Gimme a "T" for Texas!

Tell you what, Texas is cool. Everybody drives big trucks and eats BBQ all day long. Or Tex-Mex food, which is also quite something. I stayed for one week at the buddhist center in Austin and I had a fantastic time. The sangha is great and I got to do so much fun stuff, it was almost unreal. Vicky, who lives in the center, took me out to see music (including a jam session at antone's where I could play a bit) and the city. We did more cool stuff, you will see the pics below. In the weekend the we had a lecture with Sergio and an execllent Kagyu-style party afterwards. People kept on bringing instruments, and in the end we were jamming with 3 guitars, a banjo and and acoustic bass... wow!!!
but check out what else happend last week:

this is downtown Austin

at the buddhist center they built a new porch. We digged the trenches for the concrete into solid texas rock... hard but fun work! (that's me diggin' Texas there, haha)

that's the gang from the Austin center. They took me out to have some real Texan BBQ. Thanks so much guys!

and this was the best surprise ever: Vicky's dag gave us his 1800 cc turbo charged Honda for the last 2 days I was in Austin... can it get any better?!? I mean seriously... come on! PURE AWESOMNESS PERIOD

and that's Vicky

we drove downtow to check out some stores and to see...

... the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue! For those who don't know it yet, Stevie was probably the main reason (along with Eddie van Halen) for me to get serious with guitar playing. And here I was at his statue, hehe. Austin's cool. By the way, for music Austin is just great. Many clubs with regular good live music, 2 huge festivals per year... the call it "world's live music capitol". And I think there's defnetly something to it. Music is really alive here. So far this would be my #1 choice

then in the evening of my last day we took the Honda and drove out to the lake to watch the sunset and to have dinner...


I had a hard time leaving Austin because it was just too cool. But I have to move on and so I packed my bags and started to drive west through Texas. Here is some stuff I saw along the way:

this drive was for sure the most beautiful so far... the landscape would slowly change from more flat to hills and then mountains... I stopped often along the way to take in the view and to shoot some pictures. But see for yourself, I will not comment every picture with "that's a mountain" or "that's a cactus" hihi.
It was really breathtaking (well, New Mexico also mad my jaw drop a good deal!!! but that's later), and the pictures can only give a small idea of the openess and the space you experience driving down there...

In the evening then I reached El Paso. From what I could see it's not a very exiting city, so I just passed it and...

I stopped for the night at a "Super 8 Motel" just outside El Paso. It was more expansive than I thought but a nice room. I have to cut down on my food if I continue spending money like that! ;)

next morning I resumed driving and entered New Mexico. You see beautiful mountains everywhere...

and about 100 miles before Albuquerque, I took off into the mountains on the smaller roads.

that's the real thing right there. Pure wild west...

and then in the evening I arrived at Albuquerque. I got a nice welcome at Sean's house and tomorrow I am going to check out the city. But I have to go to bed now ;) it was a long day of driving... more soon !