Happy New Year!

 Our 2011 was full of adventure and new experiences, and 2012 is sure to bring more.   We hope you were able to see some of your dreams come true last year too!

Our New Year's Eve was spent at the SWOOP House, just like last year.

Stephen Shallcross, friend, chef extraordinaire, and owner of the spectacular 2Dine4 Fine Catering.  I've decided that he and his wife Lauren are good luck charms for us.  We spent last NYE at the SWOOP House and had one of the best years of our lives....so a tradition continues!

 The SWOOP House is a vintage Austin bungalow that Stephen moved (!!) and remodeled.   It's beautiful and has so many unique and homey touches.  They have a Supper Club there twice a week.  You really should go to one....it's a heavenly experience!

Greg's in the middle of a story (you can see his hand in the lower right corner), but everyone was nice enough to look at the camera.  (Why is everyone wearing blue?)

First course: Arugula salad with duck bacon (!!) and a momofuko egg on toast

 Second course: a white fish (forget which kind?) on a cauliflower cake (YUM!!) with green salsa and golden raisins

Third course: beef dumplings with mashed potatoes.  Again, YUM 

Stephen pours liquor on the cherries to flambe them for......

 .......a delicious dessert!

 After dinner, we all waddled over to a friend's house for fireworks.  "Let old acquaintance be forgot and nuh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh....." (does anyone actually know the words to that song?)

 In true New Orleans fashion (have I mentioned that practically everyone we know in Austin is from Louisiana?), oysters on the half shell were available.

Our party host, Andrew, with Greg, Stephen, Bryan, and Scott.  Only one of these boys is NOT from Louisiana.....

Playing with New Year's props.  Will Scott and Ania be mad at me for posting these silly pictures?  Only time will tell!!

Happy New Year everyone!  May all your dreams come true in 2012!

Our Trip Vehicle: LeTigre, the little van that could...

"LeTigre"

Our faithful little van/home for the last 5 months.

15,570 miles so far!

Quite a few people have asked about our van and how's she's holding up so I thought I'd do an update on her status.  First a little background...

We considered a few other van-based motorhomes and camper vans before purchasing LeTigre back in July 2010.  A Volksagen Westfalia conversion would have been nice but the purchase price for one of these is pretty steep and I wouldn't have been able to work on it as easily as LeTigre, which is based on a Chevy Astro mini-van.

Which one of these is not like the others?

We knew what we didn't want, a full size RV.  A priority for us was being able to drive anywhere a regular van could go and have something with decent gas mileage.  We've averaged just under 15 miles per gallon so far.  This includes lots of mountains...

The company that made LeTigre, called Provan, is still in business and we encountered a handful of newer ones along our trip.

Check out Provan

Needles Highway in the South Dakota Black Hills, no problem.

LeTigre is 6'8" tall so parking garages did pose a problem but this one in San Francisco was 7' so we skimmed in.

Auto ferries were never an issue.  LeTigre is only 17' long, no extra charge!

We encountered this Tiger in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.  There're quite a few of the older ones still kicking around, especially out west, as they were built in Colorado.  We found ours on craigslist and picked her up in Sedona, AZ.

Problems along the way?  Oh sure, there were a few.

This vent cover blew off in South Dakota... twice!  After the second replacement disappeared, I had to rig it with some tupperware lids and duct tape until we could get another one.

Ahhh the wonders of duct tape, this held for months!

If you're not familiar with this it's a "coil wire".  It carries the spark from the ignition coil to the distributor.  This was the source of our first breakdown in Vancouver, BC.  Luckily, LeTigre is old enough (1988) for me to still understand and work on.  I rerouted the coil wire away from what it was arcing on and got to the nearest auto parts store to get a new set of spark plug wires.  $50 bucks, no big deal.

AAA to the rescue.

We have the membership with the free 100 mile tow.

I highly recommend it if you ever embark on a cross country road trip.

This could have been fixed on the roadside if we hadn't broke down in the middle of nowhere.  Got dropped at an auto parts store and installed the new one in the parking lot.

