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"armadillos love lone star": austin day two
Today was the Alamo, because why not? We hit the highway toward San Antonio and rode it for 75 miles until we got to the beautifully cheesy tourist trap we expected. We refrained from asking about the basement, but wandered through the educational displays detailing the lost causes that made the building famous. The history was specious, but the flowers in the grass and the fish in the pond were beautiful.
We got ice cream and wrote postcards and started toward the River Walk when we saw the Jackalope store. Poor dead rabbits stuffed and mounted with antlers on their head, perverse and fooling no one. We were repulsed and fascinated and wandered inside. "Meg!" I whispered from the corner, "Look at this!" I pointed up and there, there was the most ridiculous scene yet. Two stuffed armadillos, one on his hind legs, dressed in a vest and hat and sheriff's star. And next to him, on his back, an armadillo with his arms and legs raised, drinking a bottle of Lone Star. Much as armadillos do in real life.
We walked the river and coveted food and got back in the car for Austin and a St. Patrick's Day screening of Leprechaun with Mike and Lynn at the Alamo Drafthouse. We dislike horror/gore movies, but Mike explained there was little horror to it. "He's a murderous leprechaun with OCD," Mike told us. "If you throw shoes at him, he has to shine them. Plus it's the guy from Willow. And Jennifer Aniston." We stopped him there. "You had us at OCD, Mike."
We almost didn't make it to the movie. We were stuck halfway between San Antonio and Austin for forty minutes as construction closed off lanes and a minor accident was towed away. Meg shrugged her shoulders and cranked up the Go! Team. Eventually the traffic cleared and we sailed toward the beer and food and giveaways at the Drafthouse (where the trivia competition netted our hosts a St. Patty's themed basket of freebies and the menu netted Meg green beer). Post-movie we agreed to follow Mike home, to change and hang out before braving SXSW central for Year Future and the Chinese Stars and Some Girls. "Just follow me," Mike said, but I worried we'd lose him so I asked for directions back as well. I got them, we got in the car, and off we all went.
A few miles down the road, the highway branched and I looked up from the conversation to see an exit speed by. "Was that our turn?" I asked Meg, and she said no and pointed to the red car ahead of us. "No, I'm following Mike." I squinted at the car. "Are you sure that's him?" I asked, and she pulled closer. "I think so," she said, and I had to agree. It looked like his head. "You know what would be fun?" I asked. "If we did the cross-country drive, but picked random cars along the way to follow for five or ten miles. You'd probably find all sorts of strange places that way." We made big and bold future travel plans and took the exit a few more miles away and followed the red car straight to the gate of a familiar but foreign condo just as my phone rang.
"Meg?" Mike asked, worried. "Where are you?"
"Very funny," I said. "Right behind you." I waved.
"What?"
"We just pulled in behind you." I looked closer at our surroundings, becoming less familiar by the second. "Are you kidding around?"
"We're at home. We've been home for awhile," Mike said as the red car we'd followed for miles finally pulled into a space. The car that was not Mike's car with it's telltale curved taillights and Jawbreaker sticker, pulling into a condo that was not Mike's house. I looked at Meg and Meg looked at me.
"We followed the wrong car," I said. We looked at each other for a second, then exploded with laughter that didn't stop until we were back on the road and back in the town center and back in Mike's actual apartment complex and apartment, bursting through his front door and falling to the floor to catch our breath. We'd found Mike's doppelganger; now it was time to find some music...