I was booked on the last Continental flight to Austin the night before the music festival started. Pulling my usual “get to the airport late then mad rush to get on the plane”, I poorly judged how ridiculous the line was going to be at the ticket counter and ended up having to carry-on my bag, which was full of liquids over 3oz. I tossed everything, except for the super-expensive hair product* that I was unwilling to part with. That I stuck in my back pocket as I walked through security. Genius. $30 saved. A good note for all you terrorists out there, keep your liquids on your person.

When I finally got on my overbooked flight, I immediately realized that every band was on my flight. At least all of the ones from New York and even some of the European bands. This would have been fine, but they all carried-on their guitars, which meant I had to check my bag anyway. Once we were about to take off, the pilot warned us that we were going to be ridiculously delayed, but somehow the kicked it into turbo once we got in the air and we arrived to Austin early.

Jason was kind enough to pick me up at midnight and in typical fashion we killed a couple pitchers at the Hideout before calling it a night at barclose. It’s just like me to drink heavily the night before a binge drinking week. 

By the way, I’m cross-posting everything over at Brian’s SXSW music blog.  You should go over there and read his summaries, because he saw some cooler shows than I did and he took much better notes.

* fuck yeah I said hair product.