Wednesday, 13 March 2002 | Stable

On Friday at the airport, the zipping sound of suitcase wheels against grooved surfaces and the voice of the teacher from Peanuts squawking over the the intercom. A red plastic rocket-shaped object about the length of a cat fell to the floor as I walked out the automatic doors. I looked up, but it hadn't come from the ceiling. I think it fell out of my unraveling sleeping bag, though I hadn't put it there. I picked it up and immediately regretted it, dropped it again, and looked around for security to apprehend me. No one came, and nothing blew up, so we headed to the car.

Rebecca picked us up from the airport. She and Matt offered their house to three of us who were in Austin to attend SXSW; they graciously provided couches, rides, morning coffee, and an introduction to the surrounding area, while allowing us to come and go from their house as if it was a stable. Rebecca told me it was, in fact, at one time a stable, though I had trouble imagining how it must've looked before its transformation. It's one story high and sits behind a sliding gate, a wiry tree, and an old Lincoln; inside there are orange, blue, and green walls and tons of insane little trinkets, wooden floors, and a front porch. The neighborhood is filled sporadic boarded-up buildings decorated with spray-painted No Trespassing signs and inhabited by nervous feral cats that darted away when you approached them. Next door to the house was a trampoline encased in an inflatable green dragon, kids bouncing inside of it like popcorn.

I walked the thirty minutes between Rebecca's and the convention center a few times each day, cursing the inaccurate weather report and the cold wind. Once, when a few of us were on our way back to the house, we crouched in the street to look at at a strange synthetic-looking caterpillar. While we were busy pointing and prodding, a man curiously appeared and began to breathe heavy, staccato bursts of air. He looked as if he might say something but just kept breathing and sputtering, until we told him about the caterpillar he turned and headed the other way.

There was almost daily interaction with people in that neighborhood, most of it very friendly: a little boy about seven years old, yelling at his dog in my defense, "Bingo, stop bein' bad!" when the three-legged creature lunged at me in a chorus of loud yips; an old man dragging a grill behind him as he walked down the street, who, upon seeing my camera, pointed out a couple things he recommended I photograph.

On Saturday, I took a cab to what I suppose was the first conference event, a kickball game at which I recognized a few people from their websites, though I actually knew none of them (the Internet veil can make you feel like you know people even though you haven't ever met them before). I completed one play (on my way to first, getting an "out" by involuntarily stopping the kickball with my head) and met a few people, before wandering back to my temporary home.