Just Another Day: I Left My Heart in Austin

Austin City Limits. If you have a desire to be in a park with 65,000 people and listen to music and drink and use port-a-potties and people watch and walk for miles and have the time of your life, then ACL is the place for you. I absolutely loved Austin and would go back in a heart beat.

Friday: We got downtown around 3:30 and walked over 2 miles to the park. It wasn’t that hot and the sun was shining and it was just beautiful. I knew the weather would cooperate for my man John Legend to play. We got to the park and got our wristbands. We went to the beer tent and got an ice cold Tecate and started walking…hoping to find some of our friends. Cell phones weren’t working that well so we just started looking and in an instant I see my friend Kent walking in front of us. It must have been karma. So Abbey, Laina, Kent, Jordan and I all sat down in the grass and just enjoyed the weather until John Legend started playing. And then dance party in the park was on! No, John didn’t call me back in stage unfortunately, but I firmly believe he knew I was there and could sense my presence. After Johnny boy, we walked over the Kings of Leon stage and got ready for that concert to start in about 30 min. Once again, Abbey spotted Kent in a huge crowd of people so we posted up and waited. And then our lives changed as KOL rocked the stage. They were unbelievable! Then we hit up a bar called Annie’s and created Dance Party 2009 in a bar that didn’t have a dance floor. You know how I roll.

Saturday: Rain rain go away, come again another day. It rained ALL day Saturday. We trudged along in our ponchos and umbrellas and got soaked but we still had a good time. It quickly turned into a mud bath so we took our shoes off and just walked in the mud. We listened to Citizen Cope, Zac Brown Band and a few others. It got pretty chilly that evening but we put our ponchos on and enjoyed some Dave Matthews Band and after that we headed back to the hotel to shower our feet off and get fancy for another night out. We went to a place called The Ranch, which had an outside bar and guess what…. It rained again!

Sunday: Once again we headed out to ACL in the mud. Sunday was the last day and we were excited to see several bands. Passion Pit, Brett Dennen, Girl Talk, Ben Harper, Pearl Jam. There were tons of people out and I think the park was the busiest that day. We ate some delicious tacos and I had a margarita sno cone and the girls had Amy’s ice cream. We found a patch of grass to sit on during Ben Harper which was nice considering we stood up for almost 9 hours the day before. Pearl Jam closed the evening and they were so good. I am not a huge P Jam fan but they really know how to put on a show. After the festival closed… we took the shuttle back to our car and headed to the hotel to organize our things, shower and hit the hay. We left quite a bit of mud in the hotel and part of our hearts were left in Austin when we drove away.

It was a wonderful trip with great company (Laina, Abbey, Kent, Jordan, Chevy, Ozzie, Billy, Liz, Josh, Alex, Dan, Allison) and I look forward to the next time I can grace Austin with my presence.

Here are some of my favey pics from the weekend