Monday March 9, 2015

We woke up to pouring rain, with the forecast being for rain all day. We didn’t want to postpone again and miss the chance of the warmshowers in Austin, so with little discussion and a quick agreement we decided to take a taxi to Austin. Taking the taxi took the money we would have saved on the warmshowers, but neither of us wanted to cycle in the rain. The warmshowers hosts would not be available until 5:00pm which would mean we would be cold and wet while waiting for them to arrive home.

We left the motel late (11:00 a.m.) and took the taxi directly to an REI Store in Austin. I was hoping that they carried the Keen cycling sandals, but unfortunately, they have stopped stocking them. Never mind we did enjoy wandering around for a couple of hours. We were allowed to bring the bikes in the store and left them in the “care” of the cashiers while we wandered around. At one point Ralf noticed a young man (store-person) looking at the bikes. I went over to chat to him, he was looking at our set-up as he wants to do something like we are doing – “some day”. We chatted for a while about our trip and the gear we are carrying. We knew our bikes would be safe while he was hovering around.

After we had replenished on some of our stuff, we asked the cashier if we could pop next door and get some lunch. There was a café in the bookstore, we had a very expensive sandwich with a really good cup of coffee for lunch.

At about 4:30 pm we went back to our bikes and were ready to leave for our warmshowers house. However, there was another young couple checking out our bikes when we got back. This couple were planning their own road trip at the end of the month. Again we chatted about our gear and where we have been. They are planning to cycle from Texas to Oregon, starting at the end of March.

We arrived at Hilary and Sam’s place at about 5:15, they weren’t home yet, but Sam arrived home at about 5:30pm.

We had a lovely dinner with them and a great chat, it was a late night but they have invited us to stay an extra night so that we could visit the downtown of Austin and the State Capitol Building.