The Besser’s Do Austin. Chapter 5. Short and Sweet

[written by Paul; edited by Kathy]

Late. Overdue. This update. So late that Kathy has started sending out brief updates while I was on a literary sabbatical. [Kathy: Mostly about the boys; our second son, Tate, arrived the same day as the minivan for those of you who were wondering.] Worry no more. Update #5 is in your hot little box of a PC or Mac, sitting as ones and zeros, transformed by some software package, and in front of you for your reading pleasure. Enjoy! And send us an update on your adventures!

Moved. Officially moved. 3407 Rosefinch Trail. This is our new address in Austin – but you most likely knew this. We moved in at the end of March. Our previous (psycho) landlord was dumped by her Bubba fiancé and wanted her house back. The first few weeks were tough, since the kitchen was being remodeled, but we are settling in now. I am happy to report that there is only one box that has yet to be unpacked – a personal best! That is the good news. The bad news is that the box in question is kept in the garage and will not be opened till Christmas. Perhaps I should explain a little, with some background. See when we rented the house we knew that it was smaller than our house in CA as well as our first house in TX. We figured that two things compensated for the lack of floor space – location and location. The house is right across the street from our daycare provider – Carrie. Starbuck’s, Amy’s Ice Cream, a grocery store and lots of other shops and restaurants are within walking distance. The street is quiet. The lot backs into one of those things Texans call a creek [Translation, when it rains 4 inches in 4 hours (common occurrence here), it is a raging river- otherwise it is dry]. Lots of wildlife are supported by this “creek”. Dane and I have watched the deer walk through our backyard (and picked up the accompanying deer pellets) and have seen lots of birds (blue jays and cardinals are common). The drawbacks to the house – small and overgrown yard, small floor plan, poor lighting, and located 20’ below street level – are not so bad.

We have spent lots of time on the front yard, with the help of Kathy’s parents. We cut back some plants that have probably not been pruned in 15 years. We also planted flowering annuals (lantana, Mexican heather, geraniums and gardenias), and added mulch and a stone border. After these projects and after killing the monster weeds in the yard, the place actually looks presentable. We have tried to compensate for the poor interior lighting by painting some rooms bright white and by remodeling the kitchen. This worked well. But trying to compensate for the lack of floor space by turning the garage into a play area was a bad idea. It worked well for the first month. But as the temperature crept into the 90s, the play area officially turned into a sauna! It is now our little time capsule and is off-limits until November! We have converted the dining room into a play area for the kids and only send them to the garage when they are bad! Oh well, it is only for a year, then we will likely go back to our own house in Sunnyvale.

Crawling and crazy. Officially. TATE. He is crawling in his unique way. His left leg remains straight, which is convenient when he wants to sit up after a short crawling distance but it is funny to watch. He looks like a wounded soldier because he kind of crawls with his right leg, then swings his straight, left leg over and crawls again with his right leg. Entertaining to say the least. He also has some cute sounds right now. He is not talking yet (he is just 9 months old) but he has a cute scream that we swear sounds like a baby Pterodactyl. He also has an affinity for destroying the train villages that Dane creates. He storms in like Godzilla and starts ripping up track and going savage on it with his 6 little teeth. So we started calling him “Tatezilla.” Tate is a great kid. Even the other weekend when he had a double ear infection, a cold, and hives from an allergic reaction to the 3rd antibiotic, he was still not THAT fussy. But he is picky. He has weaned himself off creamed baby food and wants to eat what we eat. Now he is already weaning himself off formula.

Three years old. This June. And changing all the time. DANE. What a fun-loving kid, and a great big brother. He is awesome and great with Tate for the most part. He has had some fun experiences recently. He loved a day alone with Daddy at the Texas State Fair and Rodeo. The rodeo was lost on him, simply because it was slow moving and late in the evening. But the fair was a big hit. Dane got to see cows, goats, horses, chickens, bulls, pigs, deer, llama and more. He was laughing so hard when he actually heard a real heifer moooo! He just cracked up and pointed and laughed some more! Same thing when the sheep went baaaa! And of course the farmers were laughing at him. Dane also got to climb on some huge farm loaders, tractors, and combine harvesters! He pet lots of animals at the petting zoo and laughed at the nursing piglets. He was licked by a snake, and best of all, he held a 3-foot baby alligator! No kidding! After the alligator demonstration show, kids got to hold a baby alligator and have a picture taken. Dane bravely held this gator for 5 minutes while the guy tried unsuccessfully to take an instamatic picture. He was so brave and talked about his experience for a few days. That is one thing neat about being in Texas. You get to do some things that litigation-happy California would not allow, such as climbing all over huge pieces of farm equipment, holding baby alligators and boa constrictors, and a crawling around Bevo the longhorn!

Visitors. Lots of them. Kathy’s parents; Brian and Ed; Dave and C.C.; Todd; Brett, Larisa and Aiden; Corinne; Jeff, Lori, David and Justin; the Petersons; Winston and Millie; and more. These visitors make the time fly by. Plus it is a great opportunity to show off our favorite Austin digs. Coupled with all of the traveling by Paul along with Besser family trips to Sacramento (Kathy’s family) and Maryland (Paul’s family which included a bonus visit to the Air and Space Museum – heaven for Dane!) has kept us quite busy over the past 8 months. Oh yeah, and 2 kids fill any spare time we have!

