Bears Oh My

We drove around all day in my sister’s Protege so we wouldn’t have to take two cars. first we went into downtown Hendersonville, NC. This is the town Diane and Allen have picked to retire to in 7 seven years. They have a neat and thriving downtown. One attraction currently running is along the lines of those artistic cows they did in Chicago several years back, only because of their locale here, they used life-sized black bears. Diane and I decided that we would take a picture of every one of the 26 bears. We got the one inside the locked bank and we got the one inside a clothing store and we snapped the one on the awning of a restaurant, but we couldn’t locate bear #5. It was not where it was supposed to be. Maybe Animal Control had to capture it because it attacked a tourist. 🙂 I’ll try and get my gallery online in the next couple of days.

That night we went out to watch some minor league baseball. The Asheville Tourists, class A farm club of the Colorado Rockies were tangling with the Capital City Bombers. The Bombers won the game 3 to 1, but the evening wasn’t a total loss. It was free cap night. The first 1,00 fans got a really nice Tourists’ ball cap (the ads were small and tasteful.) Plus, Donna’s name was pulled in a drawing so she won a throw blanket donated by a local mill. I won an oil change because we had one of the player’s signature on the right page. We gave away that prize to the couple behind us, as for sure we weren’t driving all the way back up there just for an oil change.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $830.88
Started up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 130

How Can You See?

Donna and I are up in North Carolina visiting with my sister and her husband who are down on vacation. We hooked up this afternoon and have a couple of things planned. Friday night’s entertainment was to go out to eat and go see the Music On Main Street concert in Hendersonville, NC. We are staying at the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Hendersonville is a 30-mile trip. Donna likes for me to drive and my brother-in-law graciously agreed to let me drive his car (actually it is my sister’s Mazda Protege.) It was that or take two cars because the Miata can’t seat more than two.

I love the Blue Ridge Parkway, it winds along the crest of the mountains, dipping and dodging through some very beautiful country. Plus the best part is dropping of the ridge into the valleys on roads packed with switchbacks. 🙂 It was lightly raining as we took off for our trip and the windshield wipers were kinda old so they left ugly streaks. To top it all off the inside of the window had never seen a drop of Windex in it’s life (I think it is a 2000 model) making me drive a bit slower than I could have had the roads not been wet and you could see down the road.

My brother-in-law Allen said to go slow through the windy roads as this car didn’t handle as well as his Acura. Actually it did pretty darn good, so good that he wanted to drive back. I think I might have scared him a little with my driving. I didn’t even get any tire squeal or anything.

I was kind glad he volunteered to drive back even though it took twice as long. It was dark for the return trip and the glare from oncoming cars was tough stuff. Better him than me.

Now That’s Italian

On our way up north to meet sis and hubby in North Carolina. The most interesting thing of the whole drive occurred just outside of downtown Aiken on Laurens Street. Just as we were passing the post office a small gray object fell rapidly from the sky above us and hit the road a few inches in front of the nose of the car with a splat. As I looked in the rearview mirror I could see the squirrel dash towards the side of the road. I guess he missed a branch. Just imagine if I was 2 secs earlier leaving home or a light changed on a different schedule or the squirrel paused a beat longer thinking about the gap between those branches? I wonder what kind of havoc a squirrel landing in the cockpit of a moving convertible might cause? Would not be pretty!

In our increasingly harder to accomplish task of finding a different way north we crossed into Georgia for a bit of our trip. As luck would have it we were in the small burg of Clarksville, GA around lunchtime. We stopped in the center square and walked around looking for like candidates for a nice meal. We ended up going into the Zanzo Side Door Deli. It was on one side of a building and the regular Italian restaurant was on the other. Donna had a chicken salad plate on some greens with fruit on the side and I opted for the lunch portion of baked ziti. Man it was good. Almost worth the 100 mile drive it would take just to go back. This food was so Italian good and we were so in the middle of nowhere, backwoods Georgia that the folks running the place had to be witness protection relocatees.

Purchased Today: $26 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $830.88
Started down, went up, went down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 130

Close, But No Cigar

The Aiken 9 year-old All Stars lost tonight 7 to 5 and North Augusta took home the slightly bigger trophies. They played well, but the other team just made fewer errors. Our friend’s son started and pitched the first 4 innings. When he was pulled after the 4th, Aiken was ahead 5 to 4. Unfortunately North Augusta had the number of the 5th inning starter and jumped on him for 2 quick runs. NA scored scored one more on the 3rd Aiken pitcher and the damage was done. When Aiken came up in the top of the 6th for their final shot, they went down 1-2-3.

Off to the mountains in the morning. If you are on the Blue Ridge Parkway west of Asheville on Friday and see a blue Miata flash by; wave, its me.

I’m going to take the notebook and do some analog blogging this weekend. When I get back on Sunday I’ll post the entries from each day.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $804.88
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 127

Harry Belafonte

Whenever the three of us go anywhere, we of course have to drive Donna’s Moms’ Civic because the Miata holds just two. Mom has a 6 disc CD changer in the car and it is always stuffed full of music that is appropriate for the listening pleasure of a 70 year-old woman.

It has always been a rule between Donna and I that whoever is driving, gets the music choice. This works out well for me because I do 95% of all the driving. It is different in the Civic, maybe in deference to her age or because of the fact that it is Mom’s car, I usually listen to whatever is in the changer. Most of the stuff is tolerable and we are usually going under 30 miles so it won’t be for too long.

Unfortunately one of her favorites is a Harry Belafonte CD in which he thoroughly butchers several recognizable songs. And then in others, the production is way over the top for the song involved. His rendition of Michael Row Your Boat Ashore is a shining example of this. I just spent the last 30 minutes listening to this tripe and my head is swimming. Where is my copy of Guns ‘n’ Roses’s Appetite For Destruction? I need a little “Welcome To The Jungle.”

Trip Delayed Because Of 9 Year-Old

And we don’t have kids. A friend’s son is on the Aiken 9 Year-Old All Star baseball team and they won tonight to claw their way out of the loser’s bracket into a Championship Game tomorrow. They defeated the team that sent them to the loser’s bracket on Monday by a score of 7-6.

We watched them play Saturday and they won, we watched them Sunday and they won and we watched them tonight and the won. Monday and Tuesday we didn’t watch them and they went 1 and 1. Donna and I figured they had a better chance of winning if we went, so we are.

Instead of driving up part way on Friday and spending some time driving twisty roads on our way to the Pisgah Inn to meet my sister and her husband, we will just get up early Friday morning and drive up.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $804.88
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 127

Trailer Queen

This last Saturday as part of the Peach Festival Parade there were a couple of Plymouth Prowlers as an entry. One was being pulled on a trailer. I guess this guy figured that by not driving this one around it will be worth money someday. It probably hasn’t ever been driven except maybe on and off that trailer, he still had the original window sticker on the windshield.

Prowlers are fairly rare and if he finds just the right collector he may get a few bucks for it, but I think my retirement strategy of buying lottery tickets will pay off sooner than his expected windfall.