Greetings From The Al, Judy, Mark & Kristy Herman Room

Last night we were visiting one of Donna’s friends from the Navy, so we spent time catching up instead of me surfing the web (plus they didn’t have wireless.)

Today was spent on I-10 heading west in the rain. It did stop in time for us to do a brief driving tour of Donna’s childhood neighborhood that was devastated during Katrina. Donna’s Sister Sandy visited the place a year after, in 2006 and the house was empty a complete wreck. Today, their block is unrecognizable as new homes have gone up all along the street with still a few empty lots. The picture above is what stands at their old address of 6560. It is a nice house and all, but it doesn’t fit in with the look of the surrounding properties, plus the large live oaks that stood in the front and back yards are gone, replaced by small patches of grass thus removing the major part of the charm of the place.

This evening was spent watching the wedding rehearsal and eating at the rehearsal dinner of Stuart Lewis, son of Donna’s childhood friend Sally who we watched grow from a cute little baby into a big hulk of a man. Friday morning, after tomorrow evening’s nuptials, we head home, covering what took us four days to do on the way in a mere two.

While in Louisiana’s capitol city we are staying at The Cook Hotel on the campus of LSU. Like buying a brick with your name on it to support the local Veteran’s Park, alumni have sponsored rooms here, hence tonight’s post title.

Southwest Georgia Swept

Georgia Post Offices anyone?

Maybe because we didn’t travel as far today (only 200 miles instead of the 300 of the past two days), there were only a couple of items of interest to report, 1) the breakfast of choice in the small town of Colquitt, GA is a cinnamon bun and a Bud Light and 2) we saw a person riding a bicycle that you stood on and pedaled in a stair stepper motion (maybe this.)

Twelve geocaches today. Nine Georgia Counties, five GA DeLorme pages, two State Parks and one DNF.

16,000 Peanut Farms

Somewhere outside Fort Gaines, Ga the Purple Whale surpassed the 16,000 mile mark. Today we visited 2 Georgia State Parks and a State Conservation Park. We scored caches in 3 GA DeLorme Map Pages and 11 Georgia Counties. Along the road today we spotted a fox squirrel, a turtle and a field mouse. We also spotted Jesus carrying a cross and a naked lady with a lizard in her hair.

Andersonville

Very humbling site. Including the National Prisoner of War Museum.

Lunch prior was at a Mennonite restaurant outside of Montezuma, GA called Yoder’s.

Seen while on the road today: A cyclist riding a high-wheel unicycle, a very drunk African American riding a chopper styled bicycle, a man riding a horse and a sea plane flying low overhead while nowhere near any water.

Best sign of the day, on the outlying area of Fort Benning – TANK TRAIL DETOUR – Come on, a detour? You’re driving a freakin’ tank, you don’t need no stinking detour.

Four caches total, netting 4 GA counties and 1 Delorme page.

A Night At The Spa

The Purple Whale is spending the night at Taylor Hyundai getting his 15,000 mile beauty treatment. Because we learned our lesson last time (call and schedule in advance a couple weeks) we have a loaner car from the dealer.

It is a 2011 Hyundai Azera with 2,222 miles on the clock. I don’t have the greatest relationship with loner cars (examples: 1 & 2) and this one is no exception.

Or maybe it is just me, because I’m sure this is a very fine automobile, but it is severely lacking in quite a few categories compared to its cousin the 2011 Sonata. The styling leaves a lot to be desired, both internally and externally, the front leg room is less than an Elantra we tried, the leather seats are rock hard, uncomfortable and slippery, and it wallows down the road like a mid-seventies GM sedan.

On the plus side it has a bigger engine, a V-6, that puts out about 30% more HP than the Sonata (but the gas mileage is 20% less.) The only other thing that is nicer than the Purple Whale is that it has Dual Climate Control.

The sticker was in the glove box and the MSRP was over $4,000 more than the Sonata. To be fair, I’m sure the esthetics, both inside and out are much better in the newly redesigned 2012 Azera. But it is no wonder they had to turn this into the Service Dept Loaner, they would never get want they wanted for this wallflower with all the new Fluidic Sculptured, larger and cheaper Sonatas on the lot.

15,000 Calories

Miss me?

Spent last week in Matthews/Mint Hill, NC “learning” how to program our new Mori Seki NTX100-SZ to turn, literally, raw steel into parts that in turn go into valves which make the world go round. I was not alone in this endeavor, thank goodness, a real CNC programer (Hi, Mark!) and 2 guys that are going to be the machine’s operators came along with me.

We drove up early Monday morning and spent the next 5 days in class soaking up all we could about how to use a CAM program called Esprit. We can only hope it was enough…

Between all that learnin’ we did a whole lot of eating. There were four breakfast buffets at the hotel and you know me and buffets, I eat a lot at them to make sure I get my money’s worth, even though Uncle ASCO was paying. The school provided all 5 lunches from local places and they were very good and all of them were larger than I normally eat. Of the four evening meals, two of them were at Razzoo’s, where it is impossible to stop eating once you start in on their over-sized plates of food. Plus there were Rat Toes to consume as an appetizer.

Somewhere just north of Columbia, SC the Purple Whale passed the 15,000 mile mark.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1126