Waiting For The Bats

On our last night in Austin, we decided to check out a unique local form of entertainment: watching bats fly out from underneath the Congress Street bridge. The configuration of that bridge just happens to provide an ideal nesting spot for Mexican bats. Every night, at dusk or later–bats being nocturnal creatures–the bats emerge from their perches in those slots you see underneath the bridge and fly down the river to hunt insects.

And, because a swarm of bats flying out from under a bridge isn’t something you see every day, people started to come to view the spectacle. On Sunday night, bat enthusiasts lined the bridge, while we sat among a group of bat aficionados on a small hill facing the bridge. Boats on the river also gathered for a little bat viewing. It was a kind of carnival atmosphere, and as the designated time for sunset neared a great sense of anticipation took hold.

The sun fell and the skies darkened, and people around us kept predicting that the bats would emerge any moment–but instead it just got darker and darker, to the point where you couldn’t see much of anything, bats or otherwise. The Mexican bats aren’t huge creatures in any event, and they aren’t exactly designed by evolution to be highly noticeable at night. We saw a few bats flitting by on the other side of the bridge, framed against a lighted wall, but no large swarm.

It turns out that bats aren’t slaves to the clock, and will leave their roosts under the bridge at unpredictable times after sunset. In short, they come out when they’re good and ready. If they’re especially hungry, the swarm might fly out right after sunset, but if they’re not, they might cool their heels for an hour or two. And the bats don’t particularly care if the humans gathered to watch them are there are not. You’ve got to respect them for that.

What Makes A Great Skyline?

We’re in Austin for a quick visit, and last night we attended a fine performance of the Austin Symphony Orchestra at the Long Center. The Long Center not only is a good place to listen to orchestral music, it also is a great place to admire the Austin skyline. Being across the river from the core downtown area, it allows you to get some distance and perspective.

Austin has a great skyline, and looking at it from one of the Long Center balconies got me to think about what makes a great skyline. The height of the skyscrapers helps, of course, but it is not dispositive. The key thing is variety, both in terms of the height of the buildings–to help create that classic, jagged, sawtooth look that we associate with skylines–but also in the design and depth of the buildings. Austin has some very tall buildings, but it also has a lot of architectural variety that makes the skyline interesting to study. The “jenga” building, and the graceful arc of the Google building, which looks like an unfurled sail from a distance, help to make the Austin skyline a lot more interesting.

Columbus has a decent skyline, and thanks to the LeVeque tower, and its art deco lineage, there is some architectural variety. The construction that has occurred over the past few years and the projects that are underway will go a long way to determining the long-term quality of the Columbus skyline, however. I’m hoping the architects of the new buildings are willing to take some risks on their designs, and provide a bit more visual diversity, so Columbus’ skyline ends up looking a lot more like Austin’s.

A Bracing Dip At Barton Springs

Yesterday morning Richard and I decided to indulge in a classic Austin institution: taking a dip in the Barton Springs pool. Barton Springs is a natural spring that bubbles up from the ground just a stone’s throw from downtown Austin, as the photo above shows. It is a haven for dedicated swimmers and for anyone who wants to give their dog-paddling skills a workout. And speaking of dog paddles, at one end of the pool is a barrier and a fence that separates the human pool from an area where Austin-area dogs can have a riot splashing around around, as shown in the photo below.

The swimming area of the Barton Springs pool is probably about 200 yards in length. It varies in depth from about four feet near the edges to deep enough for diving at certain points. Although it is roughly configured like a very long swimming pool, it is a naturally occurring body of water with a bottom of algae-coated rocks, so you have to watch your step as you enter the pool. Human swimmers share the water with turtles and a unique species of blind salamander.

It was bright and sunny yesterday, but with temperatures in the 50s when we entered the pool. I had hoped that the water would be at least somewhat warm, but alas!–it was like taking a polar bear plunge. Under such circumstances, there is no alternative to just plopping in and hoping that eventually your body acclimates to the cold water, which mine eventually did. The bracing temperature of the water definitely provided some motivation to start swimming and hopefully generate some internal heat.

