Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The Kyle Trail: Where Nobody Dies of Cholera, and You Don't Have to Ford Any Rivers


Jess: We're starting to get settled here in Kyle, and I for one am enjoying this new journey in our life. I can't speak for Wes, but I'm pretty sure he feels the same way. Unlike our move to New Jersey, there has been more joy than sadness, although the sadness certainly exists, too. We definitely miss our friends from New Jersey, but it has been so nice to move back into our "old" circle of friends.

I think that in situations like this, it is really easy to build up a fantasy that has no bearing on reality. I'm not going to lie, as much as I was excited about coming back to Texas, I was also pretty nervous. Of course there were the normal moving jitters: what if we forget something, what if our stuff gets lost, what if something goes wrong... We also had some big concerns about going two months without either one of us earning a paycheck, and now we still have about two more before we're both working again. That's a pretty big strain on the savings account.

My biggest worry, however, was that we would come back to Texas and it wouldn't be as great as we had built it up to be. I mean, we're not back where we met and got married. It's not that we're far, but it's not like even moving right back to TLU would have solved this concern. Our friends are scattered, we all have jobs, everyone is at a very different point of their lives than when we all hung out together in college and the little bit afterward. What if this new arrangement fell short of our expectations? What if we were lonely in Texas just like we were lonely in New Jersey at first?

And yet, despite all of my concerns, things are coming together. We didn't lose anything on the way (except maybe one of James' cloth diapers, which could still turn up), all of our stuff made it safely to the house and we're nice and settled, and nothing went wrong along the way--no missed planes, no flat tires, no cats running away at the hotels. The people at Kyle UMC are wonderful, and I'm sad to think of not being with them on a weekly basis once September comes around. The larger Kyle community is great, we can walk around a lot, we've found what I think is going to be our favorite fallback restaurant, and there is PIE! 

Yes, things are different with our friends. Most of us are married now, Wes and I have a kid, everyone is older and most everyone is working a full-time job. We can't just get together randomly at 3 p.m. and do nothing. But we CAN go float the river on a day off, play games into the night, and, most importantly SEE each other on a regular basis. As our friend Ryan pointed out, we can make plans for next week. We don't have to talk about what we'll do four months from now--although that is also an option. We're here to stay. If we miss seeing someone today, we don't miss our chance for the next half year. James is going to grow up among a wonderful group of people that we love. And that's just as awesome as I always hoped. 

Wes: We are settlers, but luckily for us we do not have to travel in a covered wagon, we can carry all of the meat from our hunting ventures back with us, and we are not made of giant pixels that make it near impossible to distinguish from males and females. 

Basically, this trail is crazy better than our childhood game, Oregon Trail. 

We are settlers in a magnificent, magical place called Kyle, which truly is an interesting place. This city, which is one of the ten fastest-growing communities in Texas, seems to be really comprised of a number of small development communities that for the most part seem to be pretty self-contained. They all come together in near-lego fashion to create this town just South of Austin on the I-35 corridor. 

And we're smack in the middle of it. I couldn't be more excited. 

Jess talked a lot about what our combined worries/fears were in moving back down. I thought I'd talk a little bit about something that surprised us, and not in a good way. 

We've found that it's not as easy to be a Dad of a baby in public in Texas as it is in New Jersey.

It might sound a little weird, but it's true. In the six months of James' life spent up in the Great White Northeast--otherwise known as Southern Canada, which is weird because there are whole states in between New Jersey and Canada... Also no one calls it that but me...

Sorry. I got off track. In the six months of James' life spent up in New Jersey, there was only one public establishment that we visited that did not have a changing table in the men's room. It might have been bent, broken, or missing straps, but it was there and semi-usable. 

In Texas, though, we've already encountered a number of places where this is the case, much to our chagrin. In both restaurants and stores, there have been too many times that I have tried to take James into the bathroom to change his diaper and found out that I would have to use the floor to complete my endeavor. So, I've had to bring him back out and give him to Jessica, who is much more annoyed about this than I am because she gets stuck with diaper duty (please, please tell me you caught that pun) more often than not. 

I've been thinking a lot about the single dads out there, and how frustrating it must be for them. 

Come on, Texas. I firmly believe that you are the greatest nation-state in the world. Step up your game. 

Well, that's all for now. Sorry for the long wait. We'll get better again at writing more consistently. It is, once again, all my fault. For now, though, You Stay Classy, World Wide Web!


-jess y wes