Toobin'

Day: 296
High Temp: 88F (with heat index of 96F)

This past weekend Tom and I were visited by one of our favorite people, Libby Ford, and her very funny beau Josef.  The pair stayed with us all weekend, and despite me having to work all day Thursday and Friday we packed in many fun activities, many of which were designed to beat the heat. Libby and Josef even enjoyed their first Alamo Draft house experience (read more about my love affair with the Alamo here). We saw Exit Through the Gift Shop, a truly funny and interesting "street art disaster film" created by the extremely elusive artist Banksy. (Try not to spend all day admiring his work). Libby swears the Alamo has some of the best pizza she has ever eaten.

On Saturday, our only real day to hang out all together, we decided to head south and try what the locals call Toobin'. Toobin' is basically just "Tubing" to those living in less southern locales. You know, floating down the river in an inner-tube. It should be relaxing, fun and a great way to soak in the local scenery while leisurely floating down a pretty river.  Not so on the Guadalupe River (pronounced Gwahd-ah-loop).

Now, a warning before I proceed. What I am about to write here nearly amounts to sacrilege to most Austinites, but I don't care. It's my blog and I'll say what I want to.

This was kind of a terrible experience.  There were literally thousands of "toobers" on the river, outfitted by the dozens of ramshackle businesses that dot Farm-to-Market 306 in Central Texas. Oh, and most of them were totally shit-faced, and acting like assholes, despite the presence of other people, and more to the point, families with children. There was a dude launching water balloons from a huge catapult bolted to his deck, and there were many drunk douchebags who brought along water cannons and water guns, which they gleefully used to squirt those passing by.

Granted, floating down an ice-cold river was probably the only way I could have spent 4 straight hours in the hot Texas sun, but this whole experience just wasn't worth it to me. As opposed to being a way to relax and enjoy being outside, most of our cohorts on the river just seem to treat the experience as a novel way to get wasted. Lame.

Perhaps my own expectations were too high.  I grew up "floating" most many weekends in Missouri.  My family owns a bit of land in the Mark Twain National Forest off a small river in central Missouri, and my grandparents retired there, in the gorgeous little log cabin on the property.  The setting is nothing less than idyllic, and even on the busiest weekends (the summer holidays, etc) there was never the crush of humanity that we experienced this weekend. You could sit on the bluff on one of the busiest weekend, and still only see one group pass by every 5 minutes or so.  And sure, people get shit-faced on the rivers in Missouri, but from what I remember, there seemed to be equal emphasis on respecting your fellow floaters, and the river you are enjoying, as there was on getting drunk.

Thankfully, Libby and Josef, and even Tom, were able to put the ass-holes aside and enjoy the experience a lot. But me, I just couldn't see passed all those red-neck hicks, to really enjoy the gorgeous bluffs overlooking the Guadalupe.