Ornoth

Now that I’m 18 months removed from it, I’d like to reflect on my seven years in Pittsburgh.

Let me apologize in advance; this’ll be more negative than positive, because I want to talk about why I left. My intention isn’t to shit on anyone’s chosen hometown. There really is a lot to like about Pittsburgh and Western PA, many good reasons to live there, and lots of genuinely awesome people. But I also want to be forthright about why I was eager to leave.

By far the biggest reason actually had nothing to do with Pittsburgh itself; it’s just that I never intended to stay. When I left Boston in 2015, my #1 desire was to finally move somewhere warm, after enduring 50+ New England winters. Pittsburgh’s weather wasn’t much of an improvement, so I always knew Pittsburgh was a temporary stop on my way to something else. Even before I arrived, moving away was a foregone conclusion, though it did become more urgent as the years ticked by and my patience ebbed.

Before I moved to Pittsburgh, my impressions of Western PA were informed by two or three trips to the SCA’s Pennsic War, one DargonZine Summit, several trips to visit Inna, plus some trips to do database work with the local hospitals. Based on that, my pre-move image of Pennsylvania was of beautifully scenic wooded rolling hills and farmland, with Pittsburgh as a leading center of medical excellence.

After living there for seven years, I left with a very different impression: that of an exploited and poisoned environment, with more openly mean-spirited people than I was used to.

But let’s start with what I thought were some of Pittsburgh’s best features:

• The countryside really is strikingly beautiful, when seen from a safe distance.
• Pittsburgh has a compact, attractive downtown with a beautiful skyline that’s shown off well from its dramatic gateway entrance and numerous surrounding hilltop overlooks.
• There’s lots of noteworthy architecture and cultural institutions, thanks largely to the philanthropic legacy of Pittsburgh’s oil, steel, and industrial magnates.
• There is an easily-accessible and uncrowded casino whose state-stipulated blackjack rules are more advantageous for the player than nearly anywhere else.
• The airport pipes in music from local classical radio station WQED.

Yes, citing a casino and crowd control music as top features is an instance of damning with faint praise, and I have a lot more negative things to say. But before I dig into those, I’d like to mention a few things about Pittsburgh that were both good… and bad. Let me show you what I mean:

• Land and housing are extremely affordable. That would be delightful, except it’s due to the fact that Pittsburgh’s population has not grown in any 10-year census period since 1950, shrinking by 55% in that span, leaving a lot of underutilized, vacant, and/or abandoned properties.
• The winters are slightly better than Boston, with considerably less cold and snow than Maine. Being further south, winter days have more daylight hours, and should have more sunshine and less oppressive darkness. But you actually see less sun during the winter. Although thankfully not inside the Great Lakes snow belt, Pittsburgh is close enough that there’s perpetual overcast skies and sporadic light flurries all winter long, and that lack of sun can be just as depressing as the shortened days up in Maine.
• Pittsburgh’s airport is spacious and quick to get through… But that’s because it was built as a major USAir hub just before that airline’s insolvency. Today PIT handles a minuscule fraction of the volume it was designed for. You can’t escape the cognitive dissonance when the loudspeakers proudly announce “Welcome to Pittsburgh!” and it echoes down the vast corridors of an empty airport.
• Pittsburgh is arguably the hilliest city in the US. As a cyclist, the upsides are intense physical workouts and memorable events like the infamous Dirty Dozen hillclimb; while the downside is a dearth of calm, relaxing routes, because all the flat land has been claimed by highways, railroads, warehouses, and industry. And if you’re a driver, those hills can be treacherous in winter.
• There’s a very friendly cycling community and loads of interesting cycling events. On the other hand, it can be difficult to get around on a bike, as there aren’t many good options heading east or south or west of the city.

And now we get to the heart of the matter: the things about Pittsburgh that turned me off. I tried to whittle this down to major points while still making myself clear.

It’s dirty.

To be fair, there’s been a ton of progress in the 150 years since Atlantic Monthly described Pittsburgh at the height of its industrial output as “hell with the lid taken off.” But a lot of damage done to the land, water, and air by the coal, oil, gas, iron, and steel industries still remains. Western PA is the only area outside California that consistently receives all ‘F’ grades in the American Lung Association’s air quality reports, and often records the worst air quality in the US. Even today, the culture of fouling the environment still lingers, as can be seen in the preponderance of roadside litter and illegal garbage dumping. Having grown up in the Maine woods, the lack of respect for the natural environment disturbed me.

It’s blighted.

I’ve already mentioned the population decline and abundance of abandoned and condemned buildings, so I won’t belabor it, save to say that the amount of urban decay and blight is off-putting. I’m sure it didn’t help that Pittsburgh was in receivership for 14 years (from 2004-2018), despite residents paying an extra 1.5% city income tax!

Collapsing infrastructure.

Pittsburgh has some unique challenges that other cities don’t. The steep topography means that parts of the city get flash floods (Washington Blvd, Mon Wharf, the Bathtub, Millvale, Glass Run). And there are seasonal landslides that can close roads for months (Greenleaf, Commercial, Pittview, Route 30). But then there’s also numerous avoidable, man-made infrastructure failures. For example, during my brief years in Pittburgh:

• The Fern Hollow Bridge carrying Forbes Ave over Frick Park collapsed.
• Concrete slabs from the Swindell Bridge fell onto the Parkway North, forcing closures on I-279.
• More concrete fell from the Greenfield Bridge over the Parkway East (I-376) , so the state built a semipermanent “bridge” underneath the main bridge just to catch the falling debris.
• Several building facades collapsed in the Southside, Lawrenceville, and the Strip, including Kraynick’s bike shop.
• A Pittsburgh city transit bus was driving along Liberty Ave in the heart of downtown when a huge sinkhole opened up and swallowed it whole.
• An entire parking deck collapsed in the Penn Hills.
• Repeated train derailments in the South Side, Harmar, and a dramatic moving conflagration as a burning train rolled on obliviously for twenty miles through Freedom and Harmony, PA.

