Well what a busy couple of days. It's all change in the Mills-Backhouse household. After nearly 3 years of loyal service Donkey (or 'The Donkster' as he was more recently known as (hey - it was a Buell we had to make him a little more hip and cool y'know?!)) was put out to pasture - to see out his days in a more relaxed and better place than hanging off the back of the RV for about 35,000 miles!!
And of course y'all know better that Chris isn't saying goodbye to one motorbike without welcoming in a new one! Yes we welcome a new (as yet un-christened) motorbike - a Honda CBR1000RR (Fireblade). To me it's a large shiny red and black thing. It has a higher pillion seat making it more difficult for me to clamber on and off but it IS much smoother ride, less vibrations and it sounds nice - much less like a Harley, much more my thing. Chris, well he's just spent the last 24 hours wandering around with an ear-to-ear grin - it's beginning to look a little scary, you know - village idiot look!
It wasn't REALLY that planned an event. He'd hankered after the 2007 model Fireblade since last November just before we left Texas when he saw they'd been discounted over $2000 on the new price (there's a new model out now which he prefers less). I reigned him in at that point but there'd been various mutterings over the past months and finally I suggested he phone round the Austin dealers 'just to see' if they still had any in stock in his colour choice. So all we'd really gone into the showroom for was to see what kind of trade-in price they'd give us on Donkey. He'd had a hard life, several scuffs and all and we'd been offered just $1000 last November which was a joke. When the guy looked at the bike and offered us considerably more than what we'd even hoped for we didn't even look at each other (we just knew it was good!), and pretty much signed on the dotted line right there. About 45 minutes later Chris rode out the door on the new bike!! I got all upset about Donkey - poor old thing. I was probably more fond of him than Chris (being the underdog, and I never really appreciated all his faults and shortfalls than Chris found so frustrating). That was all yesterday. I like to think that it was his birthday present - that's what I'm saying anyway - because that makes me sound like a really cool, understading wife!!
Today we're staying with friends John & Michelle and their kids Kate & Callum in Austin. Started the day off watching a VERY exciting little league Baseball game that Callum was playing in. This is WAY more interesting than grown-ups baseball and I even totally got the hang of the scoring, along with a little screaming and cheering! John & Michelle took us out to lunch for Chris's birthday. It was a scorchio day and what better place to be than down near the water - Lake Austin to be precise. There was a great Hawaiian themed place called 'The Hula Hut' (though I'm sure most of the food was TexMex) right on the water and we sat out drinking cold beer and margaritas on the deck before eating a late lunch.
Yesterday we'd moved on to Hill Country, TX and some classic biking roads. There's a loop route of three roads - the 335,336,337 that are sweet (according to a t-shirt we saw someone wearing the 3 roads are called 'the 3 sisters' and it's a very well know biking route), We took a ride in of about 300 miles. A great way to get used to the bike a bit and help with that 'running in' thing. Hill Country is just gorgeous. This is actually the 3rd time we've visited (the first time we had no bike, the second I was ill so Chris went riding the route by himself). There's a whole bunch of 
exotic animals living in Hill Country (at times the scenery it quite African looking. We saw giraffes and plenty of exotic hooved animals with fancy antlers - not your regular white-tailed deer that's for sure!) I was most excited by the kangaro
os!! (At least I think they were - they had the whole bouncy thing going on but were quite small - what's a wallaby? could it have been them?) Anyway, Cute and all chilling out under the shade of a tree in the heat of the day! There's so many rivers and the contrast between the lush greeness and the bright blue sky was wonderful. We ate roadside BBQ at a bikers joint and kept the jackets open-necked to let the breeze in - it was a hot day!
Before leaving Austin we stayed with some other friends - Marty and Tom. They were fantastic tour guides who gave us an 'Austin in 8 hours' tour! Boy we crammed in a lot, it was great! We toured the cap
itol building (with a 4 floor building set underground next to the original domed building) and the senate & house of represenatives and into the Governors reception room. We went by Lake Travis (Another of Austin's lakes that was dammed), We saw their new house, had lunch at their new neighbourhood restaurant and finished off the day at the University of Texas Club in the Longhorns Football Stadium (the Longhorns are the College Football team of the Univeristy of Texas Austin). It was a great day out - thanks Marty & Tom!
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This was Riga. In Latvia. Great place. We spent 2 nights here staying in a great hostel right in the centre of the old town. A small old town area and very easy to get around by walking alone. Sadly already overpopulated by drunk English who have already made a name for themselves (we were there on a Saturday night so at it's worst). But then, where Easyjet go, the drunk British yob will follow...
