We stayed with Kurt (my high school and Purdue friend), who has a house on Lake Travis. The next three photos were taken on Kurt's deck looking out over the lake. The first photo shows the neighborhood dog, Sadie. Sadie likes to fetch rocks.
Kurt is a professional ACL attendee and has the whole process fully refined. We arrived every day a little bit before the gates openned at 11 a.m. with chairs and blankets ready. Every day, the PA system would start up with openning bars from the Star Wars theme, sending shivers down your arms, then transition into the theme from Chariots of Fire, as the concert goers streamed in and started running to be at the front of their chosen stage. The fields would be relatively empty early in the day, as shown in this picture.
We did have some extra curricular excitement on the first day, there was a fire in a beer truck. A few people were hurt, but they left the hospital after being checked out. The fire started small....
...but became larger (also note the number of people starting to fill up in the fields as the day progressed).
During each day, there were so many bands, that sometimes we would split up and each head out to see a band on our own. This picture shows Mario Matteolli (sp?), who I saw by myself. I had never heard of him before, but was wandering by this stage (there were 5 big stages and 3 smaller stages), and he sounded good so I stopped. I ended up liking his sound so much that after the show I stopped by the shopping area of the festival and bought his CD.
On a different day, Rebecca and I checked out the Kaiser Chiefs. A friend of ours in Seattle, Paul, had drug us to a show of theirs in Seattle on a school night. They were really good that evening, but didn't start playing until 11.30, which was too late for us. We only heard a few songs before heading home. But at ACL we were able to see them for a whole set. They really are as good as Paul said. Their lead singer might have been a little too excited, halfway through the performance, he was jumping up and down and came down hard on the side of the foot. The rest of the show he dig all his jumping up and down on one leg. The next two images are the same photo, taken when he was still able bodied. They show him climbing the stage structure, the first is the overall picture, the second is zoomed in on him showing him climbing.
The festival offered parking for bikes. Many people obviously took advantage of this. Austin is the home of Lance Armstrong and biking is popular.
The festival is 3 days long, starts at 11 a.m. and ends around 10 each day. To light up the area, they have lights provided. I liked this one, it is like a big UFO. These two pictures are of the same lighted balloon, but from different vantage points.
Being Seattle-ites, Rebecca and I are good candidates for massive sunburns. These pictures show that we were very good about putting on gobs of sunscreen and only had 3rd degree instead of 2nd degree burns...
The main entrance to the festival had a neat neon sign.
This last picture is the requisite "artsy" image.
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