On Southwest flight 49, direct from Oakland to Austin.  It’s filled with SXSW attendees and empty mini-bottles of booze. Greg and I contributed a meager 4 bottles, while our row-mate managed a single bottle. I should also mention that we’re in the last row, I’m not sure why it matters but it may be a harbinger of things to come I have no idea if this is a good or bad thing.

I’m quite happy we’re on a different flight than the birthday crew, a sizable group of youngins that decided to drain an airport bar of Jameson at 10am.  An impressive feat, of course, until they moved on to Jaeger Bombs at which point Greg likened the scene to an episode of Jersey Shore. I haven’t seen Jersey Shore except via YouTube clips, but if they are any indication of what a full episode is like, he was spot on.

I’m sure there are a least five Internet famous people on this flight and I just don’t know who they are. Greg already spotted a Happy Cog employee who I was completely ignorant of. Which is okay as Happy Cog is a design house, and probably a dream job location for Greg.  I just don’t know a lot of people in the design community, or more importantly for this trip, what they look like. The sheer number of people attending SXSW makes it an instantly visual gathering. I say this without even having picked up my badge. Sure, I can spot John Gruber or Michael Lopp across a room, but would I be able to recognize Khoi Vihn if he was standing right in front of me? (hint: not unless I could read his name on his badge)

I need more gin. You know, for hydration purposes. Also airplane restrooms are small.  I’m just saying.

Unfortunately due to the fact that I booked the hotel rooms, we’re staying in the middle of nowhere, or as they say in Austin “the other side of the river.”. Actually I have no idea if that’s true. What I do know is that is nigh impossible to get a freaking cab out here.  We had the front desk call a cab for us and while we were checking twitter some jerk named Fitzgerald stole our cab.  At least we thought it was our cab.  It turns out that it was another guys cab and he missed it while getting coffee at the IHOP next door.  I told you we were in the middle of nowhere.  After waiting a while a cab finally showed up, but the driver thought it was for ‘Mary’ and not for ‘Berry’.  Luckily there was no Mary waiting for a cab and all three of us made it to downtown Austin.

I should note that even though it’s the day before the official start of SXSW, Austin is pretty impacted.  Tomorrow should be a hoot.  At least shuttle service will be running then.

Greg and I checked in and got our badges and the headed out seeking food.  We started out at Max’s Wine Dive.  It was pretty fantastic, although the service did really die off at the end, which was odd because our waiter looked like Craig Newmark and he’s all about customer service.  It did get busy, but we just wanted to pay and open up a table for them.  Then we did a small walking tour of 6th Street.  The first stop was Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar.  They had a couple of pretty cool guys on piano.  Greg got them to play Dr. John and the Peanuts theme.  We continued our tour of 6th St and somehow decided to stop at Logan’s.  I blame myself.

After that we saw some pretty amazing things, like the lottery numbers being drawn live and the spot where Apple will be distributing crack tomorrow, I mean iPad 2.

Then the hunt for a cab back to no mans land began and once again we were too slow and had a cab we flagged down grabbed from us.  In Austin, there are the quick and the cab-less.  All for the best as we got a cabby with some great stories about ex-wives, pot, and avoiding felonies.