Speaking of swimming, I’m obviously totally out of practice, and it seemed to take me forever to move from one end of the pool to the other, as I tried out my back stroke, breast stroke, and freestyle techniques, as well as just floating and enjoying the interesting scene. Along the way I got yelled at by a lifeguard for the first time in more than half a century because I unknowingly swam–well, floundered, to be precise–through the well of the diving area. I did manage to avoid getting yelled at for running along the edge of the pool, however.

After I finally reached the end of the pool, we got out and walked around to take in the full scene. There were a number of accomplished swimmers who obviously have significant resistance to cold water moving methodically from one end of the pool to the other, as well as people sunning themselves on the lawn that is found on one side of the pool. According to Richard, the pool opens at 5 a.m., and there usually are people waiting to take a cooling dip and get their laps in. As for me, I was looking forward to changing into dry clothes and enjoying a warming meal of some breakfast tacos with a hot cup of coffee.

The Coldest Of The Cold

It’s been cold in Columbus the past few days, and the weather app advises that the temperature outside right now is a bone-chilling 13 degrees.

It seems to be cold pretty much everywhere in the U.S. right now. Because our weather app also keeps track of temperatures in other areas that we care about, we know that it has been unseasonably cold in Austin, Texas, too, where people are struggling with a balky power grid and Richard and Julianne have been huddled with their dog and cats when the power has gone out. The champions of the February Cold Contest, though, are Russell and Betty up in Brewer, Maine, where the current temperature is -18 and the wind chill is a ridiculous, and dangerous, -40. Fortunately, the Maine power grid is more dependable than what the Austin area has to offer, and Russell and Betty have heat.

As a kid, I don’t remember my parents talking about specific temperatures or the wind chill factor; at most they might chat with the neighbors about it being an especially cold winter. The only temperature I really cared about was 32 degrees, because I hoped for consistent freezing temperatures to allow for snowfalls, sledding, building snow forts, snowball fights, and other winter activities. It may have fallen below zero from time to time, but the approach back then–by parents and kids alike–was to just bundle up some more, perhaps wrap another scarf around your neck, hitch up your snow pants, fasten the metal buckles on your rubber galoshes, and deal with it, because the weather was simply the weather.

More recently, gadgets like weather apps on phones and thermometers in cars remind us of the specific temperature all the time. The coldest official temperature in the Columbus area is 25 below zero, recorded at Rickenbacker Air Base on January 19, 1994; that day it was -22 at Port Columbus Airport (now John Glenn International). I’m sure I was in town on that day and dealing with the cold, but I don’t remember that day, specifically. It was a cold day, obviously, but there have been many cold days.

The coldest cold I recall experiencing occurred in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a wintry day where we decided to go snowmobiling and the temperature was well below zero. It was so cold that it was difficult to take a breath outside, and the outfitter for our snowmobile trek emphasized that you needed to make sure that every square inch of exposed skin stayed completely covered, because otherwise it would freeze virtually instantly and you’d be dealing with frostbite. I took that advice very seriously, and was glad indeed to be supplied with lined coveralls, enormous mittens that extended up to your elbows, and multiple neck gaiters, along with my helmet.

Cold comes and cold goes. I’m glad to see that the temperatures in Austin, and Columbus, and Brewer are supposed to warm up, relatively speaking, today and tomorrow.

A Very Big Place

Yesterday we went for a ramble around Austin and ended up at a favorite place–a stone map of Texas inlaid into a plaza atop a small hill just across the river from the downtown area. The map gives distances between different Texas cities and Austin, which is indicated on the map by the star in the east-central part of the state. The distances show just how enormous Texas actually is.

For example, the map indicates that El Paso, at the far western edge of the Lone Star State, is 580 miles from Austin. The journey from Austin to Texarkana, at the northeastern corner of the state, is another 375 miles. Add them together and you’ve got a trip of close to 1,000 miles. That’s a lot of Texas! A further sense of the scale of this place is that the distance from Cincinnati to Cleveland, south to north, is about 250 miles. You therefore could flip all of Ohio sideways and wedge it into the 250 miles between Austin and Beaumont, just in the eastern half of Texas. Ohio ranks 35th among the states with 40,953 square miles; Texas, coming in at number 2, is six times larger, encompassing 261,914 square miles.

