Ornoth

Eighteen months in Austin. Here’s a monologue about what I expected, or more properly the numerous things that surprised me, as a lifelong New Englander. If you’re curious, read on…

The Climate:

We knew Texas would be hot; it’s supposed to be hot. Guess what? It was hot. In fact, 2023 was Austin’s hottest summer ever recorded, and the driest year since 1910. In fact, it was hot enough that a friends’ house caught fire when empty wine bottles in his outdoor recycling bin spontaneously combusted!

But ya know what? We handled the heat. In fact, we handled it better than most Austinites, who surprised us with how much they complained about it. Granted, we do cherish our air conditioner, but even outdoors the lower humidity usually made the heat feel a lot less oppressive than we expected. It surprised us when Inna, a lifelong hater of hot weather and bright sunshine, caught herself complaining about a rare string of overcast days.

Still, when summer provides eighty days above 100°F, it changes how you look at things. The reggae song “96 Degrees in the Shade” by Third World doesn’t really justify its lyrical description of “real hot” anymore. It brings a wry smile when the Heat Miser – the main antagonist in the holiday special “The Year Without a Santa Claus” – sings “I’m Mister Hundred-and-One”. Pfft! Call me when it reaches 108°, dude.

With warm air baking the ground around our shallowly-buried water pipes, we had the novel experience of 94°F water coming out of our cold water tap, often warmer than what we got from the hot tap, where some water sitting in our indoor pipes got cooled by our air conditioning! And thanks to South Central Texas’ extreme drought, our tap water often tasted like moldy water from the bottom of a pond.

Another thing we had to get used to was that our two-story apartment has significantly different climate zones. Due to its open plan, the upper story is far warmer than the ground floor, both in winter and in summer. This has actually worked out for us, where my work space is upstairs and Inna’s is downstairs.

Another surprise was that even though it doesn’t often get very cold, the days’ length still shortens noticeably in the winter. Granted, Austin’s 10¼ hours of winter daylight is still 90 minutes more than I got growing up in Maine; but it’s still dark enough to discourage one from going out after 6pm in the winter.

That brought Inna some cognitive dissonance. She’s used to going out and being most social during the summer because that’s when the days are longest and the temperature is most comfortable in Pittsburgh. But in Austin, you have to choose comfort or daylight: either you socialize in the summer when the days are long but it’s too hot to be outside; or you force yourself to go out in the winter when temperatures are comfortable but it gets dark early.

And heat and drought aren’t the only dramatic weather we’ve experienced. A month after we moved in, Austin was crippled (and we lost both a huge tree and our water lines) in a destructive ice storm (writeup & pix). There are frequent thunderstorms which can be both intense and immense, and we recently had a two-day power outage after a storm fried two transformers on our street. The worst storms can bring sudden hail, and there’s nothing like being bombarded by grapefruit-sized chunks of ice falling at 180 km/h to get your attention (and that of your auto and home insurance adjusters)!

Nature:

Moving south, what did I fear most? Bugs! I expected all manner of nasty, poisonous, invasive critters. And yeah, we got a few, but there weren’t all that many, and they mostly stayed out of our house.

When we arrived, our space was home to a handful of ladybugs, but they were quickly removed and never returned. Yeah, we had to deal with a couple small German and large American roaches that found their way indoors, but they were a rare shock.

But one day we discovered one small scorpion in a ceiling light fixture – the first any of us had ever seen in our lives – which sent the entire household into a panicked killing frenzy. That underscored a Texas rule that we hadn’t been aware of: always check your shoes before you stick your feet into them!

There’s been ample wildlife in our yard, which backs up to a wooded creek. We’re plagued by an absolutely fearless herd of deer that own the area. And summer was an uninterrupted eight-month cacophony of cicadas. The fireflies were so numerous in spring that a neighbor called out the electrical company, thinking he was seeing arcing power lines!

We’ve had green anoles, hummingbirds, a ton of cardinals, and nesting hawks. On rare occasions we’ve seen garter snakes, armadillos, and even a coyote. Farther afield, on the bike I ran into actual vultures and real-life roadrunners!

Another completely unexpected delight were the flowers, which were profusely strewn everywhere. Spring is heralded by vivid bluebonnets and red Texas indian paintbrush that are seemingly everywhere. Crepe myrtle trees decorate the streets a little later. And brilliant fiery red and orange Pride-of-Barbados bushes bloom for most of the year. There were also flowers that didn’t open until October and November’s “second spring”. And after a hard freeze, our backyard frostweed plants were decorated with shockingly elaborate ice sculptures around their bases. It really was an amazing, year-long, colorful show; tho I’ll always miss New England’s lilacs and lily of the valley.

Government & Politics:

Speaking of New England, I grew up in Maine, so I’m used to being an urban liberal within an area where the countryside is dominated by conservatives. And I most recently lived in Pittsburgh, another progressive enclave surrounded by the election deniers who led the 2021 insurrection against the United States of America. I expected more of the same from Texas, and it mostly delivered, being about as full of rednecks as Western Pennsyltucky once you venture outside the city.

But it also surprised me in some shocking and disturbing new ways. I’ve never lived in a city that was so openly besieged as Austin is. The arch-conservative state legislature and governor make no attempt to hide their pervasive attempts to make the state’s liberal cities fail – and Austin in particular – in any way they can. This includes sending in state troopers (essentially military shock troops) to terrorize (“police”) the population.

They can do this because Austin’s police force has essentially abdicated its responsibility to ensure law and order. Like most places, Texas’ police officers are right-leaning, and would like to see Austin fall into chaos to prove that progressive ideas inevitably lead to social disorder. So after the violence of the Black Lives Matter protests, when there were calls to de-fund the police, many of them left the force, leaving it chronically understaffed, or stayed on but simply stopped doing their jobs… even though the Austin PD’s budget was never reduced, and has actually grown significantly.

Augment their quiet-quitting with an understaffed and underpaid 911 system, where emergency callers might wait on hold for 45 minutes before their call is even answered. Think about how this situation – continued over years and decades – plays into the hands of thieves, gangs, violent criminals, drug addicts and dealers, and everyday self-important egomaniacs unwilling to check their selfish impulses. Then you begin to understand the degree of lawlessness and sense of vulnerability that one has to endure living here.

It was an interesting coincidence that a thief ditched a car on our street and sped off on foot through our yard on the very day we moved in. And then there’s the need to make an appointment three to six months in advance to get anything done at the DMV. The state of Texas is fatally broken in several ways.

I wasn’t wrong to expect rednecks in Texas, but what really surprised me was the level of barefaced organized warfare against the state’s largest communities and their citizens. The resulting undercurrent of unsafety is by far the biggest negative we’ve experienced as part of our move. It’s profoundly scary.

Social:

Finally, just a few random observations about how things work down here.

I expected life in Austin to be way more dependent on motor vehicle travel than Boston or even Pittsburgh. That proved out. On the other hand, our house is in a great location: less than a klick to a major highway, but at the end of a small dead-end street that’s buried in a quiet, wooded valley. It’s really quite delightful. While it’s not required in our hilly northwestern suburb, much of the city needs to actively water the clay around foundations of their homes to keep them from moving and cracking!

