Austin

I traveled down to Austin to meet up with Linda and John who had been following my blog and encouraged me to come to the centre of cycling in the USA.  Lance Armstrong of world renown has a training camp here and there are many cycling manufacturing companies too.  
This is also the area where Dell computers are based.  John is an electrical engineer for Dell and we had a nice meal where we discussed their dominance in the market.

I got very excited at the idea of seeing what the Austin population thought of my machine. Their good friends David and Yvonne invited me to stay in their home for the night and the idea of using the pool and hot tub sealed the deal!

David and Yvonne met in the US Airforce as they were both Russian linguists during the cold war.

Steven their son his an avid firearms enthusiast and he showed me his collection of weapons which took some believing from someone who fired these things in the military some 35 years ago.  He even had a 1918 Royal Enfield rifle which definitely was my favourite.

Steven

The Collection!

2nd from the top his favourite 'the Judge'

David seemed so enthusiastic about manufacturing the machine that he came with me when I went back to Waco to return the hire car and we brought the machine back to his home in his pickup truck.  

On the way to Waco I was listening to one of the largest radio stations in Texas when I heard the controversy surrounding the decision of a school principle to ban a 13 year old boy from riding his bicycle to school with a US flag on the back due to the sensibilities of the ethnic minorities.  The show host decided to invite comments and so I called the show in order to ask if I should take my US and British flag off the back of my pedalcar.  They immediately put me through and I was on air for some 10 minutes putting my point of view!  I also noticed that my voice on the radio had a few second lag and realised this was in case I said something either too controversial or an expletive that was not allowed on radio.

Upon reaching their home we re-assembled it in their living room.  They then arranged for several of their friends to come around in the evening for a party and to enable them to see the machine.  

Whilst they were all enjoying the ground level hot tub I decided to walk around it to have a chat and proceeded to step straight into the deep end of the swimming pool fully clothed carrying my passport and what I thought was my phone!  Fortunately it was my Leatherman knife in it's pouch.  The others thought that I had done it deliberately!


The verdict - a resounding you must make these in Austin!


We therefore decided to show it around the city the next day.  In the meantime Yvonne showed me her favourite tipple - Moonshine.