Transported to Texas

My mom’s mom lives at the Heritage, an assisted living facility on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Lexi and I met up there for the Memorial Day weekend to visit with Grandma, and each other. I brought along the video camera and tripod so we could record some family stories (to be posted soon!) but it was also really nice to just hang out with our adorable Grandma.


The Heritage is a great place -- friendly staff, pleasant surroundings, medical and other services available, plenty of activities for the residents. The only drawback I’d note is that it’s located in a big-box zone right off TX Route 1, and you can’t really get anywhere without driving, usually on the freeway. I don’t think Grandma feels trapped there or anything -- she seems happily occupied at the Heritage. But it was a little bit confounding for two granddaughters used to walkable urban neighborhoods. I know there are plenty of walkable urban neighborhoods in Austin, but in this particular place the idea of walking anywhere seems slightly subversive, if not downright unpatriotic.

Attempting to journey on foot from our hotel to Grandma's place (clearly visible just on the other side of a wrought iron fence at the edge of the parking lot), we clambered across a line of shrubbery and eventually reached an installation that seemed to be more of a metaphorical reference to the “sidewalk” concept than an actual route for getting from one place to another. A concrete path in front of the Heritage wandered sinuously around standpipes and manhole covers embedded in the grass, then sprinted headlong for the property line, where it halted abruptly. Whoever built it clearly had some sense that the sidewalk’s end should be honored in some way, so they installed a circular ceremonial pad at the terminus.


It looked like a good place for a flagpole, or perhaps a statue of Stephen Fuller Austin on horseback. To a couple of geeks like us, it looked an awful lot like a transporter landing pad -- an impression that was strengthened a few minutes later when we passed an elderly couple walking toward us on the path (that's them under the tree in the distance behind Lexi), paused to wonder where they were headed, and turned around to discover that they had vanished without a trace.

What could we do besides drop everything, set up the tripod and video camera, and spend half an hour shooting silly transporter footage? That night, after dinner with Grandma and a late show of Star Trek, we came back to the hotel and put this together on the laptop (don’t bother looking for a plot):