I expected there to be more stuff going on in Austin than in Pittsburgh, and that’s been a mixed bag. There’s a lot of collegiate-level partying and drugs and soulless entrepreneurial ventures, but much less art and cultural stuff than we expected. Tho to be fair, Pittsburgh did very well with that for a small city, given its philanthropic heritage.

One surprising way that Austin is like Boston is that – although people are quite friendly – deep friendships are hard to form and usually quite casual and transient. Because there’s lots to do, people are usually already busy and booked up with their own stuff, and don’t respond well to ad hoc get-togethers. Because it’s a boom town with college students and young professionals constantly moving in and out, it discourages making permanent connections. So there are definitely challenges on the social front.

And every so often we have a little food dissonance. Sometimes it’s just that Thai restaurants here serve curries containing just meat… no veggies! Or perhaps it’s the Bumble Bee Jalapeño-Seasoned Tuna? Or the Heinz Jalapeño Ketchup?

Overall:

After reviewing dozens of possible landing spots, it was obvious that no city would be perfect. And once we settled on Austin, Inna and I knew there’d be some major trade-offs required. Some of our fears were legit, and some of the drawbacks make life here extremely challenging.

But we made our commitment and followed through, and so far, we have both been very happy here. Over the past eighteen months, Austin has fulfilled our needs, provided an exotic new adventure, and become the background for this new chapter of our lives. And we continue to learn new things about life here every day.

Our move over the holidays from Pittsburgh to Austin was a long, hard road… both literally and figuratively. Here are some of the lowlights (plus a couple highlights) from the hectic, stressful, and eventful month gone by.

Final week at Hobart Street

Boxing up Hobart Street produced an unanticipated cat fortress!

Closing the book on the Hobart Street apartment

Hell is real... especially in Ohio!

Home at last, after a 1,450-mile road trip

Orny broke a couple chairs out of the moving trailer to make the wait for our movers more comfortable

We successfully moved our huge pile of mess from one place to another

The lease on our new Austin home began on December 15, but there was no way Inna and I could finish packing up our belongings that quickly, so we made arrangements with movers for December 28th.

The overwhelming sensation in December was stress. All the packing, selling, giving away, donating, or trashing all our belongings took time and the dust we kicked up caused my asthma to start acting up.

Then there was the weather. A week-long arctic blast brought record cold and wind chills below -25°F, and of course I’d prematurely sealed up the box containing my winter coat and boots. It was like the northeast -- where I’ve lived for my entire life -- was taking one final, vicious swipe at me for daring to move south.

The brutal cold snap laid bare some of our old apartment’s frailties. The window in our spare bedroom fell apart in my hands. The jerry-rigged kitchen sink plumbing gave way on Christmas Eve, and the landlord’s Christmas Day repairs only revealed further downstream blockages, presumably due to frozen pipes, so we were left with no water in the kitchen. All this trauma happened while Inna was out of town for four days, visiting family. It made me very glad we would be getting out of that death trap, if only Mother Nature would let us! But all this sure made it easier for us to leave Pittsburgh.

During the bitter cold, I had to post no-parking notices and claim four parallel parking spaces in front of our house that would be required for the 28-foot U-Pack trailer that we’d be loading into. Although it was a nerve-wracking wait for other people’s vehicles to move on, I was finally able to clear the space and the trailer was dropped off on time.

That night before loading day, Inna and I stuffed our cat Begemot into the car to go set up a temporary household in her mother’s condo a couple blocks away. But in the middle of a quick stop to pick up Indian food on busy Murray Ave, the car refused to start! This did nothing to assuage my anxiety about setting off on a 1,450-mile road trip in a 14 year old car!

After some worried fiddling, we managed to get the engine to turn over and drove our reduced household over to our temporary digs. But Begemot immediately hid himself in an inaccessible corner of the basement. And after we fished him out and confined him in our bedroom, he kept us awake the entire night while he suffered his own sneezing/asthma fits and freaked out over being in an unfamiliar place.

That was our segue into:

Week at Mom’s

After our first sleepless night at mom’s, the cold snap broke, and we went back to the apartment to meet four guys from “Zooming Moving” of Salem, Ohio who would load our belongings into the trailer. They seemed smart and fast, taking 2½ hours to load our 155-ish boxes and pieces of furniture into less space in the trailer than we believed possible. It was magical watching our place rapidly clear out, then seeing everything stuffed trash-compactor style into a tiny section of our trailer (FYI that was a clever bit of foreshadowing, there). When we asked them at the last minute, they even squeezed in four chairs that Inna had feared she’d have to give away.

Once the trailer was locked and the guys gone, Inna called and arranged to have U-Pack pick it up. I visited my oral surgeon for a previously-scheduled followup that was painless but carried disappointing news. Afterward I circled back to the old apartment and found the trailer had been hauled away, so I pulled down the parking signs and went across town to visit El Burro: a favorite burrito joint.

That was on Wednesday the 28th, but we didn’t plan to leave Pittsburgh until the following Tuesday, to avoid being on the road over the New Years holiday. So we had a week to close up the old apartment and hit up some favorite places, which included ice cream at Bruster’s, lunch at Pamela’s diner, and dinner from Thai and Noodle Outlet. For Inna in particular, it was the end of an era, having lived in that apartment for 12 years!

On one hand, it was a major relief that we could stop working like slaves; all the packing and planning was finally done and over with! We even had time to run a load of laundry! And we watched with delight as our stuff traveled to Ohio, then spent the holiday weekend in Arkansas, and arrived in Austin on Monday, eight days earlier than our promised delivery date!

On the other hand, we found ourselves with too much time and nothing to do, combined with the uncomfortably cold temperature of Inna’s mother’s condo. The waiting was especially hard on Inna, who -- having committed to the Austin move -- was eager to hit the road.

And I had time to reflect on how even the holidays had been out to get us this year. Halloween featured my oral surgery; Inna twisted her ankle during our Austin trip over Thanksgiving, and our old apartment’s electrical panel went bad the night we returned; a frigid Christmas featured frozen water pipes and hectic packing while Inna was away visiting her father; and we were spending New Years living out of a suitcase at Inna’s mother’s condo, while our new house and all our stuff was already waiting for us in Austin!

But time passed, the calendar ticked over to 2023, and our long-anticipated departure date finally arrived.

The Drive

Between our fatigue, a stressed-out cat, and our 14 year old car, we allocated three days for the 1,450-mile drive down to Austin. We’d made reservations at Red Roof Inns along the way, relying on their open policy toward pets. Setting out, we were tired and nervous, but happy that things had gone as well as they did.

We left Pittsburgh on Tuesday January 3th in steady rain that tapered off the further we went. The three of us all fared well, and after nine hours we pulled into our motel in Nashville. I downed a terrible “jalapeno cheez chicken” from the Mexican place next door and settled in. The room was garbage, with broken lights, thermostat, and faucet. Bigi’s stress-response asthma was really bad. Then at 5am a group of assholes came around screaming and pounding on doors, and took three body-slams attempting to bust our door in. It was very reminiscent of our horrifying experience at our Austin motel in November. What the fuck is it with you Southerners that you turn into raving murderous assholes when you go to a motel?

