Windows down, and I’m listening to Toadies full blast, smashed between two friends in the backseat of my friends mothers car, hurtling down a stretch of highway in Austin towards Valentina's TexMex BBQ. It’s hot, the sun is setting and layering the distance in pink and orange tones. It’s an unexpectedly perfect night.

We arrive to friends with beers and tacos sitting under hanging lights in a gravel picnic area off the side of the road. They’d just moved back to Texas from Paris, where we met drinking $5 negronis at Red House one night. This turned into many nights of negronis at Red House.

We joke and eat smoked corned, pulled pork and chopped brisket sandwiches, chips and queso, tacos. Clayton and Jeremy are smoking cigarettes, talking about albums over my shoulder. It feels like I’m a teenager again, drinking beers in the middle of nowhere, shooting the shit, smoking and having endless debates about nothing in particular on hot nights with nothing to do but be young.

This is Texas and it’s good.

The next day I am sticky with sweat. It’s storming and I’m drinking Topo Chico for the first time at Guero's Taco Bar. I’m grazing on chips and salsa, sweating and listening to Clayton’s stories about Austin, old men, and rock n’ roll shows. I like it here in the heat, the storm the background soundtrack of the long day.

That night I end up at The Grackle with Jeremy, drinking bourbon, satiated by food truck tacos and listening to a woman shrieking, doing an impression of a grackle. She is drunk and it is great. She tells us stories about her fling with a younger man and blatantly hits on every man at the bar. The night ends sloppily.

I am hungover the next day, sitting at Micklethwait's Craft Meats, downwind from the smoker, with 1.5 lbs of beef rib sitting in front of me on a paper plate, with a side of two slices of white bread. Jalapeno cheese grits in a red checkered cardboard takeaway container are sitting pretty along pecan pie and a Mexican coke. I take a deep breath and begin.