My cousin Frank hitchhiked over to Austin from Mobile back in May, and he reports on a local collective he fell in with:

everyday i ended up at Barton springs, jumpin off of bridges, garbage can divein from Taco Cabana. i stayed at a couple differernt collective house's and some parks and a roof for a while. the city was very kind to poor travalers, there was a resturante called Veggie Heaven that would give you free food and it wass all vegiterian. i had a good experience there.

while i was in Austin i hooked up with this collective house that runs a recycled bike project. they have a program called -bikes across borders- they fix up as many bikes as they can, get um runnin, then drive um to the border. since it cost 700 dollars in taxs to drive them across and only 25 cents to ride them across they park on the u.s.a side then criticle mass them across. then they give them to locals who are being explioted by big american companies and cant afford cars.

i met them a few days befor the trip so i went along. it was a great experience, they had made some great bikes, double deckers, unicycles,
bady bikes. none with fur though. when we pulled up to the border we were waiting for the others to arrive the weirdest thing happened- it started hailing, in the middle of may, 103 degree heat, the mexican border, it hailed really hard for like 15 minutes. very strange. then as we rode the bikes over the rio grande a huge
storm was coming over the horizen, i swear to god the clouds were increadible hulk green, with lightning every second. it was an extramly beautiful moment.