ROAD TRIP DAY 3 — Back to Austin
We Don’t Want to Leave
SUNDAY (Chronicle #29): Today we head back to Austin. It’s been so much fun here in Marfa. None of us want to leave yet!
From our hotel in Alpine, we call Agustin in Marfa and make plans to drop off the remaining supply of Black Iguanas. We plan on meeting him at the Hotel Paisano late morning.
We arrive in Marfa and of course we need our Java fix — we go straight to the complimentary coffee in the Hotel Paisano lobby. We enjoy our coffee in the beautiful courtyard — it’s breezy, cool and sunny. It’s absolutely perfect. So relaxing!
Agustin arrives and we enjoy recapping with him some of our experiences at the festival and getting his perspective on the whole event — what he and his friends think about all these out-of-towners descending on Marfa. Turns out that most of the locals are not following the film festival events. We’ve been the only ones that’ve made any effort to engage with him and his friends.
Robin Lambaria (film festival DIRECTOR and organizer) comes by our table in the courtyard. We wish her well and tell her that the film festival is obviously a HUGE SUCCESS!
Mercedes Sports Car
We walk over to the Avalanche — Augustin’s truck is parked next to us. Just as we’re getting ready to offload our priceless Black Iguana stash — the Dallas girls drive up in their convertible Mercedes sports car. We offer them a small stash of Black Iguanas and of course they get all excited! We give them instructions that they need to freeze the Black Iguana pouches for the OPTIMUM experience.
Who Are You?
Then this guy opens the car’s front passenger door and gets off and stands next to us and asks if we know who he is.
Huh? Should we care?
Well, it turns out he’s Thomas Garza, one of the festival coordinators. He’s somewhat peeved that we had not contacted him to coordinate our product placement.
We quickly dismiss him by responding that we’ve been dealing directly with Robin, the film festival DIRECTOR — from Day 1, we’ve been in touch with Robin. On the other hand, we never once ran into Thomas — but we did hear about him from the JEM brothers. Thomas set up their JEM catering operation in an Airstream on a sand lot across the boarded-up mortuary building.
When we offer to let him have a stash of Black Iguanas, he rudely retorts that they’re heading out to get something to eat, and won’t be back until maybe 45 minutes or longer. Stupid move on his part — we counter with that we’re heading out to Austin now.
Dallas Girls Rule!
So one of the Dallas girls quickly gets out of the car and offers to take their stash of Black Iguanas to their hotel room’s freezer. The other Dallas girl drives off with Thomas to drop him off and returns back to the Hotel Paisano where we’re parked.
We’re hoping the Dallas girls enjoy the Black Iguanas sans Thomas! We’re betting that won’t be hard to do 
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