Pictures from Austin

Okay, FINALLY, as promised... my pictures from Austin. The big thing that I was worried about on my trip to Austin was a presentation that I was scheduled to give on Wednesday afternoon.

Even when traveling for business I am a tourist, and I told the audience "I've never been here before so if ya'll would help me out for just a minute and smile..." and I took out my cell phone and took this picture. (this is, without a doubt, the absolute worst picture that I have ever taken - but its significant to me :-)

In my haste, I apparently hit the "zoom" feature on the cell phone. Its a pretty useless feature because it just takes a smaller picture that is not obviously "zoomed". You can sort of see how big the room is (note lady waving her arms in the back) but all the seats aren't full. I know many of the people that were at the meeting but, from this photograph, I can't recognize a soul.

As I explained in the blog post of Aug 23, the size of the presentation grew quite a bit after I arrived in Austin. Much of the information had previously been distributed to various committees (by email) but this information had never been formally presented.

Those of you that know me know that my posture is not normally the best. I was determined that I would not be caught slouching during this presentation so I consciously stood up to my full height all day long and by the time of my presentation I wasn't even thinking about it.

Caught with my mouth open (naturally) and a little red eye.

Congress Avenue Bridge - home to "the largest urban bat colony" (over a million strong)

The signs says "CAUTION Never Touch Grounded Bats" (words to live by - really)

My good friend Emmanuel, myself and one of our co-workers (in the mirror) at Chuy's Mexican restaurant. Since the day that Emmanuel was hired, one of our supervisors has (repeatedly) confused our names. This gives us a great deal of fun, because, just as sure as God made little green apples, all we have to do is be in the same building and she will call one of us by the other's name. Emmanuel and I have told her "Monte is the tall one" but it doesn't help - she still confuses our names. It just makes me laugh and, unfortunately, that embarrasses her. This lady really is one of the sweetest people I know and the whole thing just demonstrates that she has a LOT on her mind.

The "promotional" shot of our hotel. This is a view of the hotel's north face, over "Town Lake" (its actually a river running through a city but somehow "City River" just doesn't have the same ring to it). Through some mysterious clerical error, Emmanuel and I were stuck on the very non-picturesque south face of the hotel. We got to see a billboard that rotated ads for Shiner's Beer, Bacardi and a local news station that uses an iguana in their ads - you gotta love Austin.

The view from the 17th floor of our hotel. Looking to the north. I took this shot while we were waiting for our luncheon to start. Here you can see downtown Austin, the Congress Avenue bridge (from the top) and Town Lake.

Downtown Austin, at night, from the ground. In the foreground is one of the "guano barges" (my friends and I came up with this term). These are tourist boats that, for a fee, you can board and ride under the bridge to see the bats as they set out on their evening trek. Even though the roofs of the tourist boats have been decorated by pigeons - you know "guano barge" is just more colorful than "tourist boat".

Shots from inside the hotel.

The ceiling during the day. Cool.

The interior of the hotel is open with a "triangular" sort of set up. This is a view down into the right angle part of the triangle.

This is a view up into the tight angle of the triangle. Notice the bright light coming from the translucent ceiling.

Looking down the tight angle from the 16th floor.

Looking down from the 11th floor. In this shot you can see the triangle pretty good. Just as a point of reference, our room was in the row of rooms on the left. I'm standing in the tight angle. The three corner are a right angle, a tight angle and the elevators.

Looking down from our room. (5th floor)

This is a shot of the elevators coming straight out of our room.

Then one day I took the stairs and I knew there was a photograph there - even in this most non-descript part of a beautiful hotel. This is looking down the stairwell from the 17th floor.

This is as high as you could go on the stairs. There was a door (with a loud noise on the other side) that said "NO ROOF ACCESS". I did not open this door. Emmanuel tells me that not opening that door was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made.