nutcase, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

this bike helmet amused me in lance armstrong’s store mellow johnny’s in austin (the name inspired by maillot jaune) – nutcase is the brand btw. austin is a very cool city. it’s been great to get a chance to visit. it reminds me of melbourne with it’s independent coffee houses, spread outness, and arty crowd. one of the coffee houses i visited was spiderhouse – i remember steve enthusing about it a few years back. weirdly shannon was in austin while i was here and had threatened to take me for coffee in austin if i ever showed up so that was neat, though i had to have a chimay tripel as they had that on tap!

bob and lisa carlton have been great hosts. i shared in the worship services at journey on sunday. their strapline is imperfect faith community. it was wonderful to visit such a relaxed, honest, open group where you felt there was a total acceptance of you no matter what. it’s very rare for me to feel so at home in a church and to feel like i could happily belong there – no BS as someone put it. we had a blah… type event with people from a few of the more emerging/postmodern churches round austin of which there seem to be quite a few out of a range of denominations/movements – lutheran, episcopalian, independent, spin off from mega, house church etc. it just re-confirms that the cultural changes are causing the church to rethink everywhere. i joined in a party with a group of artists, and have met several people for coffee or in the pub and of course have been finally persuaded to join facebook. that actually took place at the spiderhouse and tim snyder caught the moment on his phone so i’ll try and get the pic off him.

due to storms in houston my plane got delayed so i have ended up in austin for another night. headed back to london tonight.

i really haven’t taken a lot of photos but there is a set of around 30 here – oklahoma and austin