That’s a huge amount of territory for one state–but of course Alaska dwarfs everyone else, covering a total of 570,641 square miles. That’s bigger than Texas, California, and Montana, which rank 2, 3, and 4, combined, and 14 times the size of Ohio.

They grow states big west of the Mississippi!

Robot Dog Delivery, At Your Service

The world is moving with increasing speed toward greater integration of robots into our daily lives, and we’d better begin to prepare ourselves. Next year, in Austin, Texas, a fleet of robot dogs, like the one pictured above, will begin making deliveries on the University of Texas campus. The robots, built by Boston Dynamics and Unitree, will deliver items to faculty, staff, and students pursuant to a network accessible via a smartphone app. Those who frequent the UT campus will have to get used to the sight of the robot dogs speeding down sidewalks and leaping up stairways as they make their appointed delivery rounds.

The robot dogs not only will make deliveries, they will be part of a five-year research program that will examine human-robot interpersonal (or, perhaps, intertechnological) dynamics. The idea is to study, and then modify, the behavior of the robots “to determine how to operate safe and useful networks of robots that are meant to adjust their behavior to integrate with human populations.” The project leader for the study states: “In addition to programming robots to perform a realistic task such as delivering supplies, we will be able to gather observations to help develop standards for safety, communication, and behavior to allow these future systems to be useful and safe in our community.”

It’s not clear exactly what the robot dogs will be delivering and under what circumstances, which I think will make a big difference in assessing the human-robot interactions. If the dogs will be making pizza and beer runs to dorms and off-campus apartments, I predict that students who have imbibed in a few adult beverages and perhaps some mood-altering substances will get a bit of a shock when they open the door and find a bright yellow robot dog that moves like the herky-jerky devil dogs on Ghostbusters bringing their pizza with everything and six-pack of Lone Star.

I also predict that the people who are part of the “keep Austin weird” movement will really like this development.

Coming Soon To A Sky Near You

Over the weekend, 400 drones came together to form a giant purple QR code floating over the city of Austin, Texas. The QR code formed by the fleet of drones, which was hundreds of feet high, apparently was scannable and was part of a promotion of the upcoming release of the sci-fi series Halo on the Paramount+ network. It occurred during Austin’s annual SXSW (South by Southwest) music, film, and interactive media festivals.

According to a report in the Hollywood Reporter, people in Austin were variously “freaked out,” annoyed, or impressed by the marketing stunt. Having been to Austin several times, I seriously doubt that many of the young, uber-cool Austinites were “freaked out” by the display, unless they were already under the influence of some powerful mind-altering substance or were part of the fringe group that believes that we all really live in a computer simulation, as in The Matrix, and saw this as a giant, revealing glitch in the programming. I’d be surprised if most of the residents in Austin’s capital city did anything other than take a selfie with a comical expression on their faces and the giant QR code in the background, post it on all of their social media accounts, and then return to drinking their butter coffee or one of the many Austin area craft beers and riding their scooters around town.

What this really means is that soon the skies everywhere will soon be cluttered with drone QR code ads. Now that the Halo marketers have shown the way, copycat displays cannot be far behind. Drones are cheap and easy to program, and QR Code formations should not be hard to design. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some QR code floating above Columbus on the day of the Ohio State-Notre Dame football game this coming September, or during next year’s Arnold Festival. And ultimately the skies will be filled with competing QR codes and other ads, as seen in many dystopian sci-fi movies about grim and overcrowded futures.

In a way, this development was inevitable. Given the prevalence of marketing in the modern world, we can expect that eventually ads will be everywhere you look, coating every surface and floating in the skies above. The world will be like the internet, and the only issue will be where the next pop-up ad will appear as you walk down the street.

Austin International, 5:09 a.m. Central

We have an early flight out of Austin this morning. We got here early, and thank goodness for that: the airport is jammed with travelers and a bit of a madhouse. The regular security line snaked along for hundreds of yards, filled with anxious people worried about catching their flights. It was the greatest advertisement for getting TSA precheck status you could imagine.

It’s officially Thanksgiving week, folks, and the packed airport proves it. If you’re traveling don’t take chances—get there early!

