The Nike Human Race

The Nike Human Race is a global 10 kilometer race that was held in 25 global cities. In the United States, there were four cities involved: NYC, Chicago, LA and Austin. In our fair city, we were honored with Lance Armstrong, Matthew McConaughey, Olympic medalist Brendan Hanson and thousands of other red-shirted pavement-pushers.

The winner, Bernard Manirakiza, didn't even touch the ground!

 

Lance, the only fellow in yellow, finished in a very respectable 34'54".

Matthew McConaughey ran it in 43'41".

 

The final stretch

Cool Optical Illusions

Click the link to see some mind-bending stuff.

Be sure to check out part one and part two also.

Click here to see the World's Coolest Optical Illusions

Hot Sauce Fest & Last Symphony On The Green

We went to the 18th Annual Austin Hot Sauce Festival on Sunday. While the weather put up a strong bid to win top prize for overall hottest, there were lots of sauces to choose from. Our favorite entry was from Gourmet Country Farm and was called Koki's Green Garlic Salsa. They hydroponically grow green garlic, which looks more like grass or chives, and they use the bulbs and the greens in the salsa. Very original and very excellent.

In the evening, we went to the last Symphony On The Green performance of the year. We have enjoyed this weekly event since we've been here and will miss it. Hopefully it will return to the lawn next year. It is a great location with both an aweome skyline view and a great sunset view. Oh yeah, and there's really good music by really good musicians also.

Heather sampling a red salsa

Interesting Story About The Underage Chinese Gymnasts

The following is from strydehax.blogspot.com:

There's been some widely publicized controversy regarding the competition age of the Chinese women's gymnastics team recently. I have an Internet connection, that means I should be able to verify the age of the gymnasts in question with primary state-issued documents and find out for myself if someone's cheating, right? Right. Let's go to work.

read more | digg story

They Said "You're Gonna Miss Italian Food In Texas!"

As we were preparing to depart from New Jersey, our world-weary friends (who have all never stepped foot out of the northeast for more than a week) warned us that we would have to learn how to live without all the great amenities that being a suburb of NYC afforded us:

"You better get used to cowboy boots!"

"There's going to be no where to shop but Wal-Mart!"

"You're going to miss Italian food!"

We quickly were able to disprove the first two notions. As much as the travel shows try to make you believe that Austin is as country as Texas (see Samantha Brown and Rachel Ray's shows about Austin), we have yet to see an abundance of cowboy boots and definitely no cowboys. In fact, I think there were more people in NJ wearing western stuff than here. The second notion was even more absurd. There is more shopping within five minutes of us now than there was within 45 minutes of us in NJ. The other day we went to the library, the post office and Target, all within a few minutes of each other. In NJ, it was a 45 minute round trip to the library and even further to Target (which also was in the opposite direction).

I will admit that I was slightly concerned about the last notion. The Italian-American population is strong in NJ and Italian restaurants are the equilavent of Tex-Mex places in Austin. In fact, in Flemington, it is not a stretch to say that 75% of the non-chain restaurants are Italian. We decided to check out Romeo's which is located on the food mecca strip known as Barton Springs. The verdict? Pretty decent standard Italian fare. Heather has a sun-dried tomato fetish and one of their signature dishes looked to be custom tailored to her tastes. I went for the more traditional Chicken Parmesan and while it was not pan-fried and then baked, it was still breaded and had a nice flavor.

Final verdict? Romeo's fits the bill for casual Italian. Next test? Fine dining Italian!

Music Under The Star

 

We went to see Austin Nights Brass at The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum's Lone Star Plaza tonight. This was the final show of the Music Under The Star series for this year. It's a pretty cool, informal event and people of all ages come out to enjoy the music.

   

Of course, this is yet another free event in this fine city stuffed full of free events. Bonus feature: the museum is also free during the show so you can listen to a little music, then go learn about Texas, then watch some more music. It's really too bad they only do 4 shows a year.