I live about 7 miles from work by car. My house is between the two major north/south highways that traverse Austin (IH-35 and Mo-Pac). My work is just a block away from one of them, 6 or so miles south. A couple of years ago, voters in Austin narrowly rejected a light rail proposal that would have created a small system of surface-level commuter trains, with one of the primary objections being its perceived cost. Now, I'm not big fan of driving to work. I have a decent car rather than a mammoth land barge, but it still seems wasteful. In the best of all possible worlds, I wouldn't have to drive, but since Austin voters didn't see fit to support light rail and I am not independently wealthy, I will have to make do.
One thought that I entertain from time to time is riding my bike to work. 6 miles isn't far at all on a bike, especially if I replaced my mountain bike with a hybrid. The problem in my case is that the area between home and work is quite heavily developed and thus heavily travelled. I could ride my bike, if I liked the tastes of diesel exhaust and death. But then, why suffer that as an unchangeable permanent situation? When I lived in Vermont, there was a short bike path connecting my development with a hitherto disconnected one. It was short, only about a half mile, but very useful. Austin already has a large number of recreational trails. It seems a rather logical step to develop a few dozen miles of dedicated bike paths connecting major parts of Austin for use by short/medium distance commuters. I imagine they could be pretty cheap and simple. A 10-foot wide path, 5 feet of shoulder, and then hedges, shrubbery, and trees to provide isolation/insulation and shade. Create two main paths parallelling the major highways, perhaps 2-3 miles apart, with east/west offshoots every mile or so, from Parmer Lane to William Cannon. It would be inexpensive, easy, and would get some cars off the road, not to mention providing an enjoyable recreational environment. Were I the sort of person to care about things, I might actually put effort into this beyond the weblog post. Ah well.
Addendum: It appears that the City of Austin thinks that bike lanes on the streets are good enough. I'm not so sure about that, but I can plot a better route than I had thought from home to work. Of course, since we are now entering the peak of the Austin summer, it is unlikely that I'll start now, but it's definitely something for me to think about (assuming it doesn't get vetoed like the motorcycle and the mustache).
Austin is currently having some kind of motorcycle fan shindig. I've made my feelings clear on loud motorcycles, but this latest invasion has riled me up again. Too many old, saggy people riding big, stupid, obnoxious machines. Nothing says poser like a Harley-Davidson. I need to put that on a bumper sticker.
Somehow, even though I have lived in Austin for 4 8 years, I have never before today heard of the Moon Light Towers. Back in 1895, the City of Austin decided to install 31 very tall towers to illuminate the city at night, casting light over circles 3000 feet in diameter. This was apparently common at the time, as fewer, brighter lamps were cheaper and easier than more street lamps. About 17 of the towers still stand. More information: 1, 2, 3. Pictures from a guy who climbed one of them. So now you know. As do I.
I've been eagerly following the development of the old Austin airportfor a little while now. As I mentioned before, the plan is to redevelop it in the style of a "traditional neighborhood development." In short, that means mixing commercial, retail, and residential areas rather than having large, uniform, and separate areas for each. There are apartments, townhomes, and traditional single-family homes. The last, also known as "yard homes," have small yards with automobile access through an alley to the back, with the house closer to the street. The "corner store" returns, as do nearby parks. The current plan (outlined in an article in the Austin newspaper not available online) may have the first houses being built in about 5 years, roughly when we'll be looking for the next house. The main concerns we have are that the houses may be too small (page down) and that the schools might not be up to snuff. It's pretty exciting, though, since most of Austin is either expensive, suburbia, or both. Austin has a traditional neighborhood development initiative, but there are only a couple projects under way, and the other two are far away. My parents live in Austin, my sister in Houston, Jessica's grandmother in Kerrville, and Jessica's mother is going to retire just north of Austin in a couple of years. All that free babysitting is hard to ignore, so we're going to be here for a while.
Holy crap. We are getting lightning and thunder and rain like it's the apocalypse. The dogs are freaking out and so am I every time I hear a house-shaking boom a half second after the flash. The radar map shows a smear of angry yellow and red from Waco to south of San Antonio, and it's all moving in a roughly northerly direction, meaning we're maybe half done.
Seriously, take a look at local radar map. That stuff over College Station north of Houston is what hit us last night, and it's still coming down. I have a window at our new office and am looking at a newly formed lake just beyond the parking lot. It's also scarily dark.
