Art murals in Austin and B-cycles Just Because
I may be biased having grown up here, but Austin is a great city. While known for it’s live music and delicious BBQ, there is always something to do – and oftentimes it’s free! Sometimes it’s hard to find all the hidden gems as a tourist, so I’m here to help.
3700 Guadalupe
A mosaic of shells and wood and stuff at Sparky Park, 3701 Grooms St
One of my favorite things about the city are all the murals, statues, sculptures and art installations. There are a handful of murals that are extremely popular like Daniel Johnston’s Jeremiah The Innocent, or more commonly know as the Hi, How Are You? Frog, and the Greetings from Austin postcard mural (1720 S 1st St.). It’s a common sight, and rightly so, to see people taking their pictures with the Willie Nelson or Stevie Ray Vaughn statues.
A couple of years ago we hosted a foreign exchange student; she was a lovely 15-year-old. And what did this 15-year-old love? Taking selfies. So, we took her cruising around town to a bunch of murals for photo ops, and she loved it. After I finished patting myself on my back for being such an amazing “parent”, I realized I loved it too.
East Sixth somewhere, we just happened upon this one.
The reflective surface is like a carnival mirror. 30°16’32.8″N 97°44’00.8”W
So, when a dear friend of mine decided to move, I knew exactly what we should do. I planned an Austin Art B-cycle tour. We all love riding bikes, and the bike share system is just a fun way to get around. I planned an almost ten mile route with as many stops, including a stop for beer and jumbo pretzels – you know, to carb up for our ride. This actually took a bit of planning. I had to find addresses of the murals, lay over that a map of the B-Cycle stations, then plan a bike friendly route where we could see a bunch of art in a reasonable amount of time. We ended up biking about three hours, and still hadn’t hit all the planned stops, but only because we really enjoyed our beer stop.
United Way 2000 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
At the end of the ride, not only did we have tons of laughs, a little exercise, an excellent tour of Austin from a friendly local (that’s me), but some amazing photos we could all treasure. Other notable murals stops include the ever-changing Hope Gallery, and if you climb to the top there’s a great view of downtown, the all things Austin mural on the frontage of 1-35 and 6th, and the I love you so much script at Jo’s on Congress, and perhaps the most Austin-ish of all is the Matthew McConaughey Alright Alright Alright mural.
And we were. E. Cesar Chavez & Waller
Tips:
- Spend time pretending your a tourist in your own city, and just do the touristy stuff.
- Selfie sticks would come in handy, I totally get them now.
- Here’s the actual map: https://goo.gl/maps/6ehCrWAdn9S2 There’s a B-Cycle station at the starting point. (Not all murals shown, so you can see them on your own.)
2000 E 12th St
Probably my favorite stop. The glass mosaic at Shipe Park, 4400 Avenue G
Cotopaxi Questival: A Questivus for the rest of us
There’s a difference between a race and an adventure race. You can’t train, you can’t really plan, your nutrition is likely to go out the window. But you still need a competitive spirit, endurance, and “llamazing” teammates and supporters. Without giving away all the surprises, here’s some of our adventures and mis-adventures on the Cotopaxi Questival.
Breakfast at a moon tower. Austin is the only city in the world known to still have moon towers.
When my hiking friend, Kimberlee, told me about this race, I was in. And yes, as a matter of fact I do have four other crazy friends, Kari, Rich, Dana and Bill, who would be up for it. This is the pitch: spend 24 hours with little sleep traveling around Austin c
ompleting unknown tasks. I feel like I should have asked more questions, but surprises make the journey. Kari, Bill and I competed in the Cap2Coast Relay together, so spending many smelly hours in a car with little sleep wasn’t new to us.
Even though you don’t know what the tasks are until 24 hours before the race start, we did know they would fall into the categories of camping, teamwork, food, service and adventure. Basically the challenge is to do things you don’t normally do – and some of those things are for good reason.
The first step was to come up with a clever team name. We chose “Llama said knock you out”, since Cotopaxi’s brand mascot is a llama. The night before the race we met up for about four hours of strategizing. We finally called it a night knowing we needed a good night’s rest. We only planned for a mere four hours of sleep during the race (we ended up getting less than three).
The race started at 7pm on Friday, and most of the team took off work to pack, plan and organize. We arrived at the race start at 5pm, and would end at 7pm the following night. Each team is given a totem that must be in every task’s picture or video, so you don’t try to complete any tasks before the official start. We downloaded the Questify app, which listed each task, every team page and rank and sent notifications. Being unprepared for technology to fail was part of the mis-adventure.
Every adventure should start with a dance party!
Two hours in, we had already completed five tasks. Each task is assigned points, so completing many tasks is as important as completing high value tasks and we could follow our ranking in the app. And then we got a flat tire. None of us had a vehicle big enough for the six of us, so we had to take two cars. After changing the flat, we switched out that car with another, so we wouldn’t waste time getting it fixed.
From beginning…
to the end. We took a lot of selfies.
We arrived at our camp site about 12:30am, and were on our way again by 6 so we could catch the sunrise. It was nice when we could take a few minutes to be still and enjoy the journey. I was worried we would be so stressed trying to complete the challenges that we would stop having fun, but for me that wasn’t the case. When I looked back at the photos we were laughing in so many of them, and we are still laughing about some of the stunts we pulled.
Our expressions speak volumes. Yes, he ate worm and yes, it was horrible.
Getting creative with our photos.
Not only were we tasked with completing as many challenges as possible, we also wanted to take creative photos. If you
make the top ten teams, then you judged by your peers based on the photos and videos you submitted. While we weren’t even close to the top ten, we finished in a respectable 69th out of 523 teams. Considering my goals were to finish top 100, and to have fun, I feel like we won.
The Questival is stopping in about 45 cities this year, and Austin was just the first stop. The organization of the event had some hiccups, but for the $35 entry fee which included a Cotopaxi Luzon backpack we didn’t have much to lose. The backpack itself is pretty cool because the seamstresses who make them pick the colors, so no two are exactly alike.
The race is chose-your-own-adventure style, and you can stop at any time. We competed until the very last minute, but there were so many tasks we wanted but didn’t have time to do. I have to say I was definitely stretched out of my comfort zone with the lack of sleep and having to talk to strangers, but for all the laughs we shared it was worth it.
Tips:
- Decide ahead of time what’s your mission; to have win or to have fun. We are super competitive but wanted both.
- Bring healthy snacks. It was a long day and we had no real meals. High brew and candy only get you so far.
- Have fun! I was worried we’d kill each other, but nope I just adore my teammates more!