Questing in Austin

My first full day in Austin!  My dad and I looked at our list, and drove out boldly into the city for much shopping, errands, and whatnot.  I took the wheel this time, as I wanted to get a feel for my new city.  We had a few quests on our list:

1. The Quest for Sustenance
2. The Quest for Sweet Slumber
3. The Quest for Everything Else : Finding the Market of Wal

The Quest for Sustenance
Always pick the easiest quests first.  I drove around blindly until I found something to eat.  I quickly found a pizza place, but I discovered they did not sell by the slice...but I pressed on, and I located a Koofck (KFC) nearby, and I completed my quest!

The Quest for Sweet Slumber
This quest was also fairly simple, except that the purchase was much more of a long term investment.  Luckily, my father is seasoned in the area of slumber.  I located the nearest mattress store, and my father proved to be an excellent advisor as to which mattress I should purchase.  I laid on a number of beds, and finally, the bed that was for me was found.  There shall be comfort and merriment, now that my bed will be delivered tomorrow!

The Quest for Everything Else: Finding the Market of Wal
You'd think finding the nearest WalMart in the capital of Texas would be easy, especially with a GPS.  I'm behind the wheel once again, and we plug into our trusty GPS: "Walmart".  It's so close by....I can almost smell the greeters and underpriced goods.  We venture towards down this road and...wait....am I getting on the highway?  No...wait, yes...no, wait...what?

Frontage roads. They're roads parallel to highways that give you access to surrounding area.  See:

And with me driving, learning about these "frontage roads" on the fly is quite a riveting experience, trust me.


We arrive at our "destination", and we find a Sam's Club.  But where there's a Sam's Club, there's a Walmart, right?

WRONG

Alas, our guide, the GPS, led us astray, being aged in years, and was wrong.  It had been a Wal-Mart at one point, but was now a Sam's Club.  We discovered that we needed to follow...verbal directions...to the Wal-Mart.  At this point, I made my Dad drive.  I was too flustered to navigate the winding, hilly roads of Austin.

Oh that's right.  People think that Texas, like Illinois, is flat.  You should come down to Austin sometime...there's hills and winding roads everywhere.  You feel like you're on the Whizzer (basically the lamest roller coaster ever, but still a roller coaster) going around town.  It's absolutely exhilarating.

So the quest continues as we brave the frontage roads and try to figure out where we're going. At one point, we inadvertently did a U-turn and got on a highway.  Figure that one out.  We found that our verbal directions had failed us, and we stopped to get more verbal directions at a near gas station.  It seems clear at this point, and after some maneuvers, we finally arrive!

And BOY did we shop.  Furniture, chairs, silverware (I was really excited about the silverware), pots and pans, and so much more!  As we move to check out everything, things went awry.  Scan the printer..."no not that barcode, this one....no?  try the other one...no?  try....try...."   It took 6 minutes to get the freakin' thing scanned.

But that's only a little time.  Now we're paying, Dad's got it covered...wait...it won't work?  Long story short, buying a mattress in Austin looks pretty suspicious to banks and such when you're from Chicago, and they start denying your purchases.  Well it's pretty dang secure, thanks banks!  I decided to go to the in-store McDonalds and have another meal while my dad called his bank and stuff.  Another 30 minutes later...and FINALLY we get to leave, paid in full!

As we start to head back to my apartment, we find the first road we need to take.

"Brandon, which way, left or right?"
"Right, I'm pretty sure." (Wrong)
"Wait which direction is that?"
"I dunno."
"You need a compass."
"I don't...wait...that's not even going to help."

Although my driving isn't the best, my sense of direction is pretty good.  I was getting really good back in Chicago, navigating my way around the suburbs.  But let me show you something:

I like Chicago.  Chicago makes sense.  Austin, in case you haven't heard, is weird:

You can't have a sense of direction when they don't actually exist! I mean, I guess they still form right angles, unlike Paris:

And besides, Parisians take the Metro everywhere!  Not fair.

Ah well...the quest was finally completed, after having to make some more U-turns and whatnots, and we finally made it back home.

Thanks for reading about my time starting here...if you're reading this, I probably miss you a lot.  So give me some feedback!  And I'm gonna make another post soon I hope!