Journal #2
A New Experience In Austin

I was born and raised in Austin, done almost everything there is to do in this beautiful city. Surprisingly enough in my long 20 year tenure here, I had never ran town lake, how crazy is that? No one believes me, I’ve been all around it from zilker park too auditorium shores to the congress bridge and seen the bats. Just Never on the actual hike and bike trail, around the formally known “Town lake” as us old Austenite’s still refer to it as. So as the “non-runner” that I ‘am I never ran the loop. I was amazed by many aspects of my first experience here, I already knew it was going to be pretty, with nice flowers, on the banks of the lake, with the ducks and such, as everyone always reminded me of that, they were right. The most shocking thing to me was the amount of people there, I knew it would be busy on a Saturday morning or around the evening time, on a nice day, when most people are off work. I was there in the middle of the day, 2 o’clock on a Tuesday, it was packed with any kind of person you could imagine, from your everyday “marathon” type runners, to people in suits and cup of coffee just taking a break from the office. I loved it, it was beautiful, fun, clean, and I even saw park rangers riding along the trail, making sure everyone is safe and behaving. We are just so blessed to have a hike and bike trail as attractive and convenient as ours. Many other cities have similar trails and places to run, but not like