My next brave new experience came when I began my journey on the Capital Metro System, aka the city bus. After the first few rides from West Campus to Downtown I realized that the people I was coming into contact with on the bus were people I could learn from, so I took out my BlackBerry and started capturing these moments for a later use. Here are two things I've taken notice to thus far:
- "I graduated from SMU, ya know?! 'Self Mature University,' where nobody told me what to do. I learned it all on my own," a preacher-like man sitting by his feisty lady friend said to a fellow rider.
- Erin at the 8th and Brazos bus stop:
She sat down and took off her shades, giving me a kind grin that strangers-in-passing do, then expressed her attitude towards the 100 degree weather in Texas. "How do you guys deal with this weather? Does it ever get cold down here," she perkily complained. I could tell she was being sarcastic and told her unfortunately it only gets hotter and to be ware. "I'm Erin," she piped, extending her hand. "I just moved here on a whim after coming to a wedding with a friend." She explained that she has lived in about five different states and while coming to this random wedding with a friend she experienced South by Southwest and fell in love with Austin. "I've been living on a friends couch for 2 weeks." We talked for a little while longer as we waited for our buses to arrive in the unbearable heat; the conversation took a little of the sensation I had to melt into a puddle away from me. As we chatted the subject of "people on the buses" came up. "You know it was the weirdest thing, I got on the bus yesterday morning and sat down next to this blind man. I said hello as I normally do and he told me he knew me and 'thank you for helping me across the street.'" Erin had only lived in Austin for 2 short weeks and knew that she hadn't, for a fact, helped a blind man across the street since living here. After telling the man this, expecting to let him down, she said what he told her next stunned her back into her seat. "No, you helped me across the street in Seattle, two years ago on Pioneer St.," the elderly blind man explained. When I asked why this was shocking to her, after thinking she had moved to Austin from Colorado, she said, "I lived in Seattle, two years ago, just off Pioneer street..."
I thought living alone was going to be easy-shmeasy...until my anxiety set in and a UT football player ran his car into the side of my apartment building one night at 2 am. Yes, that was my apartment building, just one floor below my bedroom. I awoke from my deep dream thinking someone had just shot off a gun, until I looked out the window and saw a vehicle sticking halfway out the side of the building. Needless to say, I wasn't able to fall back asleep because I was too busy being nosy and watching what was going on, though I didn't have the best view. I still don't know what happened to him or his car for that matter, seeing as it was pushed out of the building and driven home before the police were called. That is by far the craziest thing to happen in Austin so far.
I have another month here before I head back to Aggieland for my final year of college. It is crazy to think that in one year I will be out in the real world and on my own. This time in Austin has better helped to prepare me for that day and for the fast paced lifestyle of the city and the journalism industry. We'll see where the wind blows me next. Nashville possibly?