After a horrible night we set out on the middle leg of our journey. Inna did most of the driving on a sunny day, enjoying the 75 MPH speed limit through memorable towns like Bucksnort, Tennessee. In the middle of Arkansas we had our one worrying car malfunction when our tire pressure monitor signaled too high air pressure. But it reset after we pulled aside for a lengthy stop, and we proceeded more gingerly. Our motel in Texarkana was less run-down, but I was so wary about the guys hanging out in the parking lot that I couldn’t eat. Fortunately we didn’t have any more overnight visitors, but the cat’s asthma made for another rough night.

On the final day we got up and showered, then faced our shortest drive of the trip, all of which improved our moods. After seeing a bunch of beaver-bearing billboards advertising “Buc-ee’s” truck stop, Inna decided to stop and check one out. It’s kinda of like Pittsburgh’s Sheetz -- a local favorite convenience store -- only with the ridiculous size, decor, and attitude of a huge casino. We definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore! Then, as Austin came into welcome view, we reflected on how well both the car and cat had done on the road trip; the latter experiencing only one outburst in response to Inna’s singing along with her chosen tunes.

Arriving midafternoon on January 5th, our first stop was of course the new house. After discovering that the real estate agent’s promised lockbox was nowhere to be seen, we found the key literally under the doormat and let ourselves in, giving the place a quick once-over. I got our fiber internet router set up while Bigi began to to settle in; meanwhile, Inna made a grocery run and tried to track down the king-sized mattress that FedEx was supposed to deliver for us.

We’d reserved a hotel in Austin in case we got in late, and decided that was preferable to sleeping on the floor, so we bundled poor Bigi back into the car. Our room was fine, but we had another restless night and checked out early the next morning to spend the day at home, watching for our mattress.

Taking up residence

Watching for deliveries proved very fruitful, as we received not only our mattress, but also Inna’s laptop, which we’d dropped off at an Apple store in Pittsburgh for repairs, and a huge grocery bag full of useful stuff (including notably non-Heinz ketchup) from Inna’s former Pittsburgh/now Texas friend Traci.

After making my own grocery run, I was hanging around and saw a kid park his car at the end of our cul de sac and jog between our house and the neighbor’s. I shrugged it off as a local picking up something he’d forgotten. But ten minutes later Austin cops swarmed the area, took possession of the car, flagged me to tell them if I’d seen anything, and started a manhunt complete with search dogs! Day One in our new house, and there’s both criminals and police crawling around our property. I’m afraid Bigi was the only one of who was feeling secure in our new home. But hey, it was January 6 and a delightful 78°F!

Over the next three days we worked to slowly make the place more livable. We didn’t have anything to sit on, but procured our new mattress, bed sheets, food, trash bags, a dish rack, and started laundering things. Bigi’s asthma receded and he became more adventurous, but – in characteristic feline style – he also managed to cover himself in ashes while exploring the fireplace.

Getting our stuff home

Meanwhile, our stuff had been sitting at a shipping warehouse for a week, and we were eager to have it delivered. Because our house is on a steep hill and a narrow dead-end street, U-Pack couldn’t drop our trailer off at the house, so we had hired another moving company -- a national chain ironically named “Two Men and a Truck” -- to transfer our belongings into a smaller truck and shuttle it from U-Pack’s depot to the house.

Since the trailer had arrived early, we got the movers to bump our job up to Monday, but when we met them at the facility, they showed up in a truck that was even bigger than the trailer! And that was the smallest truck they had. No way could they move our stuff, nor would they move it into a smaller rental truck like a U-Haul. We were completely screwed. After much wrangling, their chief agreed to use a company minivan the next day to shuttle our stuff from the top of our hill down to our house. To add one more frustration to the day, I grazed a low retaining wall trying to back out of our insanely un-navigable driveway and knocked an exhaust tip from our Accord.

The next morning – January 10th – we met up with the movers and they shuttled our stuff from the U-Pack trailer into their big truck. That was when we learned the downside of the “amazing” packing job that Zooming Moving did back in Pittsburgh: lots of damaged belongings. Three pieces of wooden furniture were broken and more than half of the 22 plastic bins we’d used had been crushed. Fortunately, not much stuff had actually spilled out, so I used plastic wrap to patch together the shattered bins. But our poor stone “Boo-boo Buddha” statue – so named because he had originally come with a chipped knee – was now fully decapitated! The only good news was that our two big glass desktops had somehow arrived intact.

After loading and the 20-minute drive to our place, I showed their driver why U-Pack hadn’t dropped our trailer in front of our house: the steep, curving descent down our street, the overhanging tree branches, the sloping narrow driveway, and the limited space in our cul de sac for turning around. While using a panel van to shuttle our stuff would suck, we thought it too dangerous to try to bring a huge moving van down that hill.

But the driver was a young Black guy fresh out of high school, and he fearlessly wanted to try it. I told him it was all on them, but he actually managed it. He parked the van at a precarious tilt and chocked the wheels.

The movers still had to carry our stuff down the driveway, but they were able to unload, saving us the extra time, expense, and damage that using the minivan would have required. It wasn’t quite as magical seeing all our stuff pile up in the living room. But despite all our pointless worrying, the entire job was done in just over four hours, leaving us shoulder-deep in a fortress of cardboard boxes, broken plastic bins, and randomly-scattered furniture.

And with that, our long-anticipated move south and the month-long moving ordeal was finally complete! Even after so much stress and all the trials thrown at us, we were now in our new place in Austin, complete with all our stuff, including Inna’s car and Bigi the cat.

Our next step was to begin digging out from the mess, but we put that on hold long enough to enjoy a well-earned celebratory dinner at Inna’s favorite: Lupe’s Mexican restaurant.

Life since then…

It’s been a week and a half since our stuff arrived, and we’ve had time to address most of the mess and begin getting comfortable in our new base of operations. In the wake of our move, there’s lots of organizing, arranging, and decorating to do, but we can thankfully say that the hard work is complete and behind us.

In addition to literally “getting our house in order”, Inna and I have made our first few expeditions afield, starting to explore all that Austin has to offer. We’re really excited to start going places, seeing people, and doing things… Finally building the new life that the two of us have dreamed about for so very long.

Stay tuned for our further adventures!

Last month Inna & I spent eight days in Austin. She was headed there for a four-day workshop, and it made sense for me to tag along and extend our trip, so that we could check it out as a possible place to relocate to.

Austin Skyline

Inna enjoying her palapa

Sparky Park

Austin Boardwalk

Craft

Couple under a palapa

Couple at Clay Pit

Couple at Lupe's Tex-Mex

Mt. Bonnell Sunset

Prologue

This was my first trip out of Pennsylvania since the Covid-19 pandemic hit; my first time sleeping anywhere other than my own bed since 2019. With the pandemic winding down, it was a nervous, awkward person who finally emerged from his cave after 2½ years of hibernation.

Leading up to the trip, I wasn’t able to muster much motivation to do the advanced research I needed to be well-prepared. I wasn’t big on the idea of living in Texas, and my previous visits to Austin (in 1994, 2003, and 2004) had left me with the impression that it was a cycling-unfriendly area. On top of that, I had some trepidation about the reasons behind Inna’s sudden enthusiasm for moving to such a scorchingly hot location.