So much anger.

I don’t want to overemphasize this, because I made a lot of wonderful friendships in Pittsburgh. But in comparison to New England, many Western PA locals seemed eager to take opportunities to be rude or mean toward one another, while hiding behind the anonymity of the internet or ensconced in their self-propelled rolling fortresses. Pittsburgh has a lot of schadenfreude, which was unpleasant.

A culture of unlawfulness.

A lot of cities found themselves at odds with their own police forces following the Black Lives Matter protests and de-funding rumors, but Pittsburgh already had a head start. Speeding has historically never been enforced; in fact, it’s still illegal today for county and local law enforcement to use radar guns to enforce speed limits! In seven years living (and riding) there, I don’t think I ever saw a state trooper, and saw only one or two traffic stops by local police.

The Covid pandemic provided another disincentive to conduct minor traffic stops. And the police reacted hostilely to BLM and de-funding protests. Then both the city council and even bike advocates asked the cops to stop traffic enforcement! All this made it much more dangerous to be a pedestrian, cyclist, or motor vehicle operator in Pittsburgh. Tho sadly, I now realize this is a much broader problem than just Western PA.

Monopolies in healthcare and groceries.

Healthcare in Pittsburgh is dominated by UPMC. Because it’s loosely affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, this immense hospital chain does everything it can to take full advantage of its categorization as a non-profit. No one I talked to had a positive experience with them, whether as a patient or an employee.

Pittsburgh also suffers from a near-monopoly in grocery stores. You would think that when I lived in downtown Boston’s tony Back Bay, my groceries would have been extremely costly; but my food bill actually jumped 25% higher after I moved to Pittsburgh.

Misplaced regional pride.

I get it: every place needs to have a sense of regional pride. But it’s kind of lame that the “Paris of Appalachia” bases its sense of identity on things that are ubiquitous throughout urban America, such as putting a chair out to reserve a parking space, or trying to jump the green when turning left at a traffic light. Or rabid loyalty to a company like Heinz, which left Pittsburgh 20 years ago. Or mindlessly hating all the other cities in the region (Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit). Sure, take pride in your city, but make some effort to identify the things that genuinely make Pittsburgh special; the “Pittsburgh Left” ain’t it.

The food.

I just don’t know how Pittsburgh gained its reputation as a city for foodies.

Let’s consider the foods Pittsburghers take pride in: Beer. Ketchup. Pickles. Lenten fish frys. Pierogies. And sticking french fries into literally everything. None of these qualify as “cuisine”. If I were a Pittsburgher, I’d be ashamed.

And while I’m admittedly a culinary philistine myself, I didn’t find any places that impressed me in my preferred food zones, like burgers, Indian, and Mexican food. Thai was a wasteland except for Thai & Noodle Outlet. Pizza wasn’t “all that” but Aiello’s was tolerable… tho they (and their arch-rival Mineo’s) still refuse to deliver and require payment in cash. And the best Pittsburgh could offer for ice cream was Bruster’s (no, don’t talk to me about Page’s or Dave and Andy’s).

Toxic redneck culture.

I grew up among rednecks. A lot of my family were rednecks. Almost everywhere I’ve lived, there have been a lot of rednecks. And outside of Pittsburgh’s city limits, Western PA is infested with rednecks.

I just don’t fit into – or get along well with – that culture anymore. The rabid devotion to the local sportball teams (The Stillers, The Pens). The preoccupation with beer and alcohol. The gun fetish (open and concealed carry are both legal). The mindless nationalism. The constant othering and barefaced xenophobia. The utter absence of compassion or open-mindedness.

Several Western-PA wing-nuts played leading roles in the 2021 Trump-inspired attempt to overthrow the United States government. And in 2018, less than a mile from our apartment, the deadliest massacre of Jews in United States history took place. I hope I don’t need to tell you how offensive those are.

In closing:

Pittsburgh was a city of contradictions and trade-offs. Western PA was beautiful, if you looked past the pollution and decay. The cycling was great, but also quite challenging. It was inexpensive (housing), except where it wasn’t (groceries). I met plenty of wonderful people (undoubtedly including the Pittsburghers who are reading this), and about as many that were truly hateful.

Although the winters, as the natives say, “weren’t all that”, it was a fine place to spend a half-dozen years. I have a lot of very fond memories of Pittsburgh. Those include the many valued friends I made; the heart-warming meditation communities that welcomed me and nurtured my growth as a teacher; plus the people and landscapes and rides that I enjoyed while cycling. These will stay with me forever.

But from the very beginning, I always planned to move farther south, beyond the clutches of the Snow Miser. And as the years passed, I needed to move on to a warmer, sunnier place.

It goes without saying that Austin, our new home, came with its own set of pleasures and challenges… But that’s a story for another post.

