Skiing on Lake Travis
and other fun Austin Activities

Thursday the 17th of August, 2000 I left Houston sometime around 1:00pm.  Destination - Austin, Texas.  For me, Austin is a second home.  And I was going to visit a couple of my best friends - which made it even more fun.

I made Jeff get out and take this picture - I'm such a typical tourist

Waaaay up in the trees - the fabled Oasis Cantina.

In most every one of these pictures,the scale is mis-leading.  In the pic above, the Oasis looks like nothing more than a big tent on the top of a hill.  But actually - the Oasis is HUGE!  It seats 1,500 people - here's a pic I ripped from another site showing the view from one of the decks looking down.

We are on the Lake!   Lambo co-pilots while Jay enjoys a beer.

First skier of the day - Jay shows us how it's done.

Now, before you check out the pics below - let me do some explaining.  Austin has been getting very little rain lately.   The water level at Lake Travis is about 50 feet below normal.  The funny thing is - unless you look really close you'd never notice from these pictures.  So, on a couple - like the one below - I've marked them up so you can see what I'm talking about.

OK - the red line is the normal water level.
In that circle just below is another ski boat, enjoying some shade from the dam.

It was a beautiful day!    Jay looks confident....

Ooohhh - a little too confident.

That's me!    Peace.

A great pic of me skiing below the Oasis (thanks Lambo)

Photographer of the year!

HE'S DOWN!!!   (I think that was Pat)

Do I look tired?    I was.

Here's another picture where you can see how low the water was.
Look behind Jay - Can you see the other boat and skier?

In the picture above, if you didn't have the other boat and skier to get perspective - it almost looks like we were skiing close to shore - and that band of rocks was maybe 10 feet high - BUT NO!  That band of rocks is like 50 feet high - and we were far out enough so that we were skiing in water that was 160 feet deep.

The sun goes down - but the partying didn't stop.

The next day, what better way to re-coup than some Tex-Mex at Serranos.
Many thanks to Jay and Jeff - and a big 'HOWDY' to Pat and Sherrie!
I can't wait to party with y'all again!