I should also point out that I just wasn’t in a very positive place emotionally, which colored my experience of Austin and thereby this account of our travels. So please discount the “grumpy old man” factor that you’ll encounter below.

Here’s my day-by-day account, but if you’re only interested in the bottom line, you can skip ahead to the Epilogue.

Wed April 20: Travel

Arriving at the Pittsburgh airport, I dropped Inna near the terminal, drove out to long-term parking, and made the long walk back. Only to discover that Inna had forgotten to leave her winter coat in the car, so I offered to schlep it back out to the car and repeat my inbound hike. We breezed through security thanks to TSA PreCheck. Breakfast from McDonalds. Unlike ourselves, only 10% of people were masked up.

Our two-stage flight went well. I used the flight time to practice Japanese on Duolingo. At our connection in Detroit, our outbound flight to Austin was the same gate and aircraft we’d arrived in from Pittsburgh, which happily obviated the entire hectic connecting-flight dependency chain.

Grabbed our rental car from Enterprise, where they were much too friendly. Drove across town and checked into our hotel, right on the I-35 highway access road. Seeing Captain Benny’s seafood restaurant with outdoor seating and palapas right next to the hotel, Inna was delighted by the reminder of our time in the Caribbean, so we immediately had a light outdoor dinner there.

The weather – as it would be all week long – was very windy and heavy overcast that would occasionally burn off to reveal the sun. Days ranged from 20-30° and nights from 10-20°. Inna found it delightful, and it was quite an improvement over Pittsburgh, where it had snowed all day the day before we left.

Afterward, we went straight to the Atown local souvenir shop, checked out “Sparky Park” (a former electrical substation decorated with pretty and sparkly and delightful junk), and got supplies at the local H-E-B (Howard E. Butt) grocery, which included some interesting “double chocolate” Lindt truffles.

Had some challenges navigating the Texan highway access road system, Austin’s half streets (e.g. East 38½ Street), and the mystery of why anyone would name a residential street “Speedway”. Returned to the hotel very tired and spent some time catching up on stuff before turning in.

Thu April 21: Level Up Circling & Mariposa

After a breakfast of OJ and cookies, I dropped Inna off at the modest ranch house where her four-day Circle Anywhere workshop was held. My plan for Day 1 was to shower, settle in, and attend an evening meditation group at Mariposa Sangha.

My contact there had proposed meeting up beforehand, but never replied to my response, so I had dinner on my own: an idiosyncratic Panang curry at Thai Kitchen, where I got instant service, being the only customer who was dining in. Dessert was a Mexican vanilla milkshake at Amy’s Ice Cream up the street, after being asked by the staff whether I was able to fix their “waffle dough pump”.

Then to Mariposa, a small peer-led Vipassana meditation group, held in a Methodist church chapel, which was still filled with Easter lilies. Met Paul Schlaud, who was leading the evening sitting and dhamma talk, covering the Buddhist precept against misusing sexuality. I contributed during the Q&A, and chatted with Paul afterward. It seemed comparable to our sitting group in Pittsburgh: pretty small and informal, where I’d be equally welcome to teach as well as be taught.

My session ended just as Inna’s post-workshop dinner broke up, so I swung by the Italian restaurant to pick her up and drive back to the hotel.

Fri April 22: Bike Shops

After dropping Inna off, I began my cycling-focused day with a stop at TJ’s Cycle, where I got a lot of good pointers, despite them being mostly an MTB shop.

The guy there pointed me to a new shop nearby called Bicycle House ATX, where I gathered a little more info.

Then downtown, where I stopped at REI to get an independent opinion. I picked up a hardcopy Austin bike map and chatted with a couple friendly locals. Then the nearby Rapha store, which was predictably pretentious but helpful.

My final downtown stop was Mellow Johnny’s, the store founded by cycling pariah Lance Armstrong. It is a hub of the local cycling community, and had dozens of workers manning the store, but to me it seemed both tackily self-promoting and thoroughly unfriendly.

My final stop was Trek Bicycle Lamar. The former center of Austin’s cycling scene, it had been known as the Bicycle Sport Shop before a corporate buyout. I spoke briefly to an attendant who had once lived in Pittsburgh. The shop had a whole wall full of suggested rides, which I captured for future reference.

By the end of the afternoon, I had gathered way more information about the Austin cycling scene than needs to be recorded here, but my impression was that cycling was popular enough to support for several bike shops and group rides. And although I couldn’t find evidence of any centuries or major events (other than the Hill Country Randonneurs), people sounded confident in riding out beyond the city limits into Texas proper. Austin seemed to pass my cycling sniff test.

I’d planned to walk around the corner to visit Peter Pan Mini Golf, which I’d visited with my DargonZine pals in 2003, but by then I was so tired that it slipped my mind in my desire to get back to the comfort of the hotel.

After meeting up with Inna, dinner was a pound of pork ribs at Rudy’s BBQ. As we entered the building, the wind was so strong that it blew down a renovator’s ladder, which nearly fell on top of me!

For dessert I took Inna to Amy’s Ice Cream. She’d had a challenging day at her workshop, and I let her talk it out and relax in the outdoor seating. We were both beat and headed back to the hotel to crash.

Sat April 23: Kyūdō & Newspaper Quest

After taking Inna to Day 3 of her workshop, I went back to the hotel to shower, which for this one day was swarmed with dozens of college students. Then it was back into town to pick up some Excedrin and the day’s main event.

I stepped into the Rising Sun Aikido studio, where people from Austin Kyūdō were assembling for practice. When the leader introduced herself to me, I heard her name as “VHS”, which she subsequently corrected to “Beatrice” (Haven). I also met Helen Febrie, whom I’d exchanged emails with to schedule my visit.

I have two main takeaways from their practice. One is that they’re an ANKF/IKYF group, rather than the Zenko/Heki-ryu Bishu Chikurin-ha lineage of kyūdō that I studied back in Boston. That means they put less emphasis on the mental and meditative aspect of kyūdō, and like other martial arts they give formal ranks to practitioners. There are also some tiny differences in their technique, such as using the two-arrow form, not smoothing the arrow feathers, emphasis on coordinated team practice, less ritualized arrow retrieval, and permission to use bows made of materials other than bamboo. It also means they’re on good terms with American bowmaker Don Symanski, which could someday prove valuable. But I’m agnostic about which school of kyūdō I’m involved with, and find that petty rivalry to be shortsighted, given how tiny the pastime is here in the U.S..

My other takeaway is that it’s a small group with friendly, approachable members. They’re a small offshoot of the IKYF South Carolina Kyūdō Renmei based near Greenville, SC. They’re not unfriendly with the remnants of the dormant Austin Shambhala kyūdō group, as well as Zenko, and they sometime cross paths. It seemed like a nice, supportive group, although requiring an immense 1,800 KM trip to SC to get instruction and support from an experienced teacher.

I stayed for the full 2-hour indoor practice, occasionally chatting but mostly enjoying the beauty of the form and teasing out the differences in technique.

It being Saturday, I wanted to pick up a Barron’s financial newspaper, since I’d suspended my home delivery for the week. Long story short, I had no luck, despite hitting a CVS drugstore, Barnes & Noble bookstore, Kinokuniya Japanese bookstore, and 7-Eleven and Valero convenience stores all across town.

