Day 2-Thursday (Austin)

We arrive in Austin at night and deiced to swing by the location of the ride the next day. So we check out the location of the ride and decide to park and ride our bikes around downtown Austin, we ride toward the skyscrapers and stop at the Brixton, a local bar on 6^th street that was featured on a TV show called Bar Rescue. We talk with the bartender who was actually the owner and realize that the entire plot was faked by the staff to get free publicity. But we continue our ride towards downtown on 6^th street and find a collection of bars springing up from rock to jazz to hip-hop.  We ride though downtown and find ourselves at the State Capital. W stop to take a few pictures with the building then come across University of Texas at Austin.  We stop there to take more pictures then head back to the car.  We decided to park somewhere we could get internet so we parked in a Fedex parking lot and slept in the car for the night.

After waking up we decided to get food at a local hotel, so we called a few and asked which ones had free breakfast. Luckily, there was one near  by so we drove over and had a nice free, hot breakfast. After breakfast we mapped out our routes for visiting bicycle shops and headed out. We visited the first few together, then split up to tackle the rest separately. Charles biked the south and east as Lavell drove through the north and central parts of town.

After visiting shops, we met back at the ride location and ate a few sandwiches before preparing to ride with the Thursday Austin Social Ride group. As everyone starts to arrive for the ride the park goes from being empty to having hundreds of cyclists within an hour. We turn on our lights and have a few people ask and buy lights before the ride. As the ride begins we head towards the familiar downtown we had visited the night before. After riding though downtown with the group we stop at a park where everyone relaxes and  has a little to drink. There we met other riders who love our lights like Mindy who tells us about the free beer at the end of the ride.

So we continue to ride and end at a local bar downtown that has free beers until the tap runs out. So of course we have a few drinks and enjoy the company of the locals and end up meeting another group of people and your riders,  Eliot, Bryan, Haziel, Becca and a few others. We all talk and take pictures as we discuss the ride and our trip. After a few hours of hanging out we decide to leave and head back down 6h street to take pictures the head to the car. Around 1 am, we pack up the car and head to Houston.