It started as a rainy day....

Monday night the rain started. Tuesday it continued to poor. I was keeping my hopes alive that the rain would stop before 5:30 that afternoon. There is nothing as refreshing as listening to the rain fall (drop drop drop, pitter patter) on the deck of my coffee shop. I love working on rainy mornings, when you can only tell that the sun is risen because the clouds are slightly less gray than they were ten minutes ago and you can begin to make out the sign of the restaurant across the street.

It continued to rain and became a fine mist as we became tacky tourists and walked the Capitol grounds to see and hear about the history of the great state of Texas! Did you know that Texas had a female governor in the early 1920's? Inspiring stuff. Did you know that the Texas legislature was part time. They only meet for six months every two years. That's it. The clouds were beginning to be slightly gray blue, but were still doling out the oppressive raininess. We had to hope it would stop in an hour or so, just before 5:30.

The rain continued to come down and we walked towards the docks, not sure where we were going exactly. We stopped at a coffee shop for a little pick-me-up hoping that the rain would stop and that we could find the boat. As we left the shop and headed out into the cloudy, but not raining, evening we overhead two young hipsters (one of whom I later found out was named Cotton) discussing where the boat might be. We followed them.

As we reached a fork in the road we saw a boat and a small crowd. This must be it! As we reached the head of the line the young man gave us two $1 dollar bills with numbers 172, and 173 written on them. We were among the first 200 people to show up. We were about to be part of the epic Daily Juice SXSW Boat Party.

Epic it was. The boat launched onto Lake Austin at 5:30 pm. There were bands, free mixed drinks (mojitos, ginger martinis, and jalapeno margaritas) and free beer and free food. Along with the ubiquitous live music of SXSW. It was an amazing evening on the boat. The rain had indeed finished, just in time for our evening ride on Lake Austin.