Moving to North Austin
Oct 18, 2021 | Austin, TX
We moved to our second Austin spot. It was a different kind of move than usual because we had to take everything down the elevator from the 5th floor. Our technique was to stack everything up by the front door, then stack a certain amount of stuff by the elevator, then quickly bring that stuff into the elevator all at once while holding the door open, then quickly stacking all that stuff outside the elevator down in the parking garage, then Brian would go back up to start the process over while Erika started putting that stuff into the car. Erika would get some kind of vertigo/off-balance/nausea from riding the elevator too many times in a row, so that’s why she stayed down below and had the job of putting things into the car that Brian brought down. The elevator was oft-used by the students in the building so we tried to move as quickly as possible to not inconvenience anyone. We had asked Liz, the woman who ran the new Airbnb, if we could check in early since that would allow us to bring our junk over in 2 trips, and she said yes so that’s what we did. It saves us a lot of time to pack 2 haphazard loads rather than one careful load.
At the new place at 2106 Kenbridge we found that the backyard “tiny home” was not as secluded as it seemed from the wide-angle photos that had been advertised, but it never ended up bothering us much that we were in such close proximity to the family’s house. Erika was delighted by having the chickens around, and continued to interact with them the entire time we were here, even putting them to bed and taking them out in the morning when the family was away at their ranch for the weekend. One thing about the host family was that they were surprisingly lax with their lifestyle, and pretty much slobs. They never cleaned up their dog’s poop, their backyard was a wreck, they kept junk like mattresses and broken washing machines on their front porch, but they were always nice and friendly people. Liz is a doctor and Simon is a German IT engineer. They had two young children, Pippen and Beo.
We were very comfortable in the home they built for us. It was well-decorated but still homey. And it had a surprise loft because they didn’t want to include it in the ad because apparently Austin doesn’t allow ladders to be used for lofts. I would definitely say that the antique ladder they used for it seemed quite unsafe, but it was great having a loft considering it had a spare bed for guests and a desk for Brian to work at.
Pictures: Brian made sure to take a pic of the Orange Market since their free coffee became part of his daily life while living there. The second photo is of a nice hibiscus plant outside of where we ate lunch that day: JuiceLand. It’s a very prolific juice bar chain that sells ready-to-eat vegan wraps. The chickens often congregated together on the backyard table, for some reason.