Twelve days in Austin. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Our goal was to secure housing, so let’s see how that went…

Prologue

When I left Boston in 2015, my goal was – after fifty New England winters – to move somewhere beyond the clutches of the Snow Miser. The reason behind my temporary stopover in Pittsburgh was to test whether Inna and I could make a partnership work (which we happily have done, for the past seven years).

Between our differing requirements and a lengthy delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we took years to decide where we’d like to relocate to. But after a visit this past April, we finally found a location we could both agree on: Austin, Texas.

The next step was a followup trip to look for an apartment. When Inna’s Austin-based Circling community scheduled a four-day workshop for mid-November, we decided to extend that visit to two weeks, spending the balance of our time house-hunting, then flying back to Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving Day.

Walking the Path

Q2 Stadium

360 Bridge from Mt. Bonnell

Mt. Bonnell NOTICE

Wendel Interior

Wendel Interior

Wendel Backyard

Wendel Brook

Sat November 12: Travel

Our flights down (via O’Hare) were fine, with only minor drama when our motel prematurely charged Inna’s credit card for our entire stay before we’d even arrived!

Wanting to be as central as possible, the motel we booked was located right underneath the main I-35 expressway. It was a dark, musty affair that was pleasantly inexpensive, except for the day of the University of Texas football game, when the daily rate jumped from $80 to $300!

Meanwhile, Google Maps did its best to keep us on our toes by insisting we take “Exit 236: Dean Keeton Thirty-Second Minus Thirty-Eight and a Half Street”. I’m not sure but I think that would be “Negative Six and a Halfth Street.”

After pizza at Love Supreme, we made supply runs to Dollar General and Trader Joe’s.

The evening was completed by the Pan-Mass Challenge announcing this year’s fundraising total: $69 million. That is the single biggest donation that the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has ever received. But it raised questions in my mind about how and whether I will be able participate in the event an 18th time next year, after our relocation to Texas.

Sun November 13: House-Hunting Day 1

Sunday was surprisingly cold (-2°C). We would have a few nice days in Austin, and a few showery ones, but temperatures were mostly a bit cooler than normal.

We headed to our first house appointment and met up with Alexandria, the awesome real estate agent we were using as our point person. We visited four units (4801 Ave. H, 1700 Perez St., 2200 Spring Creek, and 8607 Dawnridge Cir.), and accidentally checked out another from the outside (1126 Hollow Creek). Three were clear “nos”. Perez felt dark and a bit small but was a maybe, and Dawnridge wasn’t bad except it was quite a ways out of town.

After the shortest “30-minute wait” we’d ever experienced, we had lunch a the Bouldin Creek Cafe followed by a relaxing stroll down the bike path along Barton Creek. Then back to the motel to look at tomorrow’s itinerary.

Dinner was Chinese from TSO, a strip mall take-out joint where the door surprisingly opened directly into the kitchen, with no real pretense at a commercial “front”.

Mon November 14: House-Hunting Day 2

We hit three houses on a rainy Monday. 1309 Corona was cheap, dark, and claustrophobic. 11633 River Oaks was just way too far out, and next to a future development project…

And 3510 Wendel Cove. After two days of everything being on the flat, its hilly neighborhood was a bit of a surprise. After seven years cycling in insanely hilly Pittsburgh, I jokingly cried, “Veto!” when we encountered a short but steep rise on Hart Drive on the way in. But it only got worse, as the house was at the bottom of a very steep cul-de-sac. In spite of that, I really liked the house. Inna was a little more skeptical, since it felt a little dark and awkward, but we put it on our list of possibilities. More about that later.

With house-hunting wrapped up, we lunched at Clay Pit, our favorite Indian place, then stopped at the Book People bookstore. Unfortunately, Inna slipped and injured her ankle in the wet parking lot, so we spent some extra time coming down from that. I took the opportunity to pick up Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s “When Awareness Becomes Natural”, plus volume one of the “Cat Massage Therapy” manga as a gift for our tireless catsitters back home. I quickly read the latter in-store while Inna rested.

Inna requested a quick trip to Amy’s Ice Cream, then we stopped at the H-E-B grocery for an ace bandage and two frozen peas “ice packs”. We returned to the motel and let Inna rest and treat her painful ankle while researching more houses to visit.

Tue November 15: House-Hunting Day 3

On Tuesday morning, Inna’s foot was extremely painful and wouldn’t bear weight, so our first order of business was buying her a walking cane at CVS.

We only saw two places that day, because our third (on Blueberry Trail, aka “Blubbery Troll”) had been taken off the market that very morning. 1403 Springdale (aka the Pizza Hut) was decrepit due to being designated a historical property, and thus highly regulated. And 5202 Downs was an interesting but cheap and idiosyncratic modern unit (with 6-foot ceilings upstairs!) that someone had plunked down in their backyard as a cash grab. I bumped my head three times during the viewing!

Then, with the rain having passed overnight, Inna wanted to go back to Wendel Cove to check it out on a sunnier day, since it seemed to be our reluctant top pick. We spent a lot of time hanging around and thinking it through before coming to the conclusion that it was probably our top choice so far. Our showing agent, Alexandria, was incredibly patient and helpful, as she’d been all week.

I captured and showed Inna a video of the little stream that runs through the backyard that reminded me of my childhood home back in Maine. Coincidentally, Inna had also received a video: her mother had sent one of Pittsburgh enduring its first snowfall of the year. The timing of the contrasting videos made a silent but persuasive point.