Working maniac. KATHY. New clients abound and work is challenging. But she loves it. We both struggle with balancing careers, health and kids, but Kathy is better at multitasking than I. She is doing lots of reading, too. Books appear at the house on child development, religion, and history all the time. I don’t know where she finds the time! We both have found lots of insight from one book in particular- “Raising Cain.”

25 pounds lighter. And much happier. ME. Since Jan. 1, 2000. The weight was lost through a low carb diet and lots of exercise. I did the Lance Armstrong Ride for the Roses (100-mile ride) in April. It was a lot of fun. As preparation for that ride, I rode about 150 miles per week, but I have cut back to <100 now. I usually ride at lunch two days per week with 3 other Motorolans, but it is getting tougher to ride in > 90° weather at lunch, shower, return to my desk and actually cool off. I’ll probably switch to early morning rides. As part of the RftR, there was a downtown criterium the day before. Dane really enjoyed it. He especially enjoyed routing for Stacy, a pro women’s rider I met in the Rosedale Ride – a 100km race benefiting handicapped kids that I also did. Stacy and I were part of a paceline of 6 riders. At the time, I knew she was strong, but not a CAT-2 racer!

Decided. Mark down the date. Memorial Day, 2000. I have made THE decision. Contemplation took 5 years. It started with marriage, then the addition of a dog, then kids, two kids. All were sewing the seeds. I fought back with my Ford Probe GT, a Honda 650 Nighthawk, and finally a Ducati 750SS. About a year ago, on the day the moving truck was taking us to Texas, I sold the Ducati. No regrets. Five months later went the sports car. Replaced both with a Minivan and a second child. Don’t get me wrong, I DO love the minivan and would not trade fatherhood for anything, but I am now preoccupied with my mid-life crisis. I know it will hit me hard. Too much change in too little time. So I spend my drives to and from work listening to NPR and looking at cars for my mid-life crisis. Yeah, I guess I have pretty much settled on a car over an affair… I figure the car will last longer and give me more satisfaction over the long run! I favor the sports car variety. My brother-in-law already bought a Defender (a jeep on steroids) – which would be the SUV of my mid-life crisis. I like the Mustang Cobra convertible and the new Camaro SS, and periodically I see a new Carrera turbo or a Corvette (they are just too expensive!). Then there are the late model muscle cars that are always beautiful.

But I think I have made my decision – or at least narrowed the field a bit. See, my friend Chris has two bikes and he needed someone to take one around the block with him. “I only ride the new one, and the other is just not getting any exercise,” he says. I guess you could call 145 miles “around the block” to stretch its legs (this is Texas after all). Just my luck that they are both Harleys. ? Mine happened to be the 1998 Fat Boy – 95th Anniversary edition. And the bike is in its prime – broken in nicely, LOTS of added chrome, and leather all around. All we had to do was remove the windshield, and Ahh, that is the feel that I need. I had seen many a Harley in my life. I grew up in a town with a Harley factory. Most of my cousins and even one Aunt worked for Harley Davidson. I went to the museum, toured the plant, had an H-D key chain, watched the Harleys race at Laguna Seca, etc, etc. But I never experienced one – ever.

Surprisingly, not a lot of people are willing to let you take one out for a spin. It would be like a friend asking you to baby sit his Porsche while he is out of town. Just does not happen often. Anyway, my favorite Harley has ALWAYS been the Fat boy. I love the look, the power, the SOUND. You can guess that I was just a little excited for this ride. Even with all this excitement, the ride lived up to it in spades! A Harley is so different from a Ducati. I mean it is obvious by the physical differences in appearance, stigma, speed, cornering, wheelies, etc. But what captured me was the mental difference. On a sport bike, you are always carving corners, picking lines, anticipating, passing cars at any chance, jumping on the throttle, and in general, pushing the envelope. The Harley is fast, sure, but you can’t corner it like a Duc. Nor does it want to. The first corner I leaned into produced sparks as I drug the muffler around the corner and put me in my place. My mental place. I could hear the bike telling me, “Besser, you may think so, but you are not Arnold in the Terminator! RELAX, man!” No wonder Harley tried to patent the sound of the engine. It is downright therapeutic to be on this bike.

So you slow yourself down, enjoy the view of the sky reflecting in the chrome headlight, smell the fresh cut alfalfa in this field, the corn in that field, and the dark musty smell of a creek area, and feel the air rushing in your face. Let the sights and sounds take you back to some lost memory from your past. Therapeutic is the first word that came to mind. I enjoyed riding at 40 mph more than 60. I was enjoying the ride, not thinking about where I had to be or when. We rode along the rolling vistas of the Texas hill country, a section along the Guadalupe River and lots of two lane roads. About 2/3 of the way into this long ride I realized that this just might be my mid-life crisis toy. So what I really need to know is – when is mid-life? The average life expectancy is only 70 years. So I am wondering why most men wait until they are 50 to have a mid-life crisis. 35 is looking pretty good to me! Why not get a nice toy when you are young enough to enjoy it? So if you know of anyone fresh out of gift ideas for my 35th this year, send them an H-D catalog on my behalf!

We will close by mentioning Dane’s 3rd birthday party. He had 2 cakes – one at daycare and one at the Holland’s house. He requested a pink birthday cake with construction vehicles and a giant bulldozer (present). He had a wonderful day! We hope that you, too, have a wonderful day!

[Editor’s Note: We moved back to California in April 2001 and promptly left for a 5-week trip to Italy in celebration of Paul’s first paid sabbatical.]