{Warning - this post contains some adult oriented material. Read at your own risk}
We took a break from our life on the boat to spend a few months doing other things. We decided to spend this month in Austin, Texas, where we will check out the music scene, dip into some of the South By Southwest activities, and attend the PGA Match Play event.
We are also trying to explore locations where we may decide to settle once our nomad lifestyle has run it's course. Austin is one of those locations. Although it may no longer be called Austin by then. On the local news this morning I learned that the locals have decided to rename several of the schools in the area because the current names honor some individuals with confederate ties. And the confederacy supported slavery and that is bad. One scholarly gentleman was just on the screen pointing out that none other than Stephen F. Austin himself owned slaves. Uh oh... If we like this area, we may eventually settle in this yet-to-be-renamed town. A quick google search revealed that there are numerous and diverse candidates who have made significant cultural contributions to the region. I'm sure one of them is worthy of being a namesake.
For this visit we decided to try urban living and searched for an apartment in the center of town. Upon finding a place that met our needs - we reviewed the comments from previous tenants. It was consistently rated "5 stars" with one recurring and cautionary theme - "noisy... lots of noises... close proximity to neighbors and all sorts of noise...". We also learned that the owner provides ear plugs and a white noise machine to help support sleep.
We have lived in densely populated urban areas before - so we are not too worried about the noise. The car alarms, garbage trucks, traffic, and occasional arguments just become background noise and we don't feel that is a serious deterrent for us.
We loaded our car with a month's worth of our stuff and drove from Florida to Austin. We arrived Saturday and settled in. Everything with the apartment was exactly as advertised. We even noticed the noise-proofing in and on the nightstand:
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| Ear Plugs |
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| White Noise Machine |
Footsteps in the apartment above us passed through our ceiling with very little damping and we raised our eyebrows a little at how clearly we could hear what was going on up there. Even so - the devices in our nightstand still seemed to be overkill.
We enjoyed some Mexican food and live music in the neighborhood before retiring for the night. We were exhausted from the long drive and fell asleep as soon as the lights went out.
We were both startled awake at 1:35 am. Still groggy - I reached for my phone to call 911. There was a woman in the apartment above us who was crying out in extreme distress. She was being attacked, or stabbed, or .... the fog cleared from my head ... spanked??
Kim and I sat up and blankly stared at each other in the dim light. We were frozen. Confused.
We were starting to figure out what was happening directly above us - and then a metallic, spring-loaded reenk-uuhh reenk-uuhh reenk-uuhh accompaniment confirmed our thoughts. I doubt the noise-reducing stuff would have helped much and we didn't try because we assumed it would all be over soon. I mean ... that's how it works, right?
This went on for 40 minutes and at times I was seriously worried that our ceiling was about to collapse on top of us. I won't go into detail about what happened at the end of 40 minutes. Use your imagination.
I made a nervous joke about how I must do it wrong and we started to work our way back to sleep.
Just as we started to drift off - the whole thing started up again. At 2:25 am.
And then again at 6:00 am.
We have 25 more days of this... I'm not sure we knew what we were signing up for.
p.s. I know a lot of you think I exaggerate and make stuff up in this blog - so the next time this happens I will try to get a recording and post it here.
