Taking Jaywalking Lightly

Twice in as many days, I walked through downtown at lunchtime, dodging cars in the crosswalk, admiring mighty pedicabbers, doing the not-quite-making-eye-contact thing with oncoming pedestrians about who's going to swerve right and who's going to swerve left. Downtown Austin during South By Southwest is kind of like a miniature Times Square, only without quite so many weatherbeaten costumed characters of uncertain foreign extraction.

Then again, I've pretty much stayed away from the Convention Center.

It's fun to see your home city as a foreign place, though. Yesterday and today I approached two different crosswalks which already had groups of people waiting at them. When the light turned green, we didn't get a WALK signal. The first time, I just pushed the button and waited gamely with a European family through a second cycle of the light. Today, though, I darted around the startled-looking Asian couple waiting at the crosswalk and ran across the street with the green light. They waited. The red hand told them to wait.

And though the immediate impulse - stressed out from walking through what's normally a relatively sleepy downtown area, temporarily teeming with Out-of-Towners - is to turn up one's nose and relish one's superiority in knowing how things work, actually it's rather humbling. They didn't push the pedestrian button because they come from a place where pedestrians aren't scum. Why should you have to prove you exist by pushing a button? Doesn't downtown Austin have enough pedestrian activity, even without a major festival in town, to justify letting drivers wait 30 seconds longer for a green light on the off chance that someone needs to cross? You should always get a WALK signal, dammit. You shouldn't have to push a button.

I would argue that the "no push, don't walk" logic is dangerous, anyway. You don't always know if the reason you aren't getting a WALK signal is because the button didn't get pushed in time (in which case the law-abiding citizen stands there waiting through a green light for no reason like an idiot) or because there's a traffic pattern you aren't immediately aware of, such as a currently unoccupied lane of traffic that has a green arrow through the crosswalk, and you're about to step into the right-of-way of someone who hasn't approached the intersection just yet. DON'T WALK, in other words, might not necessarily mean DON'T WALK. Or it might. Or it might mean the button's out of order, because that happens too. You can't really be sure.

And don't even get me started on sensor-activated traffic lights that don't detect cyclists.

Tomorrow I'm going to rent an Elmo costume from Lucy in Disguise and see if I can get credulous tourists to pay me to take a picture with them.

Taxi!

An Austin cabbie insulted a customer today.

I know. I know. We're friendly, we're welcoming, we're nice, if you don't take personal offense to all those shirts that say "Welcome to Austin! Please don't move here" that people who moved here in the late-90s-to-early-aught-aughts start sporting this time of year. So this is quite out of character!

Be that as it may, a lady called our offices today (offices which are part of an agency which builds and maintains the state highway system) absolutely purple with rage that her cabbie had said something that offended her, and she wanted us to Do Something About It.

"Are you married?" he asked her, at some point during the ride. She responded that she was not.

"Well, maybe if you took a bath, someone would want to marry you," he concluded.

Who wouldn't be angry? So she called us, a highway agency with no jurisdiction over this particular issue. That's fine; she wasn't to know - being, presumably, Not From Here - but she was not ready to give up that easily.

"What do you mean, you can't help me?" she demanded of our section admin, who answered the call. "You're the something something transportation something or other. It's your job to take care of this!"

"I'm sorry, but I can't help you," our admin told her. "You need to call the cab company and file a complaint against the driver."

"Which cab company was it?!" the woman shouted.

South By Southwest is one of the times when I avoid public places while muttering to myself "I love tourists... I love tourists... I love tourists..." I have every right to take this attitude, because I moved to Austin in 1986, PLUS having spent a couple of years here as a very small child when my stepfather worked at Texas Instruments just outside of town on Ed Bluestein. During that time I got a couple of opportunities to see the Austin Ballet perform at Armadillo World Headquarters, and that's more Austin cred than darn near anybody else has these days, so there you go.

Today I read an article entitled "14 tips for surviving SXSW," and not one of them was "Stock up on imperishables and hide under your kitchen table with the doors locked and the blinds drawn," which I think is a good indicator that the article's author was not from Austin.

Meanwhile, the city suggests you avoid congestion and parking issues by getting around using transit, or by bike. This is great, only they've helpfully closed off all the downtown streets that have bike lanes.