Frustrated, I went back to the hotel and spent the night eating snacks and watching soccer. I was too tired to go out, find a big meal, and fight the Saturday night crowds. Inna found her own dinner and eventually Ubered home.

Sun April 24: Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hotel Day

Day Four in Austin, and for the third day I woke up headachey and nauseous. The weather was continued overcast, which certainly was preferable to Texas heat, but weighed on my mood.

Despite fulfilling major criteria like cycling, meditation, and kyūdō, much of Austin felt like America at its worst: soulless highway car culture and chain store strip mall hell. The city has become ridiculously expensive and its overtaxed infrastructure can’t handle the explosive population growth it has experienced.

Although I’d brought all my cycling gear and hoped to enjoy some cycling around Austin – especially the Veloway and bike night at the Circuit of the Americas – logistical difficulties had made it impossible. I was disappointed and depressed.

After dropping Inna off at her final workshop session, I wanted to fetch drinks and a Barron’s, but had no luck at Circle-K, the H-E-B grocery, or Target. Then I went back to the hotel to regroup and figure out my plan for the day.

While brushing my teeth, I dropped a hotel glass in the bathroom sink, smashing it and cutting up my hands, especially my right ring finger, which began bleeding profusely. It took two hours of constant direct pressure to get the bleeding under control, and another hour before it stopped enough to be able to stick a bandage on it. The white facecloth I’d used was crimson and completely soaked with blood. Getting that under control pretty much took up my whole day. By evening, I was able to gingerly drive myself to another nearby Thai restaurant, Pad Thai, for takeout.

Meanwhile, Inna had decided to spend the evening with her workshop cohort, going wading in Barton Springs before getting a late ride back to the hotel.

From my perspective, it had been another shitty day and I just wanted nothing other than to go home.

Mon April 25: Storms & Hotel Swap

Monday wasn’t much of a day either, washed out by thunderstorms and off-and-on rain. Inna spent her first non-workshop morning recovering needed work files that her teammates had mistakenly deleted. Then we packed up and checked out of our north-of-town hotel. Although we’ve usually stayed at B&Bs, Inna had found exceptional deals at standard hotels, and changing hotels allowed us to explore different parts of the city with less travel time in the car.

With time to kill before our check-in time at the next, south-of-town hotel, we drove around town looking at houses that were for sale. They were mostly ranches, of course, and the residential neighborhoods only varied in how recently they’d been developed. Prices were high but not completely insane.

After an unenthusiastic debate, we opted for a late lunch at the Clay Pit, a downtown Indian restaurant that I had visited during the 2003 DargonZine Summit meetup, and where I’d left behind (and then fetched) a digital camera. The food was surprisingly good.

Our new hotel was located right in the middle of a massive highway interchange in a more industrial section of town. Inna was delighted that the new room — unlike the old one – had a safe, until I pointed out that it was actually a microwave oven, and she probably didn’t want to store her work computer in there!

We spent the rainy afternoon relaxing. Inna napped, and then practiced her Hebrew on Duolingo, which she’d picked up after I’d started using it over Xmas to learn Japanese. Then we went to H-E-B for supplies before calling it a day.

Tue April 26: Grumpy Goes Downtown

By Tuesday, it had all caught up with me: the gloomy weather, my headaches, bad eating, inability to do any cycling, and injuring my hand, all on top of longstanding background dissatisfaction with aging and cardiac health. First thing after waking up, Inna patiently sat through one of my rare emotional dumps.

She then equally patiently helped me shower and wash my hair, since I still couldn’t use my right hand. Afterward, I replaced the bandage for the first time, and happily noted that my fingers looked much better than they had two days earlier.

Focusing on what she could control (my diet), Inna directed us to breakfast at the Magnolia Cafe, where I demolished Eggs Zapata, which amounted to scrambled eggs on english with sausage and spicy queso.

Next stop was “Austin Art Garage”, but we arrived before opening, so killed time in a nearby Indian shoppe. Returning, we scoped out the gallery, and I was amused by their 1980s vintage Tron arcade game console.

Heading downtown, we stopped at the Austin Visitor Center, which provided a transit map and just two brochures, only one of which was Austin-specific. Worthless.

With the day turning warm and sunny, Inna directed us to the mile-long Lady Bird Lake Boardwalk that’s part of the bike trail along the south side of the Colorado River. We took up residence in some Adirondack chairs left on a riverside dock and enjoyed the sun and the skyline view for a while, and watched a couple guys fooling around on e-foils. On the walk back, Inna greeted a young black woman who had brought her cat down to the river.

The rest of the day was haphazard. Another Amy’s Ice Cream, followed by Uncommon Objects, a big antiques (junk) store with most of its wares displayed by color. I dropped Inna off to meet a friend for a food truck dinner, then went back to the hotel, where I waited until 10:30pm to hear whether she needed me for a return ride or not.

Wed April 27: Lupes & More Circling

We (well, Inna) slept in until lunchtime. After hitting CVS, we stopped to admire Casa Neverlandia, a creatively-decorated private house that reminded me of Pittsburgh’s Randyland.

Lunch was a long-anticipated stop on the 360 at Lupe’s Tex-Mex restaurant, an Inna favorite since her first business trip to Houston, having heard it reviewed by a co-worker back when she was in Kuala Lumpur. It being my first time, I was pleased with the fajitas we got. I’m not sure it lived up to the years of hype I’d heard – and it was stunningly expensive! – but it was good to finally try the place for myself.

After yet another Amy’s Ice Cream, we stopped for a brief rest at the small Govalle Neighborhood Park at the Southern Walnut Creek trailhead.

Then Inna navigated us to Craft, a big DIY crafting warehouse. After a quick tour, we settled in and gave it a try. Inna produced one of her typical paint-and-collage compositions, and I stayed true to form with a bold abstract paint-based thing. Nothing noteworthy, but it was a nice activity, and something to do as a couple other than sitting around the hotel or eating.

Although Inna’s weekend workshop was over, she wanted to go to Circle Anywhere’s regular weekly evening session, so I dropped her off and went to kill time at the Kinokunia Japanese bookstore. I browsed for 45 minutes without finding anything that jumped out at me, so I moseyed on to the Daiso Japanese housewares store next door.

Bored with that, I consulted my map to find a nearby park to hang out in for the 90 minutes until Inna’s session ended. Covert Park at Mount Bonnell was nearby and looked like it would have a view overlooking the river, so I drove there.

I’d forgotten that Mount Bonnell is a favorite semi-touristy spot to watch the sunsets from atop a high bluff over the river. I’d arrived just in time, and spent a few minutes scouting out the walking paths, looking for an unoccupied vantage point. It reminded me a lot of the “overlooks” back in Pittsburgh. I relaxed, watched the sun set, and took a couple selfies and panoramas. I also enjoyed the modern convenience of using a 5G phone connection to check Inna and I into our upcoming flights home.

Inna’s workshop session had been unsatisfying, so we chatted about it on the way back to the hotel, where we started packing up while watching another soccer game.

Thu April 28: Killing Time til We Can Go Home

Our last day in Austin began as you’d expect: packing up and checking out of our hotel.

