SXSWi advice wanted

After encour­age­ment from Lisa, Max­ine, James and a few oth­ers at WE05 (and check­ing my fin­ances) I have decided to attend SXSWi. See­ing I will be fly­ing halfway round the world, I might as well have a hol­i­day. My inten­tion is to either arrive a couple of weeks early or leave a couple of weeks later, hire a car, buy a moun­tain bike (prob­ably a 29er steel hard­tail, the 2007 KHS range looks nice and unlikely to make it to Oz) and go riding.

What I would like is any advice/recommendations/suggestions on:

• Any­thing that will help a first timer sur­vive SXSWi;
• Accom­mod­a­tion for SXSWi that is still avail­able;
• Best way to do the road trip, fly to LAX or SF and drive to Aus­tin stop­ping on the way to ride, do the reverse, or fly to Aus­tin and do a loop from there;
• Place I should ride (see below for my rid­ing ability);
• Any­thing else, good bike shop is Aus­tin, a pay as go mobile pro­vider, etc.

I am not con­cerned about dis­tances in the US. The nearest city to Perth is over a 1000 miles away and that is Adelaide, civil­iz­a­tion is another 500 miles fur­ther on. My last US visit involved an 8000 mile road trip from SF, to Seattle, Clev­e­land and back to SF, via most of the national parks in between. I thought about LAX/SF to Aus­tin and then return, but that may take more time than I have and still be enjoy­able, also I have to worry keep­ing a car in Aus­tin. Though if it is the best option I can always make a little extra time available.

My limited riding ability

• I avoid rid­ing the real tech­nical stuff, two broken col­lar­bones in the past few years have def­in­itely stop that.
• Amongst the guys I ride with, I am usu­ally the slow­est and most conservative.
• So I am look­ing for rides that will wow me with scenery, make me work and not ter­rify me.
• I know I can ride for 3 or 4 hours at a reas­on­able pace, backup and do it again the next day but not a third time.
• Climb­ing, is not one of my strong points, I do not get much prac­tice, the biggest hills here are less than 1000 feet above sea level and are a good dis­tance from my place.
• Weather, more con­cerned about the cold weather. In February/March here the tem­per­at­ures hit 100F reg­u­larly, and I have been known to do the com­mute 25 miles home in 85F heat and that is a good day, bad days are 75F and 20MPH headwinds.

So advice, sug­ges­tions, recom­mend­a­tions. Am I crazy? Any­body want to join me for part of the trip?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 9:41 am and is filed under Just geek, SXSWi, cycling . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.