I guess I could take a cab.

Vikings Only Beyond This Point

It's interesting, the difference between country etiquette and city etiquette.

In the country, you wave to other drivers as you pass - though there are certain subtle rules governing that behavior. Pickup trucks always wave. Cars usually don't. SUVs can go either way.

In Austin, if you tried to wave at every other car you saw, your arm would fall off, and somebody from California would shoot you.

We drove out, the boyfriend and I, to Colorado Bend State Park near Lampasas. The countryside is beautiful, and you couldn't ask for a nicer day - bright, clear, sunny, and cool, and Texas arrayed in its own particularly understated autumn glory, forests of stunted trees a little deeper and softer in their greenery, a gentle pinkish hue over the long grasses and rocky outcroppings of the hills.

Hiking trails also have their own particular etiquette. You can't very well greet every single person you encounter walking down Sixth Street, no matter how many shot bars you've hit up; but strangers on hiking trails not only say "hello," and "how are you all doing today?" but listen for your answer, and occasionally strike up brief conversations before passing along.

"You're going to miss the car show," one man remarked to us in passing.

"?" said my boyfriend.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," said the man's wife, laughing and shoving him playfully. "Don't mind him, he's just joking."

But why? We looked at one another, puzzled. Six hours later, I still don't know what he meant. Was something awaiting us at the base of Gorman Falls, the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow trail, from which this couple was returning? Or was he making a joke at our expense? I glanced at my companion to see if he had perhaps inadvertently put on a NASCAR T-shirt. But he looked more or less normal.

Further along the trail was a young family returning from the falls with three small blonde daughters, the smallest perched on her daddy's shoulders. "Hey, how are you guys?" we asked them.

"Doing good, doing good," said the daddy. "A little tired."

"I can't imagine why," I smiled, remembering a hike up Enchanted Rock with two-year-old Katie in a backpack carrier.

"I'll tell you what," said the daddy, warming to his subject - and perhaps welcoming a brief rest - "it gets dark out here, after dark."

"..." (or something like that), said the boyfriend, who speaks punctuation fairly fluently, for a boy.

"We learned that the hard way," added our new acquaintance (I believe his name was "Captain Obvious") helpfully, "last night. You want to bring a flashlight."

The falls themselves, which are beautiful and restful, are reached via a 1.5 mile trail which ends in a steep scramble down 50 feet or so of limestone slope - slippery, so Texas Parks & Wildlife has helpfully installed a steel wire railing to the bottom so you have something to hang onto. At the base there is a small pavilion where you can rest on a bench and admire the falls tumbling from the cliff above. The rocks are newly deposited, soft and porous, and the vegetation springing from them is fragile and fresh, so there's a low fence posted past the end of the trail with several signs explaining that, due to the delicate ecosystem in a state of creation here, you must not trespass. "Restricted Area," says the sign. "No admittance beyond this point. $500 fine."

"Except," was not painted beneath this, "for Vikings."

There was a Viking in the restricted area. He had a giant horned helmet, and a red and white shield, and (this part confused me a little) a kilt. A girl was with him, and a dog. The girl had a large, professional-looking camera. The dog was affable. But what would a Viking be doing in an environmentally sensitive area beside a Texas Hill Country waterfall? "Could this be the car show?" I asked my boyfriend hopefully.

"I don't see how," he said.

I didn't either. We climbed back up to the main trail - and, by-the-bye, that's a workout your butt will never forget - and wandered along to the springs from which Gorman Creek, well, springs. A trail leads you to the creek's point of origin, a small pool of almost invisible clarity which gushes over rocks to form the creek; the springs pool shimmers slightly, on its surface, from the force of cold water bubbling up out of the pebbles at its bottom. Halfway there we met another couple, coming back, who addressed us with the familiarity I'm coming to expect from fellow hikers. "Be sure to follow the trail all the way to the end," said the woman. "You have to cross the creek twice. Be sure you go all the way."

"Yes," added her husband, "there's nobody else there, you'll be all alone!"

We smiled and thanked them and went on our way. "They expect us to have sex, don't they?" said my boyfriend. And sure enough, not twenty feet from the serene and magical pool at the end of the trail is a large, flat limestone outcropping about the size and shape of a king-sized bed. Not that we particularly noticed.