Then we made our way to the Buzz Mill cafe, where we met up with Inna’s friend Sarah Ness, a former Pittsburgher who had founded Authentic Revolution, one of Austin’s other “circling” groups. She was pleasant and interested and energetic, and had lots of positive things to say about Austin.

When Sarah left, Inna and I went next door to a Dairy Queen, where I ordered the traditional Dilly Bar. Then we literally drove around the block before Inna proposed that we go back and hang out at the Buzz Mill until it was time to head to the airport.

The car was dropped off in seconds, our TSA PreCheck got us through security in no time, and Inna disappeared into a massage booth while I finally found a copy of Barron’s at an airport newsstand. Inna stopped at “Salvation Pizza” and spent $7.50 a slice for some greasy pizza that they stacked such that each slice was stuck to the paper plate of the one above it. Did we still eat it? Yeah, you can’t be choosy when eating in the airport.

By the time our 7pm flight was boarding, even Inna just wanted to be home. Happily, like our previous connection in Detroit, our transfer in Atlanta was also back onto the same aircraft at the same gate we arrived at, which made for the best Hartsfield experience either of us have ever had. We shared a laugh when the PA announcer sounds like he asked passengers to please make sure everyone in your party had their body parts for boarding.

Although it wasn’t objectively long, our journey home felt like it took forever. The flight, the trek to the intra-terminal shuttle, waiting at baggage claim (we’d been forced to gate-check our carry-ons), the trudge out to the car, paying for long-term parking, and the 45-minute drive home. There – despite it being 2:30am — I jumped straight into trash, recycling, and cleaning out the cat’s litterbox and put everything out for pickup later that morning. But the cat was happy to see us, and we were very glad to climb into bed shortly before the sun rose.

Epilogue

Recalling that this was my first major trip post-Covid, since late 2019, I am delighted that we made it through without either of us getting sick. We were masked and careful at the airports and during flights, but less so in Austin, where we – like everyone else – went mostly mask-free in stores and restaurants. Although we weren’t especially stringent, we didn’t have any problems at all, even though our immune systems haven’t been exercised in 2½ years.

As for the prospects for relocating, that remains a bit unclear, although after numerous false starts, Austin’s the first place that we both agree has real potential.

For me, the positive side of the ledger includes Inna’s willingness to move there, an active cycling community, the presence of a kyūdō dojo, an MLS team, and no city or state income taxes. Although I’ll repeat how disappointed I am that I wasn’t able to do any cycling during this trip, either solo or in the company of locals.

The list of Austin’s negatives includes the cost of living, the traffic, the highways, the endless expanse of character-less strip malls. Higher property and sales taxes. No casino. Poisonous snakes, spiders, fire ants, scorpions, and lots of other creepy-crawlies. And no matter how reasonable Austinites might seem, it’s a tenuous island of approximate sanity amid Texas’ vast and frightening brand of crazy.

As for mixed blessings… This trip’s weather notwithstanding, there’s the heat. Although I would certainly be leaving New England winters far behind, even a sun-worshipper like myself am intimidated at the prospect of living with Texas’ infamous heat, even if Inna is resigned to being uncomfortable no matter where we go.

And the meditation scene also counts as a mixed blessing. There aren’t any longstanding teachers, nor any retreat centers anywhere nearby. The community is small and led by a group of peer leaders. While that’s much like my situation here in Pittsburgh and would allow me to continue to develop my role as a teacher, I would have even less experienced support in my own personal practice than I already have here.

So that leaves me with mixed feelings. Austin seems to have almost all of the things I want in a home, and Inna seems willing to commit. If it wasn’t Texas, it might be an easy decision to make. But I can’t escape the fact that it is Texas, and living there would require an immense adjustment, as compared to moving somewhere a little more temperate and with a more familiar East Coast culture.

Making another scouting trip would make a lot of sense, to become more confident about our decision, whatever that winds up being. There’s just so much that we haven’t looked at, including Inna’s employer’s local office, and that dreaded summertime heat.

So that’s where I wound up. As a vacation, it wasn’t a very good trip for me; and as a relocation spot, Austin has a lot of potential, although there are lots of plusses and minuses for us still to weigh.

Mt. Bonnell Sunset Pano

If brevity is the soul of wit, I’m surely both soulless and witless, because I find it impossible to write a travelogue of anything less than “War and Peace” proportions. Let’s see if I can tighten up the tale of our recent week in Boulder and Denver...

Boulder Flatirons

Orny & Inna @ Boulder Creek

Boulder Creek

Zenko Kyudojo

Liberty Puzzle

Red Rocks

Denver From Red Rocks

Red Rocks Amphiteater

DIA 4am Monkey Dance

Wed 17 July

Travel day. First time flying Southwest.

Having just gotten approved for the TSA’s Global Entry, this was my first time using the TSA Pre✓ benefit. But even with Pre✓, I was delayed for a wipe-down search of my laptop and cell phone.

Inna and I arrived in the evening to find Denver in the middle of a heat wave.

Got our rental SUV and drove 45m to Boulder. At speed on the highway, the hood started flapping upward; the rental outfit (Enterprise) hadn’t properly closed it.

Arrived at family friend Valentina’s house and sacked out.

Thu 18 July

Breakfast at Dunkin followed by wandering Pearl Street—Boulder’s downtown pedestrian mall—in dry 100° weather. Inna bought a Liberty Puzzle, and I got a Motawi Tileworks and a book by Ajahn Sumedo at Lighthouse Bookstore. Other stops included the tourist info center, Häagen-Dazs, and University Bicycles, which was nothing special.

Returned to the SUV to find a parking ticket; I’d used ParkMobile, but had forgotten to change the plate number from our car to the rental's. Ticket was eventually waived upon appeal.

Scoped out residential neighborhoods, which seemed fine.

Finished with an excellent meal at Aloy Thai followed by chatting with our gregarious hosts. I was amused to learn that our Jewish intellectual hostess’ main concern about potentially changing her name would be how to get it updated on her old diplomas.

Fri 19 July

Breakfast with hosts before scoping out outlying neighborhoods like Table Mesa and Bloomfield. Followed that up with a very pleasant drive up Boulder Canyon into the mountains, stopping at 6,666 feet of elevation to rest and admire Boulder Creek.

Despite obvious coolness, as a small town we felt that we already had a pretty good understanding of what Boulder is like, so we hung out for a while in Barnes & Noble, where I picked up a manga volume.

Dinner al fresco with hosts featured a lot of talk about religion (Judaism, Buddhism), meditation, and finding meaning in life.

Sat 20 July

Our last morning in Boulder began with checking out the Pearl Street Arts Fest, which included playing cards under a canopy provided by Elevations Credit Union that featured cooling spray misters, and a return engagement at Häagen-Dazs.

Mid-morning I visited a beginners’ practice session by Boulder Taiko. Teacher Julia seems to have an active community. Amusingly, one of the students was a former kyūdō teacher who had just moved to Boulder from Georgia!

Leaving Boulder, we drove down to Denver and checked into our AirBNB, narrowly avoiding getting dumped on by a brief afternoon thunderstorm.

Having planned dinner with friends Max & Jenn, we synced up and made our way straight over to Colorado+ Brew Pub. Conversation was lively and informative while a violent thunderstorm swept through, repeatedly triggering all the cell phones in the building to blare emergency weather alerts.

