Day 234: tubin' on the lake.

You know sometimes when you just go, man my life is cool and I am having a radical time? Today was one of those days. Last night me Charlotte and Ryan drove to Austin, the city famous for an awesome live music scene, most notably the mega band festival South By South West (SXSW). Cambria jetted in from New York a little later. And today, our radical little crew boarded Ryan's friend Jamil's totally awesome boat for some luxurious jetting on Austin's Lake Travis. Talk about fun. Except for a short-lived and really quite entertaining comedy of errors as we tried to launch the boat, the whole day went off without a hitch. In fact, it was an extended joy ride of sunshine, cool lake swimming, drink sipping, chatting and lying back to soak up the glistening scenery. It was the bomb. Oh, and I was introduced to the thrills of speed boat tubing - where you get towed at speed behind the boat on an inflated tube by a rope. So freakin fun. Apparently though, this isn't the most popular kind of tubing in these parts. The real deal is when locals all bring their inflatable tubes and their floating chilly bins/eskies/igloos, tie the whole lot together, sit in the tubes and knock back beers and wines as they slowly float up the lake. I've seen photos of this phenomenon. It's mental. And it's obviously not one I could really get into at this stage, as without the beers and wines I'd just kinda be sitting there. Speaking of which, on our boat trip I did feel the odd pang for an ice cold brew (and the fun holiday vibe that comes with) as my companions sipped theirs. I also thought it would be nice to have a cool lad along to enjoy the effin cool ride that I was experiencing. But as our boat's sound system started pumping out The Doors' Let it Roll, necessitating an instant bout of bikini boogying, and as we ponied up for another lap of speed tubin', all my pangs and pinings evaporated on the summer breeze. I was really having far too much of an amazing time to worry about a thing.