Creative birdhouses
Yard art
Pottery by local studio
Glaze Gallery
Here’s who we heard on Sunday, with performers listed under the photos:
Austin finally got a little rain yesterday! The cloud cover and rain kept the temperatures cool (80s) for the second day of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Bill and I delayed going over to Zilker Park until around 4 PM…just in time for the second band of showers to come through. So this was my view during the first 30 minutes of Alison Krauss’ performance:
Austin City Limits Music Festival is off to a good start! Everyone was worried about moving the festival back to the typically hot month of September again. But overcast skies on Friday kept the temperatures in the low 90s. Bill and I headed over to the festival at Zilker Park after a brief rainstorm passed over downtown. We took the shuttle bus from Republic Square Park just a few blocks from our apartment. Then we walked back home at the end of the evening.
Bill and I didn’t have any “must-see” bands yesterday so we criss-crossed the park to various stages. I don’t think we stayed for any complete sets…unusual for us. Official sold-out attendance yesterday was 65,000 but we felt the park was very crowded for a Friday (usually Saturdays are the worst). So we weren’t very close to most of the stages.
Here’s who we heard on Friday in chronological order, with performers listed below the appropriate photo:
This morning the Austin Fire Department held their annual 9/11 Ceremony at the Buford Tower near our building. About 100 people attended. Members of the Austin Fire Department Pipe and Drum Corps played during the ceremony. Congressman Lloyd Doggett spoke, along with Austin City Council member, Mike Martinez. Both praised the ongoing work of the local fire departments in battling the recent wildfires here.
The 2011 Austin Pride parade encircled our downtown neighborhood this morning.
UT System complex
on Sixth Street
Auditorium Shores
near Lady Bird Lake
a few weeks ago…
Due to the combination of exceptional drought and high winds from Tropical Storm Lee, wildfires are raging in central Texas near Austin. Since Bill and I now live amidst concrete and hi-rises in downtown Austin, we have not been directly affected. We have several friends who have been evacuated from outlying neighborhoods but thankfully their homes have been spared.
Our downtown apartment faces south and west, with a partial northern view if you lean out over the balcony. Yesterday we could see smoke from the Steiner Ranch fire to the west and from a smaller fire up north. Clouds of smoke from the large Bastrop fire can seen from downtown, although not from our apartment.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all who are affected by these wildfires as well as firefighters and other emergency workers. And we continue to pray for rain.
Downtown Austin was bustling before dawn this morning for the AVIA Austin Triathlon. Participants had dropped off their bikes at Auditorium Shores yesterday during race check-in. From our apartment Bill and I could see the bikes glistening under the streetlights last night.
After swimming, the triathletes ran up the dock to their bikes. The bike course went across the Congress Avenue Bridge, up to the Texas State Capitol and back, west on Cesar Chavez and back across Lady Bird Lake on the First Street Bridge. The riders really had to slow down to negotiate some of the tight turns. But I didn’t see any accidents.
I watched at the finish line as the top men and women finished the Olympic distance. James Bonney from Austin led the men with 01:56:14 and D’Ann Arthur from Dallas was the top woman with 02:06:02.
One of the more interesting sights at Bat Fest was this “Bat Cow” from the Austin Cow Parade exhibit.
You can see the artist’s concept in my photo (of a poster) below. The idea seems to be that this bat-wrapped cow would be suspended from underneath the Congress Avenue Bridge. I can only imagine the 9-1-1 calls that would result if this plan had actually been implemented.