But the sun was lowering, the shadows were lengthening, we were over two miles of rocky terrain from the parking lot, and we'd been informed that after it gets dark, it's dark out there. So we didn't dally - we headed back.

Halfway back we overtook an Indian family, chattering to one another in Hindi mixed with Urdu, small children toted on the fathers' shoulders and folded-up strollers in tow, a portable radio playing Bollywood pop. Half the group stopped for a photo, and we passed them, approaching the forward half who shouted after their lagging companions.

"They stopped to take a photo," I explained as we passed the remainder of the group, leaving their radio mercifully behind us. "They'll be along shortly."

"We needed to tell them they just missed the car show," the boyfriend said to me a few minutes later, as we neared the car. "That was supposed to be passed along."

Here it is, for you: gentle reader(s), you just missed the car show. It may or may not have involved Vikings, who definitely should in any case be assessed a $500 fine. Probably more, considering the amount of damage they've caused throughout history.

At least wave at the next Viking you see. Do it for Texas. Then call the park police.

Culture and All Its Prefixes

Unpredictability is a good thing about my job, a good thing. Without it, well, I'd know what I'll be doing from one day to the next. That would suck.

This last week, I am a - well, for google's sake, we'll call it a visitor advisor. I'm greeting people who are new to Austin, or to Texas, and telling them what they should do or see while they are here. And because I'm nice, my suggestions are pleasant ones; even (I must rather shamefacedly add) things I personally have not done. Go on a free guided tour of the Capitol building. Visit the Harry Ransom Center, where they have a Gutenburg Bible on display, and the very first photograph ever taken. There are also interesting rotating exhibits of cultural artifacts. Currently they have an exhibit called "Making Movies" which really looks quite interesting. And the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum - well, for heaven's sake, you need to go there! I only lived on the UT campus for three years and never did, and to this day never have. I hope to soon.

And yet, it's odd, when we have a little free time to ourselves, to do what we like, we end up loafing around a certain someone's home and Netflixing the Will Farrell remake of "Land of the Lost." That can't be right.

I spent Monday afternoon covering at the Cap, and it was exhausting. First of all, the actual Capitol employees across the way were difficult to begin with. Then the visitors were plentiful and demanding; the last one of the day actually pretty much ordered me to call her a cab. I think she was from somewhere that taxis roam the streets for the hailing, and was tired and frustrated, so it's hard to be upset with her, though I was tired and frustrated (and sick) as well. But how much trouble is it really to pick up the phone and call a cab company? I did it. I hope she got her cab. I went home without worrying about it further.

More tiresome was a group of 15-20 middle-aged-ish people from a conference, who were on an "information scavenger hunt," and who wanted me - an Austinite, as far as they could tell, after all - to cough up on demand a reasonable quantity of interesting, little-known, and pithy facts about my hometown. Try being asked this on the spot as an open-ended question and coming up with a meaningful answer. On the whole, I think I did pretty well, telling people that our beloved William Sydney Porter wrote many of his best works while incarcerated, suggesting a drive-by tour of the original location of Whole Foods Market in what is now a small Cheapo Discs store on North Lamar, and mentioning that you can see Michael Dell's house (unless he's moved, which is entirely possible as I really haven't been paying attention) from Mount Bonnell.

Tuesday was a much better day, in that it snowed all day, and therefore not a single Texan arrived at the visitor center. People from Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, and of course; Canadians - mais oui! - came in, but the Texans tend to stay home, once the white stuff hits the sky. We probably didn't have but 30 visitor parties all day. So instead, I whiled away the afternoon reading a book lent to us by an employee of the Capitol Visitor Center across the way: "The Hot Zone," by Richard Preston, which I dug 300 pages into yesterday, and which, for future reference, I recommend against reading while you have a nasty cold.

This book deals with a non-fictional, or perhaps semi-fictional (I'm only 300 pages in, so I don't know for sure yet) outbreak of the Ebola Zaire virus in metropolitan Washington, D.C., specifically Reston, Virginia, where I largely grew up. The location is less gripping than the description of the symptoms, and it's pretty rationally horrifying to think of a virus of this type being turned loose in the "civilized" world - as if it were any less horrible stashed out of (our) sight in the Third World.

