By Clint Younts.
Y’all might’ve noticed that my column didn’t appear in your paper last week. Normally I write one every other week, but due to health reasons, I was unable to operate my keyboard on this here computer. Since y’all are sorta like members of my dysfunctional family, I oughta let you in on my recent malady. Perhaps some of you also have been afflicted with this condition, and perhaps I can prevent others from contracting this ailment.
Last week, I had to venture into Austin, the Land of the Weird, to pick up my visiting brother at the bus stop. What I failed to realize was that last Friday was the start of the South-by-Southwest festival. I don’t know how many folks arrived in Austin that Friday morning, but I suspect the population of Travis County equaled that of Western Europe. The interstate was crammed full of taxis and out-of-town wackos who drive like they’re filming Fast and Furious XII, but only it’s in slow motion. Maniacs to the left of me, lunatics to the right of me. All I wanted was to exit the highway and get away from all that crazy traffic.
Well, silly me! I was unaware that the Megabus stop is in the smack-dab middle of Weirdsville, just behind a tattoo parlor and tanning salon. Waiting on the bus to arrive, I heard numerous sirens, coming and going. Police cars were parked all over the place, like they were waiting for an invasion of zombies. There were hordes of people motoring about, some in cars, others on bicycles or afoot. Jaywalking is apparently legal in Austin because looking out my car window towards Guadalupe was like watching a game of Frogger.
Once that Megabus arrived and I collected my vagabond sibling, we headed to Congress Avenue so I wouldn’t have to get back on that infernal interstate. Driving south on Congress during SXSW was not the smartest choice I’ve made. Like the interstate, it was bumper to bumper, and cars were whipping around me like I was stuck in a mudhole. Then, the coup de grace of my journey down South Congress (the locals call this street SoCo, but back home at the Crow’s Nest, SoCo means something totally different) happened as I was stopped at a red light. A fella pedaling a pedicab was sitting to my right. We were waiting for the light to turn when he swiveled around and waved to someone on the opposite side of the street. At the moment the light turned green, that crazy nut swung his pedicab in front of my car and the other two lanes in order to head north to pick up somebody with an apparent death wish.
I’m no physicist, but I believe my Chevy Tahoe outweighs that pedicab tenfold and could flatten that bicycle and its pony-tailed pedal-pusher like an armadillo on a west Texas highway. That goober showed no fear or common sense as he whipped across three lanes of traffic. If I were a believer in reincarnation, I’d swear pedicab drivers were kamikaze pilots in a previous life. I’ve heard stories of patrons of downtown night clubs getting run over by these spoked speed demons. One false step off the curb and WHAM! You’re on your drunken backside with three tire tracks across your chest.
By the time I made it past the Austin City Limits sign, I was a total wreck. I had never been surrounded by so many crazed people since I went shopping for a TV on Black Friday. My hands were shaking so bad after my trek into the metropolis to the north that I couldn’t write my column. I was forced to see my personal psychiatrist, Dr. Adolph Coors, for immediate treatment, and he ordered me to take the weekend off and recuperate at the Crow’s Nest. I swore to all those gathered around my beer cooler that the next time I travel north by northwest, it sure as all get-out won’t be during South-by-Southwest.
This column is running a week late, because the publisher had to take a week off to recover from the whiplash of watching Clint Younts trying to dodge cars on Jack C. Hays Trail.
