What a
GURR-REAT!!! Weekend your humble No Fenders scribe had recently in
Austin, Texas - which I learned on my connecting flight from Salt Lake city
that apparently many Texan's' are jealous of Austin's reputation, as I couldn't
figure out what A-L-L of the Guffawing over the various references to "WIERD!"
Were all about? As the final joke I heard cracked upon the Aeroplane was, I've
got one better: "Pflugerville, between a rock and
weird!"
As apparently Austin's referred to being
weird; Huh? Being my only destination city in Texas I've ever visited, I rather
enjoy the city, which makes me wonder about the rest of Texas? Not to mention
that Austin is the Capital no less...
Arriving on nearly Wednesday morning, (11:45PM
local time) naturally when Claudio took me for a nearly three hour Walkabout, later
in the day I-T was HOT! At least for this Western Warshintonian' Boy; Hya! As
the weather was in the high-80's (Fahrenheit) up 'til Raceday, which is about
30deg-f more than Seattle was; but I digress...
Thursday morning we decided to ski-dattle off
to Geo. Phillips most favourite named track in 'TexArse; Circuit Of The
Americas, nee COTA to procure our MotoGP tickets, to where we not only acquired
two 3-Day General Admission passes, but tickets to a band who a Texan warmly called
Arcadia Fire; Hooah!
As we began our weekend in style by attending
Arcade Fire performing at COTA's 360 Amphitheatre Thursday evening, which I
believe seat's 25,000 spectators outdoors near the COTA tower, as i could even
see the multi-coloured red & blue lights running up the tower's base -
before looking skywards to see the moon as we waited for the main act to begin.
Even more surprisingly was being seated in
two overstuffed "rocking-chairs" in our very own cordened off ADA
seating area! Our seats being on the left hand side of the stage's hillside
bluff, as Arcade Fire is simply an AWESOME group who were currently promoting
their latest album Reflector.
VIDEO: Reflector
And I know it's probably cliché, but! I found
the group to be overly progressive. First announcing that $1 of every ticket
was being donated to the Haitian relief fund rebuilding the Hospital where all
of the Nurses were killed during the earthquake! Along with telling Austin to
keep it Weird!
Then later on, the lead singer told us what
the song We Exist is about, as in the problems of being Gay in this world to
which he emphatically said is all HORSESHIT!
VIDEO: We Exist
As it was great
fun having the band open the show with two larger-than-life puppets of Barac
O'Bama and Governor Rick "good Hair" Perry on stage making fun of
themselves, with another puppet "O Pope Francis rocking out at the end of
the show.
With the only disappointment
towards this band being the fact that they're coming to the faraway nether
regions of Washington, playing at The Gorge, in George, WA for nearly FOUR
TIMES the ticket price we paid to see 'em in AUSTIN; SHEISA!
 |
| 2013 picture of Arcade Fire Band Mates. (Image source: musiclipse.com) |
Or the fact that American Josh Herrin is
contesting the entire Moto-2 championship this season - being totally unaware
that he's the reigning AMA Superbike champion...
As 1993 500cc world champion and motorcycle
ambassador for COTA gave a pretty insightful speech Sunday on the current state
of American Up & Comer riders lack of progression. Especially since thee
"Texas Tornado," aka Colin Edwards just announced his retirement at
the end of this season, (having celebrated his 40th birthday this February) while
surely "the Kentucky Kid" (Nicky Hayden) is in the waning year's of
his B-I-G BOYZ' Scooter career at the not so youthful age of 32. (turning 33 on
July 30th) As we'll have lost two-thirds of our top Yank' riders in just two
seasons, after my Boy ELBOZ' (Ben Speis) surprising retirement last year and hence,
who will there be for Nicky to hand the baton off to in the future?
As Schwanz correctly pointed out how American
riders will never be able to catch up performance-wise to the Europeans by not
competing Internationally as early as possible, noting how they'd never
catch-up by starting at 20 vs. European riders making their debuts at 16, as our riders need to learn
what it's like living out of a suitcase for nine months of the year...
We tried avoiding the hurricane wind-like
conditions on Friday, as there's simply NO trees at COTA and the only place we
found to duck the buffeting wind was by utilizing an empty Grandstand's perimeter,
keeping my hat from blocking my limited view, as we moved all over the grounds,
watching those "Madmen" from several vantage points - having even
gotten chased out of the "High Rent District" after watching the
Scooters' close-up for about 5mins during the weekend's first practice before
some very 'Officious blue shirted woman said Yuhs CAN'T be in here, Y'all need
to leave the way you came in!
NOT to mention the most ridiculous BULLSHIT
of the entire weekend when a short little man SCREAMED at me that I couldn't
take my bottle of water out of the
racetrack, zealously guarding his 55-gallon trashcan with some policemen
nearby; SHEISA! As I still cannot comprehend what's the issue of taking water
home with you? And that's before we even get into the Environmental aspects, a
la Texas currently having a drought, etc; Oh Never Mind!
