We circled the wagons in Hammond. This was a planned 2-day stay to visit with friends from our New Orleans past. As it turned out, Donna did the visiting thing and I did the lay in bed in the hotel thing. I have been batting a cold/flu since last Monday and with the whirlwind last week in Aiken I never had a real chunk of time to rest and recover. Hopefully this day did the job because the next 6 days we are covering 2400 miles to get to Klamath Falls.
Started in one state (Alabama), crossed a whole second state (Mississippi) and ended in the third state (Louisiana.) Today’s drive was entirely Interstate free, we did cross over or under a couple though. Through out Alabama and Mississippi the state and county roads were mostly nicely maintained and smooth. As soon as we got to Louisiana we were greeted by the thud, thud, thud, of roads made from concrete segments. This annoying, constant, repetitive bumping is especially prevalent here because the soft underground allows the 100′ x 12′ segments to slowly over time shift up and down in comparison to it’s neighbors. So while Interstates in general suck, those in the Pelican State suck more.
I set my phone’s alarm for 5:00 AM, to get an early start. I woke up at 4:45 on my own, so we just got going. All the stuff we are carrying seemed like an awful lot while it was sitting on the floor inside the AirBnB. It seemed like a lot when making 5 trips from room to car too. But with the back seats folded down flat the Mini swallowed it right up.
I don’t know it was just one of those days or was it because the both of us are so frazzled from the whirlwind last two weeks, but we had a very eventful day. Here are the Top Five:
To the best of my guessing ability, either late today or maybe early tomorrow the Mini reached the 35,000 mile plateau.
When we visited the Pacific Northwest this year we flew into Portland instead of our usual Seattle because we wanted to check out our possible (now imminent) new city of residence in Oregon. What we did see of Portland did nothing to dissuade its quirky reputation.
We spent a couple of days in the City of Roses exploring. We were staying near the airport and one evening we took the light rail train into downtown. What amazed us were the number of homeless people that were encamped along the right of way of the tracks. Also, any highway overpass the train went under, you could see a dozen tents, or shirts stretched across the bushes. We thought there were a lot, but didn’t think it was as many as, a Portland State University report says there are, 38,000 of them. That is roughly equivalent to the entire population of our soon to ex-city of residence, Aiken!
This morning when I dropped off the CTBNL with my Fairy Godbrother1 David who is going to park it in his garage until we get an address in K-Falls to have it shipped to. When I was there he said, “You haven’t had a chance to to drive the addition to my stable, the 944 Turbo.” “Got time to go for a drive?” I said said, “Sure.” I probably would have said the same thing even if I didn’t have the time…we promptly spent the next hour or so bombing around the back roads of Aiken County. Going to miss these random drives. Somewhere towards the end of our trip I put the thirty-eighth thousandth mile on this thirty-ish year-old German engineered marvel.
I have been wearing the New Balance Men’s Coast V4 FuelCore Athletic Shoe Running since I retired. They are comfortable and I love the slip-on nature of them. You tie the laces until they are snug on your foot and then the stretchy upper material allows you to slip your foot in and out. The first pair of them I bought upon retirement were in Techtonic Blue and I wore them out before 2018 was done. The second pair I purchased was in Phantom Gray (like linked above) and made it to this September. Not bad, a nine month life span, considering I’m averaging 2-1/2 miles a day every morning 5 days a week.
Both previous shoes were bought at Academy Sports. When I replaced the first blue pair I wanted blue again, but they didn’t have it, so I opted for the in stock gray. This replacement time they didn’t have any of that make and model shoe at all. Donna and I hunted high and low looking, but no dice. I wanted a slip on, I am basically that lazy, so my options were limited.
There were about a half dozen slip-on shoes, but of those available only 2 were were nice enough looking that I would put them on my feet. The first pair I tried on was too loose, I normally wear a size eleven and even in a 10.5 they slipped off the heel when taking a step. The next pair I tried were the Skechers Men’s Equalizer Double Play Slip-On Loafer. There was no size 11 available, but they did have a 10.5, so I put them on and walked around the aisle a bit. Not too bad, so we bought them.
It wasn’t until the next day on my walk that I realized I should have test walked them a little more in the store… They were too stretchy and too tight at the same time. My heel felt elevated forcing my foot forward hitting my toes on the front of the shoes. I didn’t end up with any blisters, but I did get a sore arch. I thought I would be alright and maybe I’d get used to them after walking in them for a few mores days. Wrong. On the next day’s morning walk after only a couple of blocks I decided to cut the walk short and head home. It was then that I pulled the badly worn pair of New Balance shoes out of the trash, placed the Skechers in the ‘Going to Goodwill Pile’ and ordered another pair NB Coast V4 FuelCore in Phantom from Amazon.
In the right hand column the is a widget called “a decade ago” and the one for today is Post #3,290 which signifies that from January 1st 2002 when I started this nonsense, until September 29th 2009 I have authored three thousand two hundred ninety posts. That means over those 2,829 days I averaged 1.16 posts per day.
The title of today’s post represents the grand total of posts I have created since 1/1/2002. So in the last ten years I have added a total of two thousands one hundred and sixty nine more. This means over the ensuing 3,653 days I have averaged 0.59 posts per day. Just a little more than half my previous output. I think I must be running out of words…
This weekend is a scouting mission for the annual Masters Miata Club gap trip in November. Sort of a good thing too because our go to Friday lunch spot in Highlands, NC is no longer in business. It has been replaced by a fancier restaurant that is only open for dinner. We ended up at a place just the next block over, but it was more expensive and not as good. Afterwards we wandered around town checking other places and think we have found one that might work.
Today was checking out an alternate loop for Saturday’s drive. There is nothing really wrong with the loop, but we have driven it a bunch of times and it is time for something new. They have opened up a new section of the Foothills Parkway and we wanted to incorporate it into the drive. We still want to end up at the Tellico Grains Bakery for lunch because no matter how many times we have eaten there we will never tire of their wood fired pizza.
I had Google Mapped out a nice little loop that included just the older section of the parkway because I wasn’t sure how much of the new section we could do. We drove the newer section for the heck of it and it turns out it wasn’t as long as I thought, so we are now going to include in our loop. The rest of the new roads were actually kind of fun, including the slower sections that wound through some houses and small farms.
Tomorrow morning we get up early and head on home. Seeing as we will passing through Hendersonville, NC we will stop and get some bagels at Joey’s and see if we can get my sister and her husband to meet us there.
Somewhere along the mountainous roads on the way up Friday the CTBNL zipped past the 76,000 mile mark.