Austin

There are many unlikely beneficiaries of wealthy parents with college-age children, and we can now add parking gate manufacturers to that list.

Since most students had left for the summer, I parked in the garage of my brothers' dormitory, somewhat concerned that I would be charged a premium for parking. I need not have worried, since an intrepid band of students had taken matters into their own hands, by ramming their way out of the parking garage, twisting the turnstile arms into ribbons of scrap metal. Free parking for all.

What's even more telling about this incident of vandalism as the byproduct of lazy frugality was that the dorm had replaced the gates within 24 hours. The utter efficiency and indifference of the response leads me to believe that the storming of the parking gates is a weekly ritual conducted by the dormitory Visigoths.

It had been quite a while since I stepped inside a college dormitory, and visiting my brother reminded me of one particular detail I had long since forgotten.

The smell. I suspect that Aum Shirikyo has found a new chemical weapon to release upon the Tokyo subway: the sweat of college freshmen. Nothing says "college dorm" quite like this aroma. It's as if they've installed vapor condensers to absorb and the perspiration of the students, which is then distilled into a pungent musk, to be slowly released into the air conditioning system.

The ubiquitous discarded beer packaging also evoked fond reminiscences. If there was ever any doubt about the cheapest brand of beer, allow me to put the issue to rest: Keystone Light. UT-Austin students may be a diverse group, but on this matter they have spoken as one.

One of the highlights of the trip was playing the game New Super Mario Brothers on a DS Lite, neither of which had been officially released in the United States at the time. The ingenuity of college students in completely unproductive endeavors is what keeps this country great.

As for Austin, the city has a leisurely pace, and an unpretentious appreciation for culture and music. It's a bit small, though, and the traffic is awful, somewhat negating one of the primary advantages of smallness. To be fair, I only visited long enough to help my brother switch apartments.

A word of warning: the state of Texas raises its entire annual budget by means of the speed traps on 35 South between Dallas and Austin. They might as well install drive-through traffic courts on the freeway while they're at it, so people can pay their fines before they merge again. (Note to worried parents: I did not get a ticket.)