Austin, Texas

Dave; one of my housemates from Uni picked us up at Austin airport on Wednesday afternoon. Dave got married in January to Donita, but we couldn't attend so it was nice to see him and his new bride. Unfortunately their two children were travelling with their Aunt so we didn't get to meet them.

The first night we were treated to a tasty BBQ cooked by Dave, beer can chicken is a great invention! The net day in an effort to be a little sporty we tried out a new sport called 'Disc Golf' which is basically the same rules as golf but with a frisbee instead of clubs and a ball. Turns out its a good laugh, although the heat of Austin doesn't exactly help with the fun. We had a dip in the local river afterwards to cool down, as the nearby 'river pool' was shut for cleaning. That evening we headed to an restaurant that also had a games complex attached where we played various fun fairground type games for tokens. At the end of the evening between the four of us we had barely accumulated enough tokens to get a cuddly toy... We had a lot of fun though.

The next day we went for a walk in McKinney National Park, which was hot to say the least. Luckily there was a nice natural pool at the end to take a dip in. The water was quite warm so we weren't as cooled as we'd hoped. The four of us went for tasty steaks at a Salt Grass steakhouse. The steaks were so big we had to share one per couple! Very tender too, they just melted in your mouth.

A visit to Texas wouldn't be complete without a trip to a Tex-Mex restaurant, so after spending Saturday lounging round at Dave's like the good ol' days we topped up on the previous days indulgences with burritos, fajitas and tacos. Afterwards we went to see Jurassic Park at a theatre where people commentated on the film like Mystery Theatre 2000 we used to watch. Quite funny in places especially pointing out the continuity errors. We were lucky to be allocated a balcony box where each couple got their own lazyboy-couch to lounge on some more. This I've decided is the only way to watch films at the cinema!

Sadly our time is up in Austin and we're trying at the moment to get to LA. At this point however the poor planning of American Airlines has meant we've spent 6 hours waiting for a plane to take us there. It doesn't look like its going to be ready any time soon either. A comedy of errors by incompetents has meant that our plane needed a part that was in Dallas, which was loaded onto a plane heading this way, that plane broke before it left Dallas too. So they put the part on a second plane out of Dallas only to find out when it arrived that they'd loaded the wrong part! American Airlines are worse than pants at customer service, we've been given $10 (GBP5) as compensation for wasting the best part of a day. Rubbish. I don't think we'll be flying American Airlines again anytime soon, even if they are the cheaper option.

Update: we finally arrived in LAX seven hours late, only to have to wait another 40 mins for our bags to arrive after a change of carousel too. Fed up with all things American Airlines we finally got to our hotel about 8pm tired and annoyed.