i have been to the batcave

many times in my life ive heard this question posed: what does the spontaneous emergence of 1.5 million bats look like? well tonight i went to the congress avenue bridge to find out the answer. see, between april and november, the mexican freetail bat makes its home underneath this bridge. and each night they all emerge to go out looking for dinner (they eat 30,000 pounds of insects a night!). it was said that they tend to emerge before sundown, and i was looking forward to giving everyone a visual representation of this phenomenon, but alas, the bats, never much for showmanship, waited until it was dark to come out. so my pictures are too dark to post. anyway, the bat thing was pretty impressive, and drew quite a crowd (which it apparently draws nightly). one thing to note is that where there are bats, there are mosquitos, and where there is keith, there is a lifelong aversion to remembering insect repellent. i must have a mental block; it was sitting in my car which was 30 feet away, but instead i have a legfull of itchy red bumps. and perhaps less blood than i had prior to tonight. and maybe more disease.
anyway, i got up pretty early today, and went to check out austin. it took me a little while (a day) to warm up to austin, but now i think its pretty cool. one neat thing aboot this trip is within a day of being in a place ive learned all its directions and road names and stuff, but once i leave i forget them for the most part. but austin took the longest to get comfortable driving in; its unusually complicated.
in any event, i started with the lower city area. they have a nice park called zilker park, which is their central park i guess (every city has one, but none are as great). they also have one of those ultimate party streets like beale street, honky tonk row, bourbon street (a few weeks ago at least), sunset strip, times square, etc. but its just called sixth street. it had literally fifty bars down a eight or so block stretch. itd be more fun if i were there with some friends. later i checked out the u/t campus, which is large but looks like a fun place to go to school. i also saw their imfamous tower upon which charles whitman shot and killed sixteen people in 1966 (wounding thirty more in an uninterrupted 96-minute spree), one day after stabbing and murdering his mother and wife.
tomorrow i plan to visit some highly recommended music stores (rolling stone called austin the fourth most awesome music town in america - which would be an even more ringing endorsement if rolling stone werent completely gay). then saturday i get to drive almost nine to hours to americas greatest city, its sparkling midwestern diamond and center of cultural relevancy and accomplishment - wichita, kansas!