As we left, we drove down a tiny private road off the cul-de-sac with another five houses (one displaying a Buddha statue). There were three deer hanging out in the road, and they showed absolutely zero fear as we drove up and turned around. That probably means no vegetable garden for us!

Then we drove around to get a feel for the area. We stumbled into a very shishi neighborhood called North Cat Mountain, and randomly drove up a street called Ladera Norte that was extremely reminiscent of Pittsburgh’s infamous Dirty Dozen hills. In fact, it features in Austin’sTour das Hugel, a 200 KM bike ride that includes 3,600 meters of climbing, which took place a week before we arrived.

We ate lunch at the Galaxy Cafe on Mesa Drive, then ice cream at the Amy’s in the Arboretum. Then we test-drove from Wendel Cove to Hyde Park, where Inna’s Circling studio and my meditation group are located, which was shockingly quick and easy.

We chose to spend the rest of the day at the motel, to give Inna’s foot a rest. We considered filing an application to lease Wendel Cove that night, but held off after Alexandria told us there wouldn’t be any benefit to being the first applicant. Instead, we both spent time scouring Google Maps and adding interesting features to our map of the neighborhood. At this point, I felt pretty good about where we were in the process.

Wed November 16: The Bad Day

Inna had a terrible night, so I let her sleep in late. Her foot was still bad, we were running out of house rentals in our price range, and the anxiety of making such an important decision was weighing on her.

We did look at one owner-listed place – 5113 Stone Gate – but it was a little run-down. We drove around Hyde Park a little bit, but Inna remained somewhat anxious, so I decided to bring her up to Mount Bonnell, a wonderful overlook that I’d been to a couple times, but was new to her. Being outside and seeing the expansive vista over the Colorado River seemed to ground her again.

Unfortunately, things went poorly from there. We tried to get dinner at one Ethiopian place, only to find it permanently closed. And a second one – in a windowless trailer – looked like an abandoned strip club. We finally stopped for dinner at the Oakmont Cafe on 38th, where we paid $60 for absolutely terrible food.

After that, we gave up and drove back to the motel. Inna called and messaged friends for support, which helped a little bit. But aside from Mount Bonnell, it had been an exhausting and emotional day.

But our trials weren’t over. At 2AM we were jolted awake by a group of four men slamming doors and screaming their lungs out in a foreign language outside our door and in the room next to ours. It was intensely aggressive and went on for more than an hour. It was so terrifying that I got out of bed, hid our computers, got dressed, and sat up with Inna’s cane in my hands in case I needed to defend us. Needless to say, we were both sleep-deprived and nerve-shattered.

Thu November 17: Solo Wandering & Mariposa Sit

After four days of house-hunting, we switched gears. I dropped Inna off at her Circling studio for the first day of a four-day workshop. So I had four days on my own, and my own list of things I wanted to accomplish.

My first stop was Wendel, where I walked up Wendel Cove and down Hart Lane and back, just to experience the hills. There were some people outside, a grey and white cat loped across the yard, and a cyclist passed me after coming down the next street over (Westside Drive).

Next I drove 5 miles up to Q2 Stadium, where Austin FC, the local MLS team, play. I stopped in their team shop and picked up a tee shirt and a magnet, feeling uncomfortably unfaithful to my beloved New England Revolution.

Two miles over, I checked out the Trek store on Research Boulevard, where Nathan and Dino gave me some great information about local rides, and even other shops! They suggested I also peek into the Specialized shop that had apparently sprung up in the Domain® pedestrian mall since our previous scouting trip six months ago. I got a good vibe from the place, and hope to join the group rides they run every other Saturday.

Another two-mile drive brought me to the Domain®, which was really difficult to park in. The Specialized store was tiny, but serves as a corporate anchor while they look for a larger space for a full-service shop, since Trek had bought out the shop that was their former Austin HQ. They too offered lots of awesome ride pointers, and specifically recommended the Hill Country Randonneurs.

Then it was time to meet Inna, because we were going to use her lunch hour to visit one last house – the intriguing 5308 Sendero Hills – which had repeatedly put us off due to “renovations”. It was indeed just as bizarre as we’d thought, with its very own palm tree, a big unbroken wall facing the street, chicken coops, exposed cinder blocks in the interior, and the residue of shattered windows in one bedroom! But it was both too far out of town, too expensive, and way too much space for us.

After returning Inna back to her workshop, I checked out the Anime Pop shop, which had the usual manga plus a wall full of figurines. Then the H-E-B in Allandale and early dinner from Sap’s Thai. It’s worth noting for future reference that half of Austin’s Thai restaurants serve entrees that are meat-only, and half serve the expected meat/veg mix; I’ll have to memorize which.

I went to Mariposa Sangha’s Thursday evening meditation and dhamma talk, which – like the one I attended in April – was led by Paul Schlaud, who remembered me from that visit after prompting. The topic was gratitude, and – as in April – I once again got the last comment of the night in.

Afterward, I picked up Inna and we headed back to the motel. Our neighbors were still there, as evinced by the stench of pot, but they were a little bit quieter this night.

Fri November 18: Day Off & Applying Ourselves

I dropped Inna off at the studio again. After a couple days to think it through, she seemed ready to file an application for Wendel Cove.

I spent the day hanging around, cleaning up the motel room and delighting in reports of heavy snow squalls in Pittsburgh. I enjoyed having no errands, no driving, and no rushing around. It was nice and quiet for a time after our neighbors moved out, until they were replaced by some anime girls playing loud rap music that triggered a throbbing headache.

