Greetings from Georgetown TX

This was taken somewhere at a Flying J truckstop. I don't remember which one. This is so disheartening. People eat this. It's no wonder we're an overweight nation, whose health care system is about to be inundated by people with diabetes and its side effects such as peripheral neuropathy, blindness and erectile dysfunction. You'd think the threat of ED would get the truckers to eat more oatmeal, but it hasn't happened yet. Hardies is selling a pork chop sandwich with gravy, we keep threatening to buy one just so we can get a picture of it. Stand by!



This is the RV park in Georgetown. It's call the New Life park, it's very nice. Long level slots, good laundry, lots of water pressure.


Jim is setting up to grill dinner. Note that Jim is not wearing shoes, as usual. For someone who practically wept when forced to Goodwill his Cole Haan and Ferragamo dress shoes, he has certainly made the switch to not wearing shoes.



Friday we went and looked at possible final resting places. The first was the Oaks at Wildwood. The picture below is a 4 plex. They are really nicely done. There is a lot of privacy and they're well built. All exterior maintenance is done for $210 a month. We're still schizophrenic on the subject of where to live. The real estate agent was talking about the nice people who live there, one lady likes to invite people over for 6 course dinners, and they play music and sing between courses. I personally would not enjoy this. Can't sing, don't really like singing. If you're in a little community like this, how to you avoid the social pitfalls? On the other hand, being isolated is bad. How does one establish a social network but not end up spending half your time not making eye contact with the singers. It's a conundrum, for sure. Then we went up and looked at Sun City by Del Webb. Drove through there for 10 minutes and fled in terror. We're not Sun City people, I think. Not yet anyway.




Then it was off to the historic downtown. Georgetown as it is today did not exist 10 years ago. The downtown was there and intact but decrepit. City government actively recruited business, Del Webb and industry to the area. Part of their carrot was a restored downtown. It is cute. Georgetown gets a lot of press for being a good place to retire to because of the climate and proximity to Austin and healthcare. That's the court house.


Old buildings.



The Masonic Lodge.


Traffic in Austin is terrible. So they built a beautiful toll road that goes around Austin. They're not using it yet! Something about having to pay money to drive strikes a Texan as just wrong.

Today we went to Austin. Traffic was terrible getting there, partially due to a football game. This woman is pedaling a pedicab, the truck is in the process of cutting her off. He overtook her, swung wide and dove in front of her. Bicyclists should be armed. He deserved something bad.


We parked, observed the local eateries. There are a lot of restaurants.



Cool office building.



Then it was off to Lance Armstrong's bicycle shop. It's pretty cool. He's placed a lot of emphasis on bikes for regular people, especially commuters.




Some of the jerseys.


This is downstairs where the $9,000 bikes are. It's hard to read, but that is the "bike fit studio". Tres tata. They were also working with a young team in another lab, looking at pedaling, watt output, that sort of thing.



Bikes for regular people.


After lunch at the Whole Foods Market which was really really big, we walked down 6th street which is where all of the bars and tattoo parlors are. I have never seen so many people with ink. This is the Esther Williams bar.


A stand up comedy bar.

More bars.


The Driskill hotel. Old, really old.

St. Mary's cathedral.


Lobby of an old office building.

We visited a condo sales office - 1,092 square feet for $500,000. Fees are $400 a month. We'd have to rent storage for the bikes. It's nice, looks at water, there is access to a foot bridge across the river to walking trails. There is a Whole Foods within walking distance, one would have to drive to Walmart for staples. We keep reminding ourselves that you don't have to own real estate to enjoy an area, that's why we bought the 5th wheel. I think we're going to concentrate on living in the moment and we'll worry about the final resting place later.
Tomorrow we are hitching up (aiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) and driving West. Not sure how far we will get, we're not great at early starts yet. But what else do we have to do?