The Hill Country Building Boom

On Friday we drove from Austin out into the Texas “hill country” and traveled around towns with evocative names like “Dripping Springs” and “Driftwood.” For decades, such places were part of the wide open spaces to be found in this area, with a rolling landscape dotted with small trees, mule deer, and roadrunners.

That is true no longer. Now the area is home to housing development after housing development, with many other new housing developments visible on the horizon. We drove through some of them, and were amazed at the size of the developments and the number of houses being built. There were houses in every phase of development, from cleared land being staked off to homes in the framing stage to homes where workers were putting on finishing touches and landscapers were getting the lots ready for a for sale sign. And all of the activity was right next to completed homes where families had just moved in. I’m surprised we didn’t see any moving vans.

According to the 2020 census, Texas added more population from 2010 to 2020 than any other state in the country, assimilating almost four million people. The Austin area has gotten its fair share of the newcomers, and people who live around here have gotten used to seeing cars with license plates from other states. And the accompanying development isn’t limited to the cities, as our road trip to the hill country demonstrated: the Texas countryside is being transformed, too. Given the frantic pace of the development, areas like the hill country that are near the growing cities will look a lot different in three or four years than it does right now. The traffic patterns are bound to change, too.

When you decide to go deep in the heart of Texas a few years from now, expect to see a lot more houses, and the stars at night might not look quite as big and bright with all the house lights on the horizon.

Austin’s Architecture

I’ve been meaning to write one last thing about our recent trip to Austin. If you’re interested in architecture, Austin is a must-visit destination. With the city growing like crazy, and new buildings being constructed everywhere you look, Austin allows a kind of real-time look at the direction of modern architecture.

So, what do you see in Austin’s new buildings? Lots of geometry, for the most part, and not much ornamentation. The ruffles and flourishes that you notice in older buildings—sometimes beautiful, sometimes garish, but almost always interesting—are long gone. The new buildings are sleek and gleaming, and in many instances the simple rectangle and cube designs that maximize the space under roof reign supreme.

But that doesn’t mean the architects don’t try to come up with visually interesting buildings. The Google headquarters building that is under construction and shown in the first photograph in this post is enormous, occupying an entire city block, but the design includes a graceful curve and, at the front of the building not visible in the picture, a unique stacking of floors that makes it look like the observer is peeking into the innards of the building. The design of the top of the building in the photograph immediately above tries to depart from the standard flat roof. And other buildings, like the eye-catching “Jenga” building shown in the bottom photograph in this post, make a statement by playing off the cube and rectangle look in an arresting way.

In the ancient architectural battle of form against function, functionality seems to be winning, but the architects look to be doing their best to add a dollop of flash and flair and inject some art into the architecture. And one other thing is clear: if you live or work in one of Austin’s new buildings, you are going to get lots of natural light, because windows—lots and lots of windows—are a dominant feature. That’s a good thing too, because it shows that today’s architects are concerned about the experience of the people inside the building as the people like me gawking at the skyscrapers from the outside.

Being The Bat City

There is a bridge in Austin that is home to hundreds of thousands of bats, which roost in the rafters of the underpass. During certain times of year, at sunset, the bats emerge as a huge group, execute a kind of collective swirl maneuver, and fly off into the sunset, heading down the Colorado River. The bats then return to their home sometime before sunrise.

It is apparently quite a sight, and large crowds gather to watch the bats take off. (We haven’t witnessed it yet, but we’ll catch the Bat Emergence on a future trip to Austin.) For this reason, Austin is also known as the Bat City, and it has embraced that moniker and become . . . well, a bit batty about it. You see paintings of bats on walls, Bat City t-shirts, bat graffiti, and other bat-related items everywhere around the city. It’s fair to say that Batman would feel right at home in Austin.

My favorite bat-themed feature is these bat-shaped bicycle racks on a downtown street.

On The Trail At Mary Moore Searight Metropolitan Park

Yesterday morning we enjoyed a hike at Mary Moore Searight Metropolitan Park, an enormous, sprawling park on the outskirts of Austin. It had rained early in the morning and rain was forecast for the early afternoon, so our plan was to dodge the raindrops and do our hike when the air was cooled by the rain that had just passed through.