Inna and I stayed up a bit too late into the evening working on putting her puzzle together.

Sun 21 July

While Inna slept in, I’d planned a full morning of activities back in Boulder, so I was up very early to make an 8:30am meditation group.

With the normal leader (Terry Ray) on retreat, they had a substitute leader and an abnormally small group (a total of four of us). The hour-long session was held in a sunroom in Ms. Ray’s home, the last house at the top of the foothills above town. With the sliding glass doors open to the morning sun, it was a nice, peaceful setting.

After a brief final chat, I hoofed it across town to the Zenko Kyudojo, the national headquarters for the school of kyūdō that I practiced with back in Boston. I was welcomed by Aki, the late founder’s granddaughter, who runs the Boulder dojo. We joined about a dozen others for a two-hour practice. They were very friendly, and it was a pleasure to chat and observe their form. As usual, the weather was gorgeous, to the point where people were actually excited at the prospect of coming rain! I found the practice very inspiring and it reminded me how much I enjoyed and miss kyūdō.

A couple tidbits: Practice was interrupted a couple times thanks to a rabbit whose warren was in the backstop behind the outdoor targets. I also learned that the standard draw is 90cm, but mine is about 100cm, and that you add 1kg of draw weight for every 5cm beyond 90.

A bit after noon I drove back to our Denver BNB. Although we only had three days in Denver and a lot of ground to cover, we weren’t up for sightseeing and took a down day: Inna napping while I walked to a solo lunch at Swing Thai before doing more work on her puzzle. Then we hit up High Point Creamery, the local ice cream shop, before I realized it was time for another meditation group.

This group, nominally led by the also-absent Lloyd Burton, was attended by about fifty aging white people in folding chairs in the basement of a church. The sitting and dhamma talk were provided by monastic woman Ayya Dhammadhira.

Afterward, Inna and I made a quick trip to the grocery store for supplies before staying up to complete her puzzle.

Mon 22 July

With a new day we went straight to Denver’s uninspiring downtown, hitting the visitors' center, their 16th Street pedestrian mall, and a quick tour of the local Accenture office.

Next we drove all over town, checking out residential neighborhoods, which all looked good, absent much information about home prices. Lunch was burritos at Illegal Pete’s, followed by ice cream at Häagen-Dazs.

Tiring of looking at the urban jungle, Inna wanted to do more sightseeing up in the mountains. We canceled lunch with my college roommate Ric and drove out to the spectacular Red Rocks park and amphitheater. We crawled around a bit, while Inna got her first experience with shortness of breath at altitude. We also took a scenic drive up into the hills to Kittredge and Evergreen, maxing out above 7,800 feet.

After a brief stop at Tattered Cover Books, Inna and I both attended another meditation group. This was another small group of about ten people, mostly beginners.

Then it was back to our BNB to pack up for the trip home.

Tue 23 July

3:35am. Yeah, that’s what time I wanna get up.

Trip back to the airport was easy, except when passing the notably odiferous Purina Cat Chow factory, where Inna loudly bemoaned, “It’s like we’re in Bigi’s mouth!!!”

Denver’s parting shot was that we couldn’t find our airline; it was like living in a real-life nightmare, where every airline on the planet had a ticketing area except Southwest. Just what you need at 4am on a Tuesday morning... But we eventually found it in a completely different part of the airport and successfully made our flight home.

Overall Impressions

Denver and Boulder claim to have tons of bright sunshine, more than just about any other temperate city. It’s true; the term “high desert” really does seem to fit, as it’s bone dry, but not devoid of tress and normal plant life. Boulder especially reminded me of California: sunny and very expensive, and expatriates love it; but without California's pretentious people, the job competition, and not imminently sinking into the ocean...

For such a large metropolitan area, insight meditation is surprisingly decentralized, with individual teachers doing their own thing, with their own small followings. I didn’t get any impression there’s a big retreat center nearby, either.

While I didn’t hit any bike shops in Denver, the ones in Boulder were all pretty lame: very little selection of road bikes, no real local maps or information about group rides, events, or clubs. There might be some shops that cater to roadies, but I didn’t find any.

Two things I feared really never materialized. Although there's a little bit of a western vibe, it's not particularly bad. At the same time there's very little ethnic diversity. And the drug culture is annoying, but it’s not quite as in-your-face as I feared. On the other hand, last week several events and venues were shut down after prairie dogs were discovered bearing fleas infected with (literally) The Plague, which apparently is a regular occurrence!

Aside from that, the biggest drawback to living there is exorbitant real estate prices, due to Denver’s growth and Boulder’s unique self-imposed limitation on sprawl. Ironically, Boulder’s limits on expansion haven’t resulted in any increase in population density; there’s no real urban core, as it’s smaller and less populous than Manchester, NH! Boulder in particular seems like any bland small town. There's great support for my interests (cycling, meditation, kyūdō, taiko...) but it just doesn't seem to have very much character.

Denver’s certainly more urban and diverse and has more employment opportunities, and is somewhat more affordable.

In the end, I’m sure I could enjoy living in the area, although as with any other city, there are trade-offs that must be weighed.

So I moved. Issat such a big thing?

For me, absolutely! Never in my life have I moved this far, and never before have I relocated beyond the familiar woods and towns of New England. Previously, my longest move was only half as far as this one, and that was more than 25 years ago!

It’s not just the distance that makes the move a big deal, but also the tearing down of my Boston life.

When I arrived in Boston, I spent the next quarter century carefully constructing my ideal life: a meaningful career, an amazing home, and financial stability, surrounded by intelligent and interesting people, in a vibrant and captivating city. With the passage of time, I exceeded my own expectations and achieved the life I’d dreamed of.

Obviously, the symbol of that success was my condo: my ability to finance it, its history, and its location at the very center of Boston’s urban life. Directly outside my bay windows were the Hancock Tower, the Pru, and the unforgettable campanile of New Old South Church. On any given day, if I looked outside I would see horse-mounted policemen, streetcorner buskers, shoppers indulging in posh Newbury Street shoppes, Hare Krishnas chanting, Critical Mass or charity rides, Patriots or Red Sox championship parades, the Pride spectacle, First Night festivities, classical or pop concerts in Copley Square, all manner of political rallies, the finish of the Boston Marathon, or the seasonal Santa Speedo Run… You get the idea: there was always something going on, and thanks to where I lived, my life was more eventful and enjoyable… Which makes it very difficult to walk away from.

For all these reasons, I love Boston more than anywhere else in the world. It was the home that I created with a reasonably successful adult life, and my condo was the physical symbol of that achievement.

Hopefully that helps you understand why leaving my condo and my city behind is such a big deal for me. I am turning my back on everything that I love and know and rely upon, and beginning again from nothing. It’s a huge challenge, and moving out of the safe, familiar, and controlled is not something I’m very comfortable with.

As if all that weren’t enough, I’m embarking on living with a woman for the first time in 22 years. Although my previous attempts didn’t last terribly long, I’ve hopefully learned something from those mistakes. But after two decades of happily living alone, cohabitating will be yet another major challenge to adapt to.

At the same time, the Boston I love has been changing out from under me. I’m reminded of how fleeting happiness can be, and that even if we could keep things from changing, humans aren’t wired to be happy in a static situation, no matter how pleasant.