I have to go back to the Cap tomorrow after lunch, and if it's not quiet enough for me to finish the book there, I'll bring it home. I'm not watching "Land of the Lost" again, at any rate.

Go see the Ransom Center, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, and the Elisabeth Ney Museum. Never seen any of 'em, to my shame. I am on my way.

The Center of the Universe

"Look, look!" enthused an adorable little boy in swim trunks - I'd guess he was about two and a half - to Robbie and me, sitting on top of the hill overlooking the Long Center, Auditorium Shores, and the hike-and-bike trail. The man-made hill is crowned by a ring of stone benches surrounding a handsome limestone-and-granite map of Texas. Austin is picked out with a star on the map; several other, less relevant Texas cities are indicated by a dot, and under each dot the distance in miles from this, the sunniest, happiest, most beautiful city on Earth, is given. "Look!" said the little boy, zigzagging excitedly back and forth across the map. "It's the whole world!"

Who could disagree?

The little cutie was drawn to us by Bella, Robbie's miniature dachshund, who responded to his attentions by curling her tail tightly underneath her body and trying to hide under the bench. Robbie coaxed her out and held her in his arms so the little boy could pet her. The child caught sight of Robbie's watch. "Hey, what time is it?" he demanded urgently.

"It's almost four," Robbie told him.

"What's that mean??"

We weren't able to give a satisfactory answer, though, so the little fellow orbited the world a few more times before dashing down the hill to join his mother, grandfather, and brother, who were ambling along the spiral path that climbs the hill. The mother approached us after a few minutes and asked us, smiling, "How old is your son?"

"Wait - he isn't yours?!"

So I stood up and gazed down the hill towards the splashing water fountains until I spied a woman looking around, cupping her hands to her mouth and shouting. I waved to her. "Is that your mom in the red shirt?" I asked my little companion, "I think she's trying to find you." He dashed down the hill to a happy reunion. Awwwww... I guess it's just as well. Robbie's got Bella, and I already have a kitten.

I sat atop that same hill yesterday evening, too, with a new friend, who took me to see a new symphony by Dan Welcher, the Bruch Violin Concerto #1 with the amazing, energetic, and very snappily dressed Sarah Chang, and the Tchaikovsky Capriccio Italien.

The natives were restless - children waiting to splash in the water fountain plaza, which runs through cycles and pauses every several minutes to allow parents to drag away their exhausted offspring; but there were none of those last night. The tense, rhythmic chant of "Wa-ter! Wa-ter! Wa-ter!" was clearly audible from the top of the hill.

My friend has season tickets to the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In most cities, this would entail a good mix of classics and new pieces - and there's really no getting away from the pops concerts (nor from people who whisper to one another loudly during the performance, kick the back of your seat, and shout "Bravo!" at female soloists), but the one thing that kind of annoyed my friend was that a Charlie Daniels Band concert was included in his season subscription. "When I buy season tickets to the symphony," he remarked, quite reasonably I thought, "I am specifically paying NOT to see the Charlie Daniels Band."

I guess that's Austin for ya.

Day One

"IKEA," said someone at dinner tonight, "is just like Bed Bath & Beyond, times a million. On crack."

That should totally be their official motto.

So I am on the road for a week, starting today; and so far it's going marvelously, I must say. The only quibble I have is that the internet in my hotel room costs $11.95 a day. I'm staying somewhere else tomorrow night; hopefully it's free there, but for now, I'm reduced to clacking away on a very noisy keyboard in the business center, which resembles a large closet, only with more mirrors.

Today I learned that the big pokey thing sticking out of City Hall is designed to resemble an armadillo's tail. Did you know that? I didn't. We also saw a zombie parade marching up Congress as we headed to the Capitol. Many of them were carrying protest signs. "Undead? Yes! Unperson? No!" read one.

How cool is that, to have a bunch of people come from out of town and there just happens to be a zombie parade going on? I love Austin!

Also today I got to put my arm around a great big boy cow with curly horns. There's something I've never done before!

It's not that late and I'm not very tired and I sure wish there were internet in my room. There's one a them TV things, though; I hear they show shows, and lots of people quite enjoy them. Maybe I'll try that out. Or maybe just a nice hot bath and try to get some sleep. It'll be a busy week.