Uprooted, an eco/travel blog

Hostels, done right, are some of my favorite places to stay. They aren’t always awesome (see Abominable Snow Mansion), but the ones that have their act together are great places to meet people, live (and eat!) for cheap, and generally get the most out of whatever town you’re passing through.
I’d heard that the Austin hostel [...]

I left something out of my previous post: two photos, featuring the young man who won the Chicken Shit Bingo game. Thought you’d enjoy them.
Happy 4th of July! It doesn’t get more American than this:

Chicken Shit Bingo is pretty straightforward. As a matter of fact, once your eyes adjust to the dimness of Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon, you pretty much can’t miss the game.
The bar is small, hot, and packed with Lone-Star-sippin’ Texans. Directly inside the entrance is a pool table with a bitchin’ NASCAR lamp hanging above it, [...]

It was a hot day, and the Housewives of Travis County were on a mission. Swimming was the goal, and on a day like this Krause Springs was the perfect destination.
They call themselves housewives, this set, but it’s really a posse of unemployed professionals, welders, artists and cooks (okay, and one real housewife) who were [...]

Compared to the North or the West, Texas smells. It’s not an unpleasant odor, but it’s unmistakeable: wafting up from the springy earth, a mix of decay and new life. A fertile smell, fecund: the smell of a marshland barely contained. Which, of course, Austin is.
The warm night air, as the evening winds pick up, [...]

It’s beautiful in Austin: Texas hill country, with low rolling treebanks as far as the eye can see. The Colorado River rambles through the middle of town, and scores of springs bring forth cool water even in the hottest months. You can hear great music wherever you go, and there’s art on every corner. But [...]

Last night a huge storm rolled through Austin.

According to the neighbors who were out on the porch watching the weather with me, storms like this aren’t out of the ordinary. I’m like, really? Lighting and thunder every couple of seconds, funnel clouds, quarter-sized hailstones, and two inches of rain in half an hour— that’s normal?
But [...]

Wow, a week just turned into two weeks, didn’t it? I must have needed the break. And boy did I get it!

Big Range Austin Dance Festival, originally uploaded by Andrew Baron

Here I am in Austin, Texas, where I’ve just spent two hot&humid weeks traipsing around with a passel of homies, swimming, getting sunburned, eating pizza, [...]