So that’s the background. For some people, moving is just a regular and routine part of life. But after comfortably “settling down” in Boston, I find it downright scary to pull up roots and transplant myself into an utterly unfamiliar city.

I’ve now been in Pittsburgh for two weeks. On the positive side, the mundane, practical aspects of integrating households have gone well, and kept me from excessive navelgazing (until now). Food and cooking will probably require the most adaptability, thanks to the most obstinate gas stove in the history of mankind.

In the meantime, the chaos of moving has thankfully relieved me of the duty to observe this year’s holiday season. Thanks to record-setting warmth, I’ve already completed four bike rides, exploring 75 miles of local streets: every road steeper than anything in Massachusetts. And I’ve had a few social encounters, which will remain a perpetual work in progress.

The attempt to sell my Boston condo has begun, although there’s stress there due to this being my first time through that process, as well as some chaos introduced by my real estate agent. I’m hoping it will be unexpectedly painless, but that’s probably not realistic. But there should be a bucket of munny at the end of it…

Which leaves the relationship to talk about. Inna and I have worked surprisingly well together thus far, given our historically divergent tastes. Although we’ve been close friends for 18 years, it’s still very early days and our relationship will evolve quite a bit over the coming weeks, months, and hopefully years.

With such a basal change, it will probably be decades before I can conclude whether moving out of Boston was the right thing to do. But had I not done it, I would always wonder whether I should or shouldn’t have. Making the move was the only definitive way to find out, and it makes sense to do it sooner, while I am still hale enough to handle the transition.

I’ll miss Boston and my friends there terribly, but after two weeks away: so far so good, at least.

After a record-short 333 days, my tenure at Buildium is over.

Last winter’s ludicrous snowfall finally put the nail in the coffin of continuing to live in Boston. But it also became clear that moving out of Boston wasn’t compatible with my employer’s plan to centralize their personnel locally and stop supporting people working remotely. I had hoped to stay on while relocating, because it would obviate the need for any Pittsburgh job hunt, but given our opposing directions it was inevitable that Buildium and I would have to part ways when I left town.

In the past, when I left a company (as opposed to being laid off or having the company move out from underneath me), I’ve always been fortunate to move on to something better. In 1995 I jumped from a failing medical software company to a rapidly-growing nascent internet consultancy, which was without question the best career move I’ve ever made. And in 2006 I left a tiny professional services contractor to return to large-scale internet consulting just as open-source and “Web 2.0” were taking off. It would be awesome if this departure leads to similar improvement, especially given the way front-end coding has transformed over the past couple years.

The unfortunate aspect of my departure is that I’ve been really happy at Buildium and would prefer to stay. While property management software isn’t the noblest purpose in the world, it was a huge improvement over my previous job spamming students and funneling leads to student loan companies. I greatly improved my technical skills, the hours and stress level were uncommonly humane, and the pay was good.

And the people were awesome. Buildium’s leadership team has its share of challenges, but it’s been very satisfying to once again work with and for people with a healthy dose of both intelligence and common sense—as might be expected from a company founded by and stocked with fellow Sapient alumni.

But more than that, what makes Buildium unique—both among my former employers as well as across the industry—is that its staff are enthusiastic and uncommonly personable and caring, without being contrived or dogmatic about it. From top to bottom, the positive attitude of their team members sets Buildium apart from other places I’ve worked.

That’s a big reason why I would have preferred to stay on as one of several remote workers on their engineering team. Sadly, the commitment to centralizing operations in Boston made that impossible. And after 25 years here, my life is taking me in a different direction.

Although that didn’t stop me from feeling a certain righteous amusement when HR asked the employees to vote on what Buildium could do become a better place to work. Someone added “Work remotely” to the list of ideas, and sixteen people put their checkmark-votes next to that item: more than twice as many as any other suggestion!

And if that input had been put into practice, I would still be working there, rather than going my own way and diving back into the job market in an unfamiliar town.

Loyal readers will recall that I gave up on the Friday Five when the administrator decided to take a couple months off. Now that she’s back and has been regularly posting, I suppose I’ll resume.

How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life?

That’s a difficult one. Let’s enumerate, and hopefully I won’t miss any…

1. Gloucester, MA (1 year)
2. Portland, ME: 50 Highland Avenue (6 years)
3. Augusta, ME: 5 Manley Street (13 years)
4. Orono, ME: UMaine, 412 Knox Hall
5. Orono, ME: UMaine, 129 Gannett Hall
6. Orono, ME: UMaine, 131 Gannett Hall
7. Orono, ME: UMaine, 429 Gannett Hall
8. Orono, ME: UMaine, 4?? Somerset Hall
9. Orono, ME: Mill Street (funky summer sublet)
10. Orono, ME: Main Street (dump, 1 year)
11. Bangor, ME: 221 Center Street (attic apartment, 2 years)
12. Shrewsbury, MA: 33 Sheridan Drive (complex, 2 years)
13. Natick, MA: 20 Village Way (complex, 2 years)
14. Natick, MA: 5 Harvard Street (2 years)
15. Boston, MA: 64 Queensberry Street (6 years)
16. Boston, MA: 160 Commonwealth Avenue (condo, 2 years and counting)

Which was your favorite and why?

I’d have to say that my current and previous residences were by far the most enjoyable. It took me quite a while to realize that I wasn’t happy in the suburbs, but since moving into the heart of Boston I’ve really enjoyed where I’ve lived. They both have had all kinds of interesting stuff going on just outside my door, while simultaneously being my own little pocket of isolation where I can enjoy just being at home.
 

Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why?

That entirely depends on how much of an “improvement” the new place is over the old one, really. On one hand, I do enjoy the opportunity to go through all my stuff and organize it and throw away all the useless cruft that’s accumulated since my last move; however, moving really sucks, and I no longer enjoy the manual labor element of it. When I moved into my present place two years ago, that was the first time I’d ever hired professional movers. Now that I own, and am very happy with my building and location, I don’t forsee moving again for a long, long time.
 

What’s more important, location or price?

Hahaha! Dude, I live on beautiful, tree-lined Commonwealth Ave., in a historic landmark: the first public building in New England to use electric light, and the site of one of the worst firefighting tragedies in American history. People throughout Boston recognize my building by name, rather than by address. Just outside my window are fashionable Newbury Street and the DuBarry mural, both old and new Hancock towers, the Pru, the New Old South Church, 222 Berkeley and 500 Boylston, the Boston International School, and Copley Square. I’m within a block of the Boston Public Library, two MBTA stations, Trinity Church, the Copley Place mall, the Ames-Webster Mansion, the Exeter Street Theatre (formerly Waterstone’s bookstore). I’m within 2-3 blocks of the Charles River Esplanade and Hatch Shell and the Public Gardens, and within walking distance of the ocean and everything Boston and Cambridge have to offer. You can’t buy a better location! Let’s not talk about price, shall we?
 

What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)?

To a large extent I’m living in my dream house. Sure, it might be nice to have some secret hiding places and passages, and room for ping pong and pool tables, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. About the only thing I might change would be to also have two summer places: a camp on an isolated lakefront deep in the woods somewhere, and a beach place on Cape Cod, but I need someone to give me lots of free money before those happen, tho…