The culprit?  A $50 serpentine belt tensioner.

LeTigre turned her 200,000th mile along the way!

She's got the old fashioned 5 digit odometer so it's like starting over again!

Starter motor in Albuquerque.  Guess how much?

Yep, $50.

So besides the starter, tensioner, plug wires, and vent covers, the only other maintenance has been front brake pads (in Portland), a power steering hose (in Colorado), and oil changes.

Here in Texas we're required to get a safety and emissions inspection annually for our vehicles.  We left in June and LeTigre's inspection sticker expired in August, oops.  Of course it was no problem in other states and we made it back to Austin without getting pulled over...

until I was on my way to get the van inspected!  No joke!  Luckily the Trooper that stopped me was in a good mood.  I had Kipper with me and some of our business cards to prove we'd been on an epic road trip and he let me off with a warning.  Thanks Trooper Simmons!

Oh, and LeTigre passed with flying colors!

Since getting back to Austin, we've been working on a few LeTigre projects to get her ready for the next leg of the trip.

More on those soon...

Back in Austin........

We got home late on Dec 2 and have been very busy since then!  First order of business: catching up with friends and family.  

Bryan and Ania were sweet enough to have a dinner for us...and of course we didn't starve!!

Why are there 7 girls in the bathroom?  Well, didn't you know that's where we like to hang out?  Actually, we were all in there admiring Ania's new tub/shower/vanities/etc.  Very nice!

Even Jello the Cat joined the festivities.  Here, he makes friends with Chloe and Cari.

Me, Greg, Lauren, Amy, Ania, Bryan, Scott, half of Erika's face, Kat, Erik, Chloe, and Cari.

Uuummmm, TRYING to take a picture with the tree.  Technical difficulties.....but it looks cool!

Thanks for a great party, Bryan and Ania!

A few days later, we went to Mike and Ayse's house for homemade pasta!  Yuuuum...

So, you know all those cooking shows where the Italian grandmothers are saying how easy it is to make homemade pasta?  Not so.  It's actually kinda tricky.  But Ayse managed to pull it all together and it was delicious! 

Greg and Mike

The next week, we took Greg's mom to Buda to go to their Trail of Lights with Stephanie, Travis, and Maxie.  Austin was too broke to have their annual Trail of Lights this year...Buda's doing something right!

(Stephanie, Travis, Greg, Barbara, Maxie, Camille)

And it was great!  Lots of opportunities to take silly pictures!

Lots and LOTS of opportunities to be silly......

Oh yeah, and we got reindeer noses.....lots of fun!!

Greg's Aunt Mary lives about 30 minutes away, but we don't get to see her nearly as much as we'd like.  She was nice enough to invite us to her house for lunch with her daughter, Beth, who is a new Austin resident.  Welcome Beth!!!  And thanks for the wonderful afternoon, Aunt Mary!

Cari writes for Edible Austin and was given the assignment to write about the infused vodkas at the Side Bar. It was a sacrifice, but Amy, Ania, Erika, and I joined her for a tasting a few days before Christmas. We had an Orange vodka and a Gingerbreak vodka, made with Tito's (an Austin vodka) and as much local produce as possible.  They were sooooo good!  The hot toddies were especially delicious on that cold, blustery night!  The Side Bar makes their infused vodkas in-house and they're different every week.  Go check them out!

Here's Cari, all smiley with her gingerbread vodka and cute gift from Erika.

And then it was Christmas Eve.  Scott and Amy were out of town, so we had a party at their house.  Not really.  We just had dinner.  In the Casita.  Nothing got broken....

It's not a party without a 1,000 piece puzzle that drives everyone crazy.  

Stefon, Vince, and I put the last three pieces in.....

....wait a minute, that's not a very Christmas-sy sentiment!!!

And of course there's the Christmas tradition of Yahtzee and James Bond.  Is there anything better?

(Vince, Grandma, Barbara, Mom, Ali, Stefon, me.  Greg's there too....behind the camera)

It was a great Christmas!  We hope you had a safe holiday too.  And Happy New Year!!