”. I made it to one of my favorite places, Central Market, but somehow it didn’t feel the same. Maybe it was because it seemed like everything I was looking for was higher prices than I remember. I also made it to the new flagship Whole Foods Market. It is pretty incredible with all kinds of great takeout food, which it didn’t have much of before. If you ever get to Austin, you gotta check it out.
I tried taking Abbey to some of her old stomping grounds – Town Lake, Barton Creek, Turkey Creek – but except for Turkey Creek she really wasn’t that interested. I think it was partly because of the heat in the beginning of the week. Lucky for her it turned colder later in the week and stayed cool and rainy ‘til we left. Turkey Creek Nature Trail is in the city park right near where we used to live. On Monday Abbey and I went to see our old neighbors for dinner so I brought her to the trail beforehand. I’m not sure if she remembered it, but at first I was more excited than she was. After a while she loosened up and seemed to enjoy it. It was dark by the time we got to the Branches so I didn’t get to see our old house. Bill and Valerie said they have put a pool in, but didn’t say much more than that. Of course, they did say it’s not the same without us there;) Their son, Charles, is a junior at UT which is hard to believe since he was about 8 when we first moved there. He used to love to come on walks with us when we took the dogs. Their dog, Ollie, has since passed away, but they just recently got a new cocker spaniel named Bentley. He is very friendly with all dogs, but he had never had a dog in “his” house before so he put up a real stink when we first got there. It took him quite a while to settle down, but he finally resigned himself to the fact that Abbey was sticking around for at least a little while. He got excited again after dinner was over just to make sure she wasn’t getting too comfortable, but he was actually trying to get her to play. I did get some potentially bad news about Abbey on this trip. I took her to Buster’s old vet to get her checked out for a few things and found out she may have Lyme disease. She isn’t showing any symptoms, but 2 tests came back positive and she’s been exposed to dozens of ticks in her life. Hopefully, we can keep it under control somehow. She has already slowed down a lot this year, so I’m not sure how much hiking she’ll do anyways.
Austin was really one of the last stops on my list of places I wanted to go to visit people. It’s kind of the end of my first loop around the country and now the second loop begins. I have some vague plans so far with a few definite stops mapped out, but a lot of it is up in the air. I don’t think I’ll see as many of you this time around but if you ever want to join me somewhere along the way just drop me an email. There are tons of great places to visit around the country.