The Searight Park encompasses lots of different kinds of habitats. There are wooded areas, meadows, and even a shallow canyon that was carved out of the native limestone by a small creek. There are dozens of different trails, one of which follows the rim of the canyon and features some impressive drops, as shown above. No guardrails or fencing, of course!

The creek bed itself is a very pretty area. The creek has formed small pools that feature lots of small fish and some colorful algae. Richard and Julianne’s dog Pretty enjoyed a refreshing dip in the water, as did another dog. The limestone was still wet after the rain, and in some algae-covered areas it was slick and you really had to watch your step.

The park includes an area where the creek has been dammed, creating a deeper, wider stream. This area is popular with kayakers, although none were out on the water when we passed by.

Much of the park consists of large unmoved meadows that are designated wildflower areas, as shown below. In some areas the native grasses are nearly shoulder high, and give you a sense of what the prairies must have looked like long ago. There were still some wildflowers in bloom, but we apparently had just missed the prime time to visit, when the whole area was bursting with color.

Still, there were some flowers to appreciate. One variety I had never seen before, shown below, is the Castilleja plant, colloquially known as “Indian paintbrush” or “prairie fire.” The plant is native to the western part of the Western Hemisphere and is found from Alaska to all the way down to the Andes in South America. It’s a pretty and distinctive flower with bright petals that look like a paintbrush, which explains its nickname.

The Mary Moore Searight Park is a great park to have nearby, and our hike yesterday barely scratched the surface. We’ll be looking forward to heading to other parts of the park on a future visit.

Colorado River Cool-Off

It’s been in the 90s in Austin, and pretty humid, too. But it’s nice when there’s a river that’s handy. In Austin it’s the Colorado River —not the one that goes through the Grand Canyon—and people were taking full advantage today.

There were tons of kayaks, rafts, and floats on the water, and hardy teenage boys were jumping off a pedestrian bridge into the river. Not a bad option on a hot day!

Austin Athirst

It’s fair to say Austin has a healthy thirst for adult beverages. The downtown area features two significant drinking areas—Sixth Street and Rainey Street—where you can wet your whistle at countless bars, cocktail lounges, and saloons, many of which are blasting recorded music or featuring live music. But that doesn’t really give you a clear picture. Here are some vignettes that help to illustrate the point:

• When we checked in to our hotel, the Van Zandt, on Friday afternoon, the clerk asked if we would like a beer or a water. I’m pretty sure the beer was mentioned first.

• One of the bars on Sixth Street is evidently so popular that, as the sign above indicates, people are willing to install the “LineLeap” app and pay for the privilege of jumping to the front of the line—something I’ve heard of for amusement parks, but not bars. How do the other liquored-up people in the line like that?

• When I was taking the above photo at about 2 p.m. two guys who had gotten an early start came up to me and one, with breath that could stop a rhino, challenged me to “rock, paper, scissors, two out of three!” I politely declined.

• We walked down Rainey Street at a little after noon, where I took the picture of the sign below. The bars were already filling up, and it was clear that the cocktails would be lonely no longer.

• When we later returned to our hotel a little after 9 p.m., Rainey Street was packed with people. The music being pumped out by one nearby bar was so loud that the bass reverb was distinctly heard and vibrating the windows in our room on the 12th floor.

Saturday Morning In Scootertown

Austin is a big scooter town, even bigger than Columbus. On Friday night we saw hundreds of scooter riders, and people were zipping everywhere and completely ignoring the instruction on the base of the scooter that says you can’t ride it on the sidewalk. Pedestrians in downtown Austin on a Friday night need to maintain a state of constant vigilance to avoid collisions with newbie scooter riders.

Saturday morning is a different story. The Friday frivolity has ended, the scooters are no longer needed, and they’ve been casually abandoned everywhere, in willy-nilly fashion. Instead of worrying about collisions, the walker has to be careful not to trip over a scooter some thoughtless and likely inebriated person left right in the middle of the sidewalk. It makes it impossible to enjoy a Saturday morning walk without navigating around and between hundreds of discarded scooter carcasses. But at least the Saturday morning pedestrian has company: the scooter crews are out in force collecting their scooters and putting them back upright, in cool configurations, in position to be used by the Saturday scooter set.