Asheville and Little Switzerland

Jake and I packed up and headed to Asheville, NC on Saturday morning. Asheville is about 2 hours north of Greenwood and a completely different world for sure! It is kind of like Lawrence, only with real hippies instead of Johnson County based college kids who are just posing as hippies to allow them to smoke pot and rebel against "the man" while still wearing Hollister and A&F. There were a whole bunch of unwashed people with rank dreadlocks walking around with their belongings on their back and Teva sandals. Along with a lot of loitering, and not a single minority....very strange place. Actually it was really cool. Lots of nifty shopping, neat restaurants, live music, museums and really friendly people...probably due to all of the pot. Definitely a place that would be fun to go back to overnight or bring some friends along and do some going out. We could be totally off of the handle and go completely unnoticed in that crazy place.

We then drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Little Switzerland. Someday you all need to see the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is like driving down Highway 1 on the west coast, that scenic and way more windy. The only problem was that we did not find a gas station on the way out of Asheville and there was not a town/gas station/hole in the wall anything for the first 50 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway...I am going to write Dodge a letter and thank them for allowing for stupidity and having the gas light go off with 51 miles worth of gas left in the tank! We were sweating it for sure as there are no shoulders on this dangerously narrow/windy road. The scenery would have been way more enjoyable with a full tank unfortunately. Once we got gas we went to Little Switzerland. Picture Lindsborg with no people, no culture, and 3 building...all connected. Yeah, a little disappointing for sure. Luckily the joint had beer and was able to redeem itself with a nice deck with a decent view of the post office...

Lazy Blog Readers

Everyone is telling me that they are reading this, but no one is posting any comments. Get on it you fools! Thank you Bill for leading in the league in "Most Posted" at 3 comments.....

Addendum to Charleston

The first place we went after setting down our bags in our hotel in Charleston was a famous restaurant called "Jestine's". The place has all sorts of write ups from every who is who in the world of food. You wait in a long line outside before getting a chance to sit down in a tiny little restaurant to eat fried food.. Not my idea of a good time but Jake and Travis were quite impressed. I was amazed at the number of adults that felt it was a good idea to stand outside in 90 degree heat at 2pm with their toddlers and babies to eat in a tiny restaurant full of food a kid would not touch with a 10 foot pole. I was grumpy after standing in that line, so all of the kids in the joint were totally angry by the time they got to sit down to their Oprah endorsed fried okra and collard greens. As we left after eating all sorts of fried things and Coca-Cola cake I noticed one perfectly silent baby in the corner....because the mother was breast feeding it in the middle of the restaurant. Not in the restroom, at her table, not covered up with a towel, in front of the window with the line full of people. Jake and Travis didn't believe me that someone was doing that..so I had to take them back to the window and show them of course. Almost as upsetting as the huge amount of assorted fried things I had consumed at lunch!

Nothing But Class...

So we are in the "nice" Piggly-Wiggly by the lake where the rich folks live when suddenly I smell cigarette smoke. I start looking around and notice that someone has just lit a cigarette and is smoking in the checkout line of the grocery store...not only that, but this particular character is also not wearing a shirt....or any shoes in the grocery store. He is also very irate as he is attempting to purchase a Mountain Dew but dropped his money through the conveyor belt somehow in the unmanned checkout line where he magically dreamt someone was going to check him out. After several minutes of watching this saga unfold the manager shows up and tells the man that he cannot smoke in the store. The man looks surprised and angered by this and walks out of the store muttering "asshole". He then returns without the cigarette (or shoes, or a shirt) and gets back into line. Another confrontation with the manager happens and the man finally gets his Mt. Dew and heads out the door. The manager walks behind us and mutters "F*&king redneck"....The manager's name tag said "Billy Bob" and he was wearing a plaid shirt and work boots... I love it here!

Charleston

Travis Lenkner came to town this weekend and we headed 2 1/2 hours to the coast. Yep, only 2 1/2 hours, no plane ride involved. Jealous yet?

Charleston was fantastic. It is a really interesting mix of old and new. When I say "old" I mean "OLD" like Revolutionary War old. On Saturday we stood outside in line to eat some southern cooking in a tiny restaurant, walked around town to see the sights, and then had some really great seafood for dinner. They have carriage rides that you can take all around the city to see the sights, but most things are in pretty good walking distances. It is totally worth a trip to see a city like that.

On Sunday we drove across a new really high bridge over the water, and a really cool bridge over marshlands to get to Isle of Palms. Very nice coastline for sure with some big waves and warm water. The outdoor temperature was around 81 degrees while the water temperature was 83 degrees. There were a ton of folks surfing and a bunch of kids digging really deep holes...that seemed to be the cool thing to do on Sunday apparently. I even saw a grown woman digging a really deep hole with a shovel by herself. Not sure if I can even speculate what that was about. Travis and I managed to get our pants wet (imagine me doing that) when we were standing in the surf and not paying attention, so I had to buy a 10 dollar CRAPPY beach towel and got to see a giant lady with a giant tattoo on her giant arm of a giant torso of a giant naked lady....now that is class. Thought about trying to nonchalantly take a picture with my camera phone, but decided I would be risking a serious beating from her one arm while the naked lady watched from the other arm...

I am certain that my mother will be disappointed that the most detailed part of my post about one of the most beautiful places in America involves white trash tattoo choice....Love you mom!

My Inner Self?....

I decided last Tuesday that it was time that I tried to get into touch with my inner self or whatever, so I decided to go to a "Beginner's Yoga" class. The class was full of very nice people over the age of 50 who were very pleasant and eager to tell me stories of how much they enjoyed their yoga class. At that point I was pretty sure that it was going to be too easy for me and began to think about checking the schedule for the "real" yoga class. The teacher was a very pleasant lady over 50 who was wearing some sort of an outfit with lots of flowing fabric and some sort of windchime situation around her neck (which luckily came off before class started). The teacher took time to chat with me and give me an intro as to what would happen, all the time wearing a very supportive and pleasant smile. Then she pro ceded to beat me up in a way that I have never been beaten up before. I was falling over, sweating profusely, and swearing under my breath by the end of class. Who knew being a tree could be so hard? I am not sure how my inner self was afterwards, but wasn't really walking correctly until Saturday. However, I really enjoyed it. After telling other people how to exercise all day long at work it is sure nice to be able to turn your mind off and let someone else tell me how to exercise. I think I enjoy her sneaky, pacifist version of sadism. I will have to try some of that kind on my patients as opposed to the usual loud and scary sadism that I employ!

Forced March Through Hickory Knob Park

Instead of relaxing at home today, I talked Jake into heading about .5 an hour away to Hickory Knob State Park for a relaxing hike around part of the lake. 7.1 miles later he was pouring sweat and barely speaking to me. I was also pouring sweat and barely speaking to me. The dog was of course totally fine, although orange from getting in the lake and then rolling around in the red clay dirt. The dog is still orange after the bath, so I am wondering how long that will last. I apparently made a misjudgement regarding the topography of our new home, and Jake then pointed out that we could have just walked into Lindsborg from my mom and dad's farm for the same distance...I should definitely not be in charge of that again. Jake was actually awesome during the whole train wreck and deserves a lot of credit for not just shoving me in the lake at mile 5 and leaving. He actually says that he enjoyed it. We will see if I can talk him into going again....ever again.

SEC Football Is Intense!

Just got back today from our trip to Auburn over the weekend for the KSU/Auburn football game. I really enjoy weekends where you are more tired when you go back to work on Monday than when you left work on Friday. Luckily tomorrow is an additional day off to let me recuperate! I was originally scheduled to work, but there were luckily too few people needing PT in the hospital!

We left on Friday afternoon and headed to an Alumni get together at the ESPN Zone in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. Neat little spot with a lot of small boutiques and a lot of yuppies. I won't hold the yuppies against them though! There were around 75 purple folks there having a good time. I don't think that the servers were quite ready for how many drinks it takes for the Wildcats to have a good time! Some Oklahoma State fans that were in town for the GA/OSU game came to our party instead of their own Alum group as ours was more fun.

Auburn was an absolutely amazing experience. Everyone there was freakishly nice. Like nice enough that you thought they weren't being nice, but they WERE actually being nice. The atmosphere is better than anything I have seen in the Big 12. The huge stadium is right on campus, all the tailgating happens on the lawns of all of the campus buildings, and the bar area is about 10 steps down the block. Their downtown has a bunch of bars, but also has a footlocker, a gap,and a bunch of hometown businesses. I really don't think the whole thing is owned by some bar slumlord named "Rusty" like Aggieville is! The South is very funny. Anything goes as far as class goes. There were a ton of girls dressed up in sun dresses, some boys in blazers, and then a bunch of randoms with their faces painted that were totally hammered. Our seats at the game were super and we were surrounded by a bunch of really great KSU fans. I am confident that we make more noise at our 50,000 seat stadium in Manhattan than they can make with 80,000. The first 3.5 quarters of football were amazing and the last .5 of a quarter was amazingly bad. Oh well. Could have been a much worse showing for sure.

Sunday we drove back from Atlanta through Athens, GA where the University of Georgia is located. Their campus is GIGANTIC and they again have a very large football stadium right on campus that is about 10 steps from downtown/bar district. Auburn definitely was a prettier campus, but the downtown in Athens was really pretty and had some really swanky stuff that adults could enjoy along with the bars for the drunken masses. I did manage to find my favorite beer on tap for the first time in a tri-state area since moving, and can safely say that they put more bulldogs on things than we paste with Powercats....that is scary.