I picked Inna up in the evening and made a quick stop at the Central Market before going back to the motel. Inna told off the neighbors and I made to turn in before she hauled me back out of bed to complete the frustratingly-long online lease application process, which was so invasive that it even required us to supply our body weights! Then the secondary application for our cat, which required both front- and side-view photographs, as well as proof of vaccinations, which was stored at home, 2,300 kilometers away. Frustrating and insulting!

Then it was my turn to have a restless, anxious night. At least the neighbors didn’t blast their tunes when they came home in the middle of the night…

Sat November 19: Half-Day Retreat

After surviving the night, my morning highlight was finding an active infestation of ants in our bathroom. At least it wasn’t bedbugs…

After a visit to the motel office, I dropped Inna off at the Circling studio early and headed off to Mariposa, where I’d signed up to join their monthly half-day retreat, which in this case was on cultivating kindness. In my emotional state, five hours of meditation was either exactly what I needed or the worst thing I could do to myself.

When I arrived, I met Carolyn Kelley – their lead teacher – for the first time, which was pleasant. Although I didn’t really know any attendees, they seemed to comprise a mix of all levels of meditation experience. During the periods of walking meditation, I chose to do standing meditation, which Carolyn asked me to explain in the end-of-day discussion. My response was that for me, being in an unfamiliar building with unfamiliar people would have been awfully distracting, pulling me out of a meditative mindset. Overall it went well, and it was great to finally touch base with Carolyn.

Afterward I picked up a pen at “Paper Place” to replace the Pilot G-2 I’d lost somewhere along the line, and some food at Central Market.

Returning to the motel, I noted that no one had fulfilled our morning request to spray the room for ants, so I chased down a staffmember and stood over him while he sprayed. Fortunately, the insecticide they used wasn’t too stinky…

While Inna spent the evening at karaoke with her Circling friends, I ate my “cowboy casserole” – a mediocre dish of pasta, chicken, and picante sauce – and figured out my plan for Sunday. Then Inna returned and we enjoyed a blissfully quiet night after Inna had skillfully negotiated with the motel staff to not put anyone in the neighboring room for a couple nights.

Sun November 20: Anime Austin

After dropping Inna off for her final workshop day, I made a quick run to Book People to see if they carried the Barron’s financial newspaper (nope).

Then it was out to a Holiday Inn to check out the last day of the Anime Austin convention. It being 10:45am on a Sunday, there were very few people around, and most of the vendors weren’t there yet, so I just wandered around the tables, seeing what was available. It was mostly just acrylic charms and artwork, and the tee shirts were the only thing that I might consider picking up for myself. The panel discussions weren’t really of interest, so after browsing the area I decided to leave. It was a waste of my admission fee, but I don’t mind spending the money to support the hobby.

Next stop was the Barnes & Noble at the Arboretum, where I finally found a Barron’s (they were stored behind the cashiers). I sought out a Circle K convenience store to fill the rental car with gas, but had to find a second one when the first one had apparently closed.

Then a quick stop at Randall’s, which appears to be H-E-B’s main competitor, before hitting up Panda Express for lunch. But the Panda Express didn’t have my preferred dish (black pepper chicken), so I punted and stopped at Fire Bowl Cafe, which offers fresh stir-fry with your choice of carb, meat, veggies, and sauce. It was a delight to finally get some vegetables into my system.

I spent the afternoon at the motel before meeting Inna at the Circling Studio, where I briefly went inside to be exhibited to her friends. Then “dinner” at Amy’s Ice Cream and back to the motel, where a new set of neighbors’ television kept us awake late into the night.

Mon November 21: World Cup & Rest Day

While Inna slept in, I woke up at 7am to watch the first World Cup footy match in Group B: England vs. Iran, which was a 6-2 blowout.

We had pretty much exhausted both the local rental listings and our stamina, and there wouldn’t be many new listings showing up on Thanksgiving week. And with an application already filed for Wendel Cove, we essentially suspended our house hunt. So we had three full days left to fill before our flights home.

At 1pm I watched USA give up a disappointing draw to Wales in their first game. They would eventually advance from the group stage but be eliminated in the “round of sixteen”.

When I taunted Inna with the prospect of visiting Austin without hitting up her favorite Mexican restaurant, the inevitable happened, and we wound up having a huge and delicious dinner at Lupe’s just off Mopac.

During our meal we received our first of several followup information requests regarding our application; this one asking for my drivers’ license, a second month of pay stubs from Inna, and clarification that she wasn’t switching jobs. Inna aborted her evening plans (meeting up with Steven and a Circling session) in order to respond.

Around 11pm a woman started screaming her head off in one of the nearby units, but that thankfully lasted only about 45 minutes before quieting down.

Tue November 22: Killing Time

We woke to another information request: this time for a note from Inna’s boss on company letterhead, confirming that they would let Inna keep her job. The already-frustrating application process was truly out of control.

Having done most of the running around I wanted to do, I let Inna drive the day’s agenda. With limited parking downtown, I dropped Inna off to visit her employer’s local office. It was three floors with a very open street-level entrance, with kombucha on tap and many social and friendly people, which was an improvement over what we’ve seen in other cities.

We stopped at the Vegan Nom food truck in East Austin, then crossed the river to visit the Cosmic Cafe and Beer Garden and Summer Moon Cafe. Then back to the motel for an afternoon nap.

At 7pm I drove her to the Circling Studio for an evening session, while I picked up pad cashew from the Pad Thai restaurant. Then fetched Inna, a quick stop for Mozarts at Central Market, and home.

Wed November 23: Last Day

Although it was quiet overnight, it was my turn for an anxiety-filled night, which wasn’t helped by yet another information request from the leasing agent, requiring us to enter our online banking usernames and passwords! What the fuck? What an incredibly worrying, exhausting, invasive, and demeaning experience.

Inna’s plan was to visit two Circling friends, so I dropped her at the first and went back to the motel. Then I picked her up and dropped her at the second, planning to have lunch and visit a local comics/game store.

My first stop was Thai Fresh, which was inexplicably closed. My second stop was Shake Shack on Lamar, but there was no parking nearby. What’s a guy gotta do to get a meal in this town?

I punted and drove down to Tribe Comics, but spied Jersey Mike’s Subs in the same strip mall, so picked up a chipotle cheese steak before responding to yet another information request; this time verifying our intended lease date. Meanwhile, Tribe Comics seemed like a pretty good and friendly game store, although it saddens me that strategy games and miniatures have almost completely disappeared.

After picking up Inna, we gassed up the car in preparation for tomorrow’s departure and made a final dinner out of the “safety provisions” we’d bought days earlier.

And around 5:30pm we received an email from Wendel Cove’s management company saying “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE APPROVED!” Of course we didn’t have a lease – that would be a lengthy and equally exhausting next step – but we were well on our way to taking up residence in a brand new home in Austin!

And it was a wonderful and ecstatic moment to end our trip on.

Thu November 24: Thanksgiving Homecoming

Between Inna’s still-painful foot, it being Thanksgiving Day, and Austin-Bergstrom’s reputation for long lines, we packed up early and made our way to the airport, doing our usual dance of dropping Inna at the Departures curb with luggage while I circled back around to return the car and hoof it back to the terminal.

Despite both of us getting spot-checked by the TSA, we got our gate 2½ hours early, so we grabbed morning snacks and I went and checked out the terminal’s outdoor patio.

Our layover was in Washington Dulles, where we had to walk from one terminal to another. Inna’s foot held up well; she declined a passing people mover, but we were still glad she’d brought her cane along. I “enjoyed” a Thanksgiving dinner of a Terminal C Pizza Hut personal cheese.

The flight into PIT was short, I retrieved the car, and we made our way home to an enthusiastic reception from the Biggie. But an hour later one of our electrical breakers decided the Thanksgiving holiday would be a great day for a fatal failure, leaving us without power except for some jerry-rigged measures taking advantage of our current apartment’s unbelievably random electrical system. Patchwork repairs would take four days to be fully completed.

That, too, was kind of a poignant way to punctuate our trip.

3510 Wendel Cove

With the trip covered, let me tell you a little about the new place.

First, the basics. 2 bedroom 2 bath 2 floors, 1,530’, built in 1986, 2-car garage. Rent is appreciably less than the other houses we looked at, which is a big bonus coming from the very inexpensive place we currently occupy.

It’s a somewhat modern, idiosyncratic, open layout, with a fireplace and a bizarre towerlike second-floor “flex room” overlooking the open living area below, and which will probably serve as someone’s office. One bedroom, bath, and the flex room are all on the second floor. The somewhat dated kitchen is a little segregated from the open space, which is good for my sensitivity to cooking smells. Lots of big windows and natural light, but shaded by a number of trees. A small deck, back yard, and a brook that runs behind the property.

Other little bonuses are that there are windows (that open!) in both showers, and the only wall we share with the other half of the house is the back wall of the garage. It seems safe and free of the animal and insect problems that one has to consider when living in Texas.

It’s very close to the Mopac expressway, but quiet because it’s in a cul-de-sac, with a sizable hill in-between. It’s very near our desired destinations, and there are lots of nearby attractions, including shopping, library, groceries, post office, medical and vet.

It’s in a neighborhood labelled as “Highland Hills”, between the better-known Allandale and the Northwest Hills. It really feels like a suburban oasis, while being within an easy couple miles of everything you might need in the city. And it’s about a 8 KM bike ride to my meditation center, or about 11 KM to downtown, using the Shoal Creek trail.

The only minuses I could list would be that the interior is almost unbroken beige; one of the shower windows was very poorly and amateurishly painted over; and we’re going to have to figure out how we can set up the space to provide the kind of together-but-apart work spaces we’re used to in our current place. And I should also mention the rather absurd hill, which presents a minor psychological obstacle in leaving home.

Epilogue

So there were some real challenges this trip, especially the noisy motel we stayed at and the insanely invasive and humiliating lease application process. There was also Inna’s painful foot injury, which ironically paralleled my slicing my finger open on a broken glass in the middle of our earlier visit last April.

But in the end, our quest to find an acceptable place to land in Austin was successful. I outright love the house, and despite Inna’s initial skepticism, it has grown on her, too.

As of this writing, we’ve only just gotten the lease signed – which was a whole separate story – and is only the first of a huge number of massive to-dos before we are finally settled in. But it’s still an immense step on our way to new lives in a new city. We’re excited to make a home of it!

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.

Ten months ago, I went out to the Insight Meditation Society for their 9-day New Years retreat. It was my first time doing a retreat of that length, and I found it vastly more dramatic and emotionally challenging than any retreat I’d ever experienced.

When I came home, I hoped to share my experiences in two separate blog posts: one public, the other friends-locked. Although I completed the first draft of the public post, I never shared it, because I was unable to adequately express the more personal stuff in the private post. And external events interfered, as well.

Nearly a year has passed now, and so much has changed since then. I guess I probably won’t ever complete the private half of my account, but I thought it appropriate to clean up and share the bit I’d planned to post publicly, for those of my friends who are interested.

So here’s my report on last year’s New Years retreat, albeit belated and edited for privacy.

Back in December, three women and I shared a car ride out to the Insight Meditation Society in Barre for their 9-day New Years retreat with guiding teachers Yanai Postelnik, Catherine McGee, and Pascal Auclair.

This was only my second time at IMS, the prior visit being a 5-day retreat two years before. After reviewing my blog entry from that first visit, I made damned sure to bring more than a single pair of socks!

As you might imagine, the weather in the Worcester hills at the end of December provided a spectacle of its own. The first three days were fairly mild (35-42°), and the ground was bare, so I took the opportunity to familiarize myself with the miles of walking trails through the woods behind the center.

That was followed by five straight days where it didn’t get above 22°, and dipped below zero for several nights. Thankfully, our rooms were kept comfortably warm, although I noticed one space heater being used to thaw some frozen pipes in the basement of one of the dorms.

We had two snowfalls of about 3 and 6 inches, neither of which stopped me from regular trudges through the wooded paths out back, as you can see from the photos at right.

While walking outside on New Years Eve (before the snows), I realized that the long hedge in front of IMS was made up of large holly trees. Having grown up in Maine, I have a deep affinity for holly, which thrives in similarly cold and desolate places. So I gathered a handful of holly leaves and berries from the ground and placed them along the windowsill in my room (see photo).

The cold weather peaked on day eight of the retreat, when I took what could be conservatively called a brisk 3-mile trek around Gaston Pond. The sunrise above the snowed-over pond was lovely, but I nearly lost my fingers taking the accompanying photograph in air that was seven degrees below zero! Ironically, that was during perihelion, the time of year when the distance between the Earth and the Sun is actually the shortest!

Then the temperatures miraculously shot back up to nearly 50° on a misty morning on the last day of the retreat. The fog only thickened as the week’s snows rapidly sublimated and completely disappeared.

I definitely didn’t sleep well, and heard similar reports from several others. My theory is that the amount of time spent each day with eyes closed, observing the mind, builds up so much momentum that it’s difficult to shut it down to go to sleep at night. But that’s just one theory.

On New Years Eve, the teachers led us through a ceremony that included writing something we’d like to give up or leave behind on a piece of paper, then depositing them into a container to later be burned. I was sitting next to the container, and it was interesting to observe how most people emphatically threw their unwanted attributes into it, often ritually ripping the paper into bits beforehand. And then a very few folks (including myself) were much more reluctant to drop theirs in, as if they were letting go of a safety blanket.

The second Saturday—day eight of the retreat—was the day that all hell broke loose.

After returning from that long, frigid sunrise walk I mentioned above, I noticed that my throat was really sore. I had come down with a cold. I had taken lots of careful precautions, knowing that retreats are ideal breeding grounds for disease, but it had still caught up with me. Thankfully, there were only two days left before we headed home!

But that was nothing compared to what followed. At the start of the midday sitting, the teachers asked us to immediately go and check our rooms and secure our valuables, because someone had gone into several meditators’ rooms (there were no locks on any of the doors) and taken all their cash! Eventually we learned that eight to ten people in one particular dorm had been robbed, and some prescription painkillers had been taken, as well.

Having spent an entire week opening their hearts and allowing themselves to work with their emotional vulnerabilities, it would be difficult to describe the sense of violation that my fellow retreatants felt. However, with the wisdom of the teachers, the group found some ways to respond to the invasion that helped people heal.

First, the entire retreat—more than a hundred people—took up the “om mani padme hum” chant and walked in a procession from the main building’s meditation hall, through my dorm, then across a passage to the affected dorm, and back again. The chant was moving and powerful, and the combined strength and goodwill of so many people helped the meditators in that building feel that we had “taken back” the space.

Then arrangements were made for small groups of people to voluntarily take shifts doing walking meditation in that building all night long, so that the residents would know that someone was awake and present at all hours to protect them in case the thief returned. I would have volunteered, but I knew that getting a good night’s sleep was imperative for fighting my oncoming cold.

I wasn’t particularly concerned about my own safety. My room was near the main building, and no one in my dorm had been robbed. I was mostly concerned for the others. But as we went to bed that night, everyone was on edge and emotionally primed to respond to the potential return of the trespasser.

So it was in that state of mind that I woke up at 2am when the door to my room was opened. In the dim light from the “Exit” signs I could see the silhouette of someone slipping into my room from the corridor. By the time I was conscious enough to respond, they’d begun backing up, but that was when it hit me that this could well be the guy!

My heart racing and barely aware of what I was doing in my panic, I threw off my bedding, grabbed the door, and screamed “HEY!!!” The interloper was backing off hurriedly, then cowered on the opposite side of the corridor from me, saying “Imsorry Imsorry Imsorry, I got confuuused!”

That wasn’t the response I would expect from a thief, so I froze in mid-leap. That gave me enough time to scan what I could see of the person’s features in the darkness. Out of a hundred complete strangers at the retreat, I thought I recognized one of the women I had shared a ride with… “Claudia, is it?”

Apparently it was. She apologized again, and I think I just said “Okay” and closed the door on her. I would have flopped right back to sleep, except my heart was pounding and I was chock full of adrenalin. No matter how still I laid or how much I tried to calm my mind, there was no more sleep that night.

The next day—the last full day of the retreat—the teachers held a a small session for people who still felt they needed to work through some of their reaction to the burglary. I decided I would go and just ask how to deal with my body’s response, because no matter how much my mind had settled, my heart was still racing along in fight mode.

Claudia also appeared at that meeting, and we talked through the event. Apparently she had been one of the people doing walking meditation during the night, and in returning hadn’t realized that the passage from the second floor of one dorm led to the first floor of the other. She had walked into what would have been her room if she had been on the second floor, but because she was mistakenly on the first floor, she’d walked in on me instead.

People going into the wrong room by accident isn’t unheard-of there, since the doors all look the same, and there weren’t any locks on them (there are now). Of course, having that happen to me at 2am the night after a burglary was pretty much the worst timing imaginable. Since it was conceivable that something like that could still happen again, the following night I slept with my bed frame blocking my door from opening at all. I didn’t want to go through that a second time!

The final day brought the closing feedback session, where I spoke a brief piece about how the retreat had affected me emotionally much more than any previous retreat. And Claudia and I and the other two women in our car were the last ones out of the center after the retreat ended.

So, that’s a good bit about the body of the retreat. Now I’ll talk a bit about some of the ideas that came to me while spending all that time in silence.

Everything we experience, which feels so personal and unique to us, isn’t; it’s actually just one instance of sensations that virtually all humans experience at some point in their lives. Viewing them as universal phenomena makes it easier to hold one’s own pain lightly and feel a lot more compassion for others.

I thought up two interesting metaphors for how we relate to time. One can only see what’s happening clearly by being fully engaged and aware in the temporal present. Our past experiences can be like the film on a dirty window, making it more difficult to accurately view what’s going on in the present; our histories leave a residue that obscures or filters one’s view of the present. One need to try to see through or beyond the obscuration, or somehow clean the obstructions away. Similarly, focusing on the future can cast a shadow that darkens and obscures one’s view of the present; you can either spend all your time planning for and living in the shadow of an as-yet unrealized future, or step out of the shadow and experience the present moment in its full, vivid brilliance.

There’s an old instruction that goes something like this: never miss an opportunity to make someone else happy. I had some opportunities to play with this during the retreat, and the results were rewarding. I’d like to remember to do this more often.

When dealing with strong emotions (positive or negative), the best way to relate to it is with curiosity. Trying to suppress it isn’t healthy, and conversely one can easily lose perspective by self-indulgently wallowing in those emotions. The correct prescription is to explore one’s emotions with a sense of curiosity, because then one can understand, see the value of, and learn from those feelings.

In meditation, we cultivate a separation between the observer and the observed. In that way, the part of the persona that is observed can experience an emotion like anger, while another a part of the mind is at a slight distance from the experience, observing it, and learning from it. This separation of the observer from the observed isn’t just useful to help us see ourselves more clearly. Conversely, for those of us who have difficulty with our emotions, or are afraid of giving them free rein, it’s also a good way to free part of one’s persona to be fully absorbed in our emotions without the fear of losing control or being overwhelmed by them.

The common conceptual framework we inherited tell us that the heart is the place where we feel emotion. But saying that the heart is the seat of emotion is no more accurate than saying you hear sound through your kneecaps. If the heart was truly where emotions were located, people with man-made artificial hearts would never feel emotion, and doctors would perform cardiac surgery to cure depression, rather than prescribe drugs that impact brain chemistry! It’s time to stop referring to the heart as the seat of emotion, which is merely fossilized lore from a distant time of human ignorance.

There’s a huge amount more to say about that retreat, but I’m afraid the rest of the story will have to wait.

Every so often I’ve mentioned my former wife here, mostly in terms of her effect on my life or my current emotional state. She really is one of the best things to ever happen to me. But bless her soul, she had the homemaking skills of Paris Hilton. Here’s one of my all-time favorite stories…

At one point during college we lived in a tiny apartment that was essentially carved out of a hallway in a New England farmhouse. As such, the front door opened directly into our kitchen.

My love did most of the cooking, and usually did passably well, but she was just learning, and there were occasional accidents. When something got a little bit smokey or reduced to a sticky goo, she’d take the offending pan outside and leave it by the door until it had cooled down and stunk less.

Now this was up in northern Maine, where snow happens eight months of the year. So usually it got dropped on a snowbank. And often it would be actively snowing during one of these culinary misadventures. The snow that piled up on the pan kinda made the mess a little worse, but only if you went out and got the pans afterward. If you didn’t…

Yeah. If you didn’t get them, then by morning the snow would have piled up and hid the entire offensive mess from view under a pristine layer of pretty white fluff. And my wife quickly realized that if that happened, no one noticed, and she didn’t have to deal with the mess at all!

Of course, as winter dragged on, the little woman’s culinary repertoire would be increasingly limited by the dwindling stock of available cookware. When the spring thaw finally came, we celebrated Easter by finding six to ten rusted skillets, pans, and pots strewn all over the front lawn. And then we could eat anything we wanted for four whole months, until October’s first snows, when the cycle of the seasons began again…