SXSW – Day 0 | March 11, 2005

Yesterday was a pretty long and tiring day all told. I got up at 6am, meeting Jeremy and Richard at the station. A short train ride later and we were deposited at Gatwick airport. After the usual check-in rigmarole we hooked up with our other traveling companion of the day – Dunstan and caught our transatlantic flight to Houston. The flight went pretty smoothly. I watched The Incredibles, caught up with a bit of work and even managed to get a couple of hours of sleep. About 15 hours later we arrived in Austin to be greeted by a beautiful sunny Texan afternoon.

The Taxi ride to the hotel was possibly one of the most entertaining cab rides I’ve ever had, and a real introduction to Texan hospitality. The cab driver was my stereotypical image of a Texan – honest, friendly and with an authentic southern drawl. During the Cab ride we chatted about Texas BBQ, The Rodeo, Horse Riding, Texas BBQ, SXSW, Bush and oh, Texas BBQ.

Getting to the Hotel we immediately hooked up with Dunstan’s room mate – Ethan and headed to the lounge for free beer. After knocking back a couple of cold ones we wandered along 6th street and ended up at the Iron Cactus for Frozen Margaritas and Tex Mex food. After a meal fit for three, we ran over the road for another beer at Maggie Mae’s before moving onto Buffalo Billiards for more beer and table football. As the jet lag started to kick in, we hit 4th street, and our last stop for the evening, Halcyon Coffeehouse.

Halcyon is a really nice coffeehouse-come-bar dripping in WiFi, and the kind of place Brighton really needs. I’d been having connectivity problems all evening so lightly drunk and bleary eyed, we had an impromptu hardware hacking session which prompted Ethan to describe us as the special needs A-Team. After this many beers back home I’d be well and truly hammered. Luckily American beer is like making love in a canoe, so I wasn’t feeling too worse for ware.

With the jet lag firmly washing over us, it was time to head back to the hotel for some well deserved rest. Jeremy was in charge of booking the accommodation and I was under the impression we were getting a twin room with an extra bed. However it turned out that the twin rooms wouldn’t fit an extra bed so I drew the short straw and crashed on the floor! Luckily, having been awake now for 24hrs it wasn’t too difficult to get to sleep.