Besides being bicycle friendly, Austin has an excellent bus system that includes bike racks on all the buses. We left the bikes behind and headed out for the closest bike store. They were able to fix Bruno's broken spoke and true the wheel for a very reasonable price. The clerk said that Lance Armstrong occasionally surprises customers when he shops there. I left Bruno to wait for his wheel and headed into the city.
One disadvantage of having a layover day on a Monday is that most museums are closed on Mondays. However, the University of Texas museums were mostly open so I decided to head to the LBJ Museum and Library and the Huntington Art Gallery. I enjoyed wandering around the huge campus. It is like a small town, just north of the capitol. The art gallery contains a very good collection with some excellent Old Master and Western art paintings. I also found an excellent bike shop, Freewheeling, that had my Avocet tire. I also bought another pair of glove liners, long socks, and a Master Blaster pump for Todd. That pump has become a popular item. Nothing like a few cold mornings to send us all scurrying for warmer clothes. Lynne even had her daughter send her sleeping bag, as she had been sleeping in a light blanket until now. The package included front panniers to hold it (and of course Janet came to the rescue and installed the new fron rack).
After leaving the campus I stumbled across an excellent Western Art gallery where presidents have come to purchase art, the Country Store Gallery. The proprietor even had a Lance Armstrong story about him being in the shop recently. Lance seems to be well known and liked in the city.
I hurried back to the hostel to shop for dinner with Jim, but when I arrived I heard that we would go out to dinner instead. I didn't argue. One of the major attractions in Austin is the bat bridge, where a colony of free-tailed Mexican bats roosts between the slats of the Congress St. bridge. We decided to take the bus there and join the small crowd that gathers every night from Spring to Fall to watch them emerge at dusk. About half of the colony of over a million bats has already migrated south, but the remaining thousands came streaming out on schedule just after dark, chattering (echo locating) away.
We didn't make it back to the hostel until late, after dinner and a long wait for the bus. Spike and Lynne were awaiting us there, having returned from Boston, and they filled us in on their trip. It has been a sad time for them but they were ready to continue the trip. The next day would be a long one, 95 miles to Round Top, TX.