It may come as a surprise to people who don't live in Austin or only have been here in the summer, but we get some serious rain. It comes in waves of varying intensity. And, of course, nobody knows how to drive in it. We get some pretty impressive lightning and thunder along with it. I remember one night a couple of years back when we had a thunder-and-freezing-rain storm. Unfortunately, the area where I live is flat and has a lot of tall trees, making it tough to see all the lightning. That's why I want a tower, just like HGTV's 2004 Dream House. I'm not into their interior decorating, but the Victorian-inspired architecture, interior layout, and, of course, the tower are all awesome. That's become my new house goal. Here's hoping for the big bucks.
Today, the last day of the year, the temperature is currently 76° F. That is admittedly an unseasonably warm temperature, but it sure beats the 41°F in Essex Junction, VT.
Over the last week, the trees in Austin have pushed out the first tender leaves of spring. It's nice. We've got at least one more cold snap ahead of us, though, but then it's clear sailing all the way to October.
Last night, we had a severe thunder-lightning-torrential rain-hail storm. It was short, but while it lasted... The noise was unbelievable. I was pretty worried about the skylights and windows of the house. I am so glad I have a garage. I tried to take some pictures, but only one of them came out well. This is the front yard immediately in front of the patio:
Those pieces of hail were about 1/2" to 1" in diameter. It looks a little better in the 2160x1440 version of the picture, but that's 1.14MB.
There's a controversy in Austin about toll roads. A bunch of people want them. A bunch of other people don't. The latter have bumper stickers condemning toll roads as "double taxation." They make me gag. Taxpayer-funded highway construction is a popular pork item, which effectively makes everybody pay for roads that only some people use. Toll roads are a good idea because people who use the roads pay for them in proportion to their usage, and people who don't use them shouldn't. The "double taxation" catchphrase is, well, catchy, but it's also stupid. If there was no toll on the road, everyone's taxes would go up to compensate, but I don't see anyone complaining that their taxes are too low because of the tolls. Similarly, if there was no tax money being used for highway construction, the tolls would be substantially higher, but I don't see "double taxation" opponents clamoring for higher tolls. They want their road usage to be subsidized by the general body of citizens; "double taxation" is just a smoke screen.
To digress briefly on toll roads... I suspect that one thing that deters people from using mass transit more is that they have to explicitly pay per use. Using roads costs money as well, but paying those costs is decoupled from any given use of it. If we had toll roads, on the other hand, you would explicitly pay per use, eliminating that perceived difference, and (hopefully) increasing the use of mass transit.
The redevelopment of the former Austin airport continues. Last week, our fine local newspaper had an article about the search for homebuilders. The developer has released the design guidelines for homes in the project. Some of the guidelines include:
Houses must have front porches and rear-facing garages. Each block must contain at least four floor plan models, with no more than two houses having the same elevation. At least four lots must separate similar houses.
It sounds a little nit-picky, but given the suburban sprawl non-style of the last 60 years, that is welcome. The first phase will be for sale starting in mid-2007. Both the newspaper article and the design guidelines require registration, sadly, but I can send them to you if you want. I'm not going to post them here because the former is copyrighted and the latter is a 6MB PDF. I'm slowly reading the 166 pages of the latter document, and I'm getting increasingly excited, even though some genius decided to embed diagrams in it as blurry JPEGs.
We got tubular skylights installed in our living room last week. They bring in a lot of light, but it has a distinctly blue tint. We knew we would want to paint the living after we got the skylights in, but the blueness of the light certainly emphasized its importance. Saturday evening, I stopped by the local Home Depot to look at some paint samples. I went in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals, as the temperatures that day were in the 80s (just so you know why I live in Texas). I grabbed swatches of orangey yellows and headed back out. As I neared my car, I saw a sight that filled me with joy at the power of human ingenuity: Home Depot had covered the dividers in the parking lot with plastic strips advertising their credit card. I don't know what brilliant person thought of that one, but they have my admiration.
Someone has been decorating trees on the highway. I drive to work on Austin's Loop 360, which meanders through the western side of town. For the last couple of years, someone has been decorating some trees at an undeveloped section along the road
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. I don't know the name of the tree species, but it's a bushy sort of thing, about the size of a more traditional Christmas tree, with kind of a pointy candle flame shape. Anyway. The last few years saw a few trees getting decorated, mainly with tinsel and shiny garlandy stuff. This time, though, things got out of control. There are something like 35 trees decorated there for you to see as you zoom by at 60 mph. Either the mystery decorator was really feeling his/her oats this year, or there are copy cats. It's an odd thing. I like seeing them and wondering, which I guess is the point.
