AUSTIN, Texas, July 3, 2005 — It's Sunday, tomorrow is the Fourth and lots of people are celebrating, I guess. We've promised to take my Dad about eighty miles outside of Austin into a Hill Country area called Willow Loop for a barbeque. There will be fireworks but we will be gone before they explode for sure.

First I just have to watch Roddick and Federer trade rocket shots and aces. Federer is just better all around. Good offense, good defense. We will just have to unfurl the flag of the USA some other time over the hallowed Wimby lawns. Not today. The Swiss (and the South Africans, too, I guess) can celebrate today. Although tennis sort of transcends homelands except in

Davis Cup or something, to me. I have accomplished a few things while viewing tennis. Taking the sheets off the bed and laundering them, for example. I've also polished off a pastry FFP went and got for me.

After the tennis I get off to the gym. I ride the bike hard for fifty minutes, reading in the papers about businessmen as crooks. I do some ab and lower back stuff.

At home, I organize and think about finishing packing. I shower and snack. My Dad comes over around four and we head out in his van. We go to the Willow Loop which takes about an hour and a half. There is a spread of food of the barbeque variety...chicken, beef, potato salad, various salads, desserts. We look around the place, eat, drink (water for us, one light beer for Dad). Little kids splash in wash tubs. Big kids in a converted storage tank. Kids ride a fourwheel utility vehicle (with helmets). A trailer full of hay is organized. Dad, FFP and I aren't up for a hayride. For sure Dad isn't! We try to wait for the hayride to return before bidding adieu because we want to say goodbye to the hosts who are on it. One of the guests who didn't do the hayride is someone who used to work at my old company. He is pumping himself up to some other business guy. I ignore it. But it is getting late. I am doing the driving and I want to get off the little road before it is dark. So we set off to do the return trip and I'll e-mail our hosts to tell them thanks for having us.

Only one little fawn tries to collide with the van but it's still light then so all is well and we avoid it. (There are also 'open' cattle areas on 1323 where you have cows wandering toward the road.) We see lots of police stops. Including (justice!) one of those vehicles that has tires to make it two stories high. I can just hear it. "Please step out of the car, sir. Keep your hands where I can see them." All the while craning his neck up. How do they get out of those things?

We get home and Dad heads off to his house. It's getting late but I watch some stuff off the DVR and read some papers. Sleep.