I love to go to see things in Austin. I’m from another big city, so I like to see other big cities and what they have. My friends don’t enjoy exploring as much as I do, so sometimes it’s pulling teeth trying to get them to leave the game that’s on TV.

My favorite place in the world is Zilker Park on a sunny Saturday. It’s the place where they have the music festivals that the prompt alluded to, but it’s basically a dog park on other days, except it doesn’t smell and there’s a tremendous view. I love to go around petting every dog I see and I make it a mission to find at least one golden retriever puppy each time I go. I’m four for four on that mission this semester. It’s hard to get a picture of them though cause they’re constantly moving so I have a video.  Except the video won’t upload, so here’s a terrible screenshot of a snapchat video. Meet my new friend, Archer 🙂

I think the Sixth Street experience should be added to this list too. Most college towns have bars, but the stretch along Sixth is just unique. There’s so much going on and so many people flocking to the streets. There are bars everywhere you turn, and so many people flood the road that they close the street to vehicles. I love to go into the bars and then leave the bars around 1:30 am (30 minutes before they close) to go get pizza. There’s something about Roppolos’ Pizza that I never get sick of after a night out. I’m a strictly cheese guy. You can call me boring, I don’t care.

I also chose to go to a lecture on campus. I went to see former Google CEO Eric Schmidt talk about the future and his love for Austin. I can’t lie, it was very confusing what he was saying. But you could tell the man was brilliant and I wanted to buy stock in him. He’s worth 11.6 billion, so he’s doing something right. He talked about virtual reality and the importance of not selling out when you come up with brilliant ideas. He said, “When you come up with something that’s good, you can grow it really rapidly.” He continued, “It’s what I tell all my students, don’t sell.” Schmidt continued saying how he is normally on the other end of the table in business dealings, encouraging smaller companies to sell to him. It was a cool experience and probably something I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise.

My friends get annoyed with me documenting my life and adventures so it was nice to have an excuse to tell them to shut up and let me do my project. They say it isolates me, and sometimes it does. But, I have a bad memory, so being able to leave a digital trail of sorts is a nice way to remember the fun times I have had. I see a lot of dogs too, so it’s fun to capture what each dog looked like and see its tail wagging when I look back on it months later.