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Specifically, on the southbound side just after the Spicewood Springs traffic light (the southern one [yes, there are two]).
A frequent sight in Austin is the bumper sticker, "78704: It's not just a zip code, it's a way of life," referring to the boho hippie center around S. Congress south of the river. These are the same people who wear the "Keep Austin Weird" t-shirts. I got more than my fill of hippies growing up outside of Burlington, VT. They annoy me, and it looks like I'm not the only one.
We attended Mueller Family Day on Saturday. It was a pretty low-rent affair, basically a tent in a field with a bunch of people talking about the Mueller Airport residential redevelopment project. We missed most of the structured talking, due to Uma's nap, but I got two key questions answered.
The first important discovery is that they changed the order in which they plan to build out, due to drainage issues. The area I wanted most, due to proximity to the main features of the development (school, retail, parks), will now be the first area with houses rather than the second. That means next summer, instead of sometime in 2008 or 2009. That was sooner than we expected, and probably sooner than is financially responsible or even possible. Bummer.
On the other hand, I picked that area based only on looking at the map, so it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Besides, if done right, pretty much any part of that development is going to be better than 95% of the rest of Austin.
The other key datum was that the range of house prices is expected to hit $550,000. Ouch. No way we can get anywhere near that for at least a decade. The representative didn't elaborate on the features of such a house. It would certainly be the biggest house with the fanciest upgrades, but I don't know how big, what upgrades, or how much each contributes.
Our current house is about 1700 square feet. Adding another living room, another bedroom, another full bath, and doubling the kitchen gets us somewhere in the 2300 sq. ft. range. That's not huge by American standards. On the other hand, it's a design goal of this development to be denser and to draw people out of their houses. There won't be any McMansions. I know that the smallest houses at Mueller will be around 1100 sq. ft. I neglected to ask what the top end of that range will be. Hopefully, it'll be well above the 2300 sq. ft. that I want. I recognize the fundamental conflict here between what I am conditioned to want, and what I know is intrinsic to making this such an exciting place to live.
There's not much I can do at this point besides wait. It's a little tense for me because this is the first indication that it might not be attainable. That's a big bummer, because I can't really think of anywhere else in Austin that I want to live, and leaving this area is highly unlikely. Still, it's also very, very preliminary and based on incomplete information. It changes nothing about what we must do.
We need to make our house nicer. We need to avoid spending money on things we don't want or need enough. And I need to develop my career, both in terms of my day job and also in whatever else I can wrangle. On the first, we've made some strides with the painting and skylights, and we're going to have to do something with the 1260 lbs. of flooring I bought last month. On the second, we're pretty frugal as it is, but we can be better. One thing is for certain: our retirement and Uma's college education come first. If we must sacrifice those to get there, it's not worth it. On the third, that's all me. More on that later.
A giant Asian supermarket just opened about a mile from my house. We checked it out this weekend. Among the foods you can buy:
Dried white fungus
Egg steamed bread
Essence of chicken drink
Pineapple gel
Pineapple seaweed shortcake
Tamarind drink
Veggie sesame eel
I realize it's not very nice to make fun of simple cultural differences, but c'mon... Pineapple seaweed shortcake?
There will also eventually be eight Asian restaurants in the same shopping center. My hope is that at least one of those will be a decent Thai place. Having all that good food so close will be pretty cool.
On a list of the 50 largest US cities with greatest natural disaster risk, Austin is right in middle. They just ranked them there, though, instead of scoring, so it's hard to tell what the risk difference is between various cities. If I only include cities I would want to live in (Milwaukee, anyone?), it comes out like this:
The New York Times Magazine has an article about how animal shelters are trying harder to make adoptions work, featuring Austin's own Town Lake Animal Shelter, which is where our dog Molly came from.
48 sub-cutaneous injections later, I have discovered I'm allergic to pretty much everything biological in Austin. Some of these are more recent developments.
I can feel it. Note that the image is actually deceptive; "high" cedar pollen are usually in the 1,000 range. If the image had been scaled properly, the bar would be many times longer.
Note that according to the qualitative judgment, the current 538 is still "high." The previous measurement was apparently even worse than I thought, being at least some 35 times higher than high.
I had my first significant reaction to my allergy shots earlier this week. About 40 minutes after the injection, I started having an asthma attack. It was unpleasant, though not life-threatening; I've never had a dangerously bad asthma attack. The allergy nurse suggested it was due to the high oak pollen levels in the air combined with the oak serum in my set of vials. I think she was on the right track, but not quite all the way there, as demonstrated by today's oak pollen count:
