Road Trip

You will never never see a dead crow on the side of the road. — Mark Turner

Last night Donna and I were wined and dined by Jerry and his wife (also a Donna.) We went out to a place called Catch 22, a small seafood restaurant on New Orleans Road. Jerry was feeling expansive so he insisted we have all have an a glass of wine, appetizers, entree and dessert. The pinot noir was the best I have ever had, the crab cake for a starter that was terrific and the Veal Saltimbocca was so good that if they kept bringing to the table I would have eaten it until I lost consciousness. The chocolate brownie with ice cream for dessert while good, but was actually the low point of the meal. Catch 22 is listed as a seafood restaurant only the women had a seafood entree, unless Jerry’s duck was an eider. Everyone of us raved about our meals as the best we had eaten in memory, so while I’m sure Hilton Head Island has many terrific places to eat, you definitely can’t go bad in your hunt to find your personal favorite by starting out at Catch 22.

This morning dawned cold and overcast for our drive back. There are only so many ways to get back to Aiken from HHI and I’m thinking unless we start taking dirt roads, we’ve been on all of them. Donna did manage to map out one we hadn’t done in a while, which had about a third of it on US321 (a nice bit of symmetry seeing as we were in condo A321.) Even though it was quite chilly the birds know spring is right around the corner as there were quite a bunch active along the roadside. Quite a few cardinals were spotted along with a couple of our state birds, the Carolina Wren. As usual on the these rural two-lane roads many a turkey vulture was spooked by our approach only to hop back to feeding once we were past. There was cauldron of them feasting on a deer that I bet numbered a couple dozen. The most unusual sighting was when we crested a small rise and there were several crows and a large brown and white bird around something on the left of the road. As we got within 50 yards the crows scurried off leaving behind a slower to take off bigger bird, which turned out to be, no shit, a bald eagle. It probably had a 4 1/2 – 5 foot wing span. It was the last thing we expected to see feeding along the road.

Spent another day learning stuff that we’ll never use at GibbsCAM school. It was not a total waste, although we will never be doing exactly what we covered today, we may see something similar in the future. Plus he more we monkey with the program the better we get with the interface and will feel more comfortable using it. And a dull day at training beats a good day at work anytime.

Tonight after school we headed over to the Concord Mills mall area. After a brief shopping excursion into the Bass Pro Shop we headed over to Razzo’s Cajun Cafe for dinner. The food and atmosphere when we visited in October were so great we just had to make a return trip this time. We asked to sit in Madeline (our waitress from last time’s) section, but were told she didn’t work there anymore. Oh well, we were seated in a booth just two away from where we were seated before. The place was pretty quiet tonight compared to last time and our server turned out to be a red hot little number named Pepper. Mark and I would have enjoyed flirting more, if we were into young men. No kidding, the guy’s name was Pepper. He said he was named after a famous baseball player from St. Louis in the 30’s, Pepper Martin.

Even though our plan of getting Madeline to hold up a “I miss you Mark” sign and having her picture taken with us in the booth, to email back to the other Mark who was with us last time, was foiled, we are still planning a trip back to the restaurant in two weeks when we return for our last training session because the food is that good. We just won’t necessarily be asking to sit in Pepper’s section.

Mark and I are off on another two-day training adventure in Albemarle, NC. We are saying in our usual Holiday Inn Express (Mmmm…Cinnamon Buns.) and this time I won’t be able to complain about the parking lot lights interfering with my beauty sleep. After my complaint at breakfast last trip, Mark cued me into the secret, ask for an odd numbered room. The odd numbers are on the backside of the hotel and face a patch of woods. Very dark.

Another plus about this trip was the drive up, I’m driving the Miata and in an effort to not get stuck in rush hour traffic in Charlotte, I charted a route that got us off I-77 about 30 miles south of the big city. It took us through a couple small towns (and a few really small burgs too) on the back roads. Even though the mileage was a little longer, we got to the hotel at about the same time as the earlier trips. As a bonus we were in Monroe, NC about 5:30 and found a Sagebrush Steakhouse to eat at. instead of having to wait until we got to Albemarle. The food was just as good as the one in Albemarle and the waitress here was a whole heck of a lot better than the one we had back in October.