Home in Austin...for a Minute

Houston just vibrates differently.  My old buddy Ryan told me he could always tell when he was close to Houston because everybody on the freeway would collectively accelerate to 80mph and start shifting lanes.  It's the true melting pot of Texas, built on industry and over the last 20yrs has made significant investments in parks and quality of life.  

When I'm home in Houston I vibrate differently.

After working remotely from the front room at Liz's, I closed up shop and we started to pack.  Before leaving we all went downtown to drop off my Niece Jordan at the Houston Ballet and walked around Market Square, my favorite place downtown (La Carafe, Scotch at Charity Bar, Critical Mass, Liz/DK's wedding and my favorite birthday bike ride to Market Square Grill).  We all grabbed a slice at Frank's, then said our goodbyes down by the Buffalo Bayou.  I pointed the truck West and we headed home to the hill country. 

Our stay in Buda didn't start until Tuesday so we needed a place to crash.  I had an early morning meeting in downtown Austin so we booked a suite at the Holiday Inn Express "near campus" as Kim put it.  "Near campus" turned out to be a block from the ARCH, a particularly rough part of town. 

After checking in we drove into the parking garage and the canoe on the truck just happened to be about 1" too high.  We moved the boat to the back rack and cleared the garage safety bar by about a quarter inch.  I figured they set those things a couple inches low to be safe.  They do not.  I hoped they would have parking on the first floor.  They did not.  

We made it down to the 3rd floor slowly, scraping the ceiling as the angle of the truck changed going down the ramps.  As I unloaded the truck the kids were literally standing everywhere I needed to be and when I made them stand aside they started wrestling, Henry got popped in the mouth (accident) and started bleeding.  Wounded, tired, adrift...we took the elevator up to our room.

Prologue:  I popped out for a bottle of wine from a corner store a few blocks away.  Downtown Austin is beautiful and mostly quiet at night.  I had the late night traffic on I-35 at my back and the muffled cacophony of 6th street two blocks to my left as I wove my way through homeless campsites.  I made my way past the federal building where LBJ kept an office during and after his presidency, past the Omni to a corner store right around the corner from the Bike Austin office near the capitol.  

As I walked the same route back, a bottle of wine in hand, I thought of all the great memories literally everywhere I turn.  I was making good pace back up the hill and excited about a glass of wine and crappy cable TV when a homeless man noticed me, stopped peeing long enough to expose himself and give me the finger. 

We are living in chaos right now.  I keep thinking to myself, "This isn't normal..."  It's hard and exhausting but we are living out of principle, breaking through every obstacle because it's not "if" we will get where we are going, it's "how" we will do it.  In all this chaos, I genuinely believe that years down the road (possibly after a bit of therapy), I'll walk past 8th and Neches I'll laugh and retell a few stories from our big float.