"And we'll bring it back no matter what it takes..."

Remember how Smokey and the Bandit was about smuggling a lot of Coors beer from Texas to Atlanta, because at the time it was illegal for Coors to be shipped anywhere east of Texas? Well, right now I feel a bit like "Big Enos" Burdette 'cuz even though I don't drink beer, I do now have something that is still as hard to get outside of Texas today as Coors was thirty years ago...

It's a six-pack of Dublin Dr. Pepper. Last month when I went to Texas, I got to visit the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco. That part of Texas is the only place that you can find what is called "Dublin Dr. Pepper", which is Dr. Pepper made with real cane sugar as opposed to corn syrup. They were selling the Dublin Dr. Pepper at the gift shop there, but since I was going back on a plane and didn't have much room in luggage, I had to pass on getting any to bring home to North Carolina. Fortunately my bro-in-law Jonathan (who's in seminary at Waco) bought some, then drove it from Texas to Georgia (how is this not like Smokey and the Bandit, exactly?) and then gave it to us to drive back to North Carolina when we went to Lisa's parents' home for Christmas.

We haven't opened any yet. As hard to find as this stuff is, we're more or less saving it for special occasions. But if you're desperate to try Dr. Pepper the way it was originally made, head over to Old Doc's Soda Shop and you can buy Dublin Dr. Pepper over the Internet for shipping to just about anywhere.

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Texas, Day 3

Still can't get the pics to load at the moment (our digital camera is more used to hooking up to a Windows XP machine and it's nothin' but Macs here) but I'll be showing the cream of the crop from the bunch when I get back. In the meantime, I can report that it was another action-packed day here in Texas...

My friend Deborah and I got in my rented Jeep about 10 this morning and headed to Austin. She got us on Congressional Avenue and I got some awesome photos of the Texas State Capitol. Then we headed over to the University of Texas at Austin campus, and Deborah got a pic of me standing in front of "The Tower". And yes, this is the building from which Charles Whitman shot and killed all those people. Which isn't really why I wanted to see it: it's always struck me as a great design for a building. But I couldn't disassociate being there from the history of the place, either.

After that, we got on I-35 and headed north to Waco, 'cuz there's something I've been bound and determined to do ever since I found out that I was going to this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon in Austin: visit my brother-in-law Jonathan who's a seminary student at Baylor. About 1 p.m. we got to his apartment and hooked up with him, and we went to this place in Waco that serves up Chicago-style deep-dish pizza... which was the first time in my life that I'd had any. After that (and it was a lot of pizza, believe you me) we went to the Dr. Pepper Museum: Waco is where Dr. Pepper was invented and I think the whole state is pretty darned proud of that :-) Then Jonathan took us around Baylor: a school with more steeples than some entire towns that I've been too.

We got back to Jonathan's place, and we said goodbye for now (I'll be seeing him again in a few weeks). Then we got back on I-35 for the drive back to Austin. I dropped Deborah off at her home around 7 and then high-tailed it back to town. The reason? A get-together for the Butt-Numb-A-Thon people at some chili joint in downtown Austin. Took me awhile to find it but in the end I got there and met some of the Ain't It Cool gang: Nordling (will be posting a funny story about when he and I met when I get the pics up), Massawyrm, and then the man himself Harry Knowles! Will have a pic of Harry and me up soon too.

Then I came back here, and I'm gonna be hitting the hay soon 'cuz I'm gonna be getting up early tomorrow morning so that I can be at the Alamo Drafthouse (the Ritz one) at 10 for Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Which is where I and a few hundred other movie geeks will be spending the next 24 hours watching Lord-knows-what.

So this is the last report that I'll be filing 'til Sunday afternoon. Expect tons of good stuff that I'll be writing about when I get back :-)

Butt-Numb-A-Thon starts in 13 and a half hours. Here we go, fast and furious...

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