Birmingham, AL - We had a particularly long