Drouth

Baleen and I are off to Austin where I’m mentally and physically unprepared for what’s to come. Mentally, because my audience of four hasn’t provided any reading recommendations, not even movies or CliffNotes, and physically, because it’s too hot to fish. Austin and parts of the south are in the midst of a heatwave and drought, the absolute worst Texas drought on record, that’s nearly frightful enough to turn a man to science fiction to find out what happens when arable land becomes arid.

The way we’ll deal with temperatures twice those in San Francisco is to submerge ourselves in the Comal River, at least what’s left of it, and wear next to no clothing, certainly not socks and shoes with laces, lest Baleen and I look like two German anthropologists dropped deep in the Amazon losing a gallon of sweat a day while the locals we’ve come to study are as dry as a Texas summer.

But we’ll need more than that to get by. There’s family style barbeque at Salt Lick with our new, growing relations, and Clive Bar on Rainey Street, where if the Shiner Bocks don't do it, there’s Lady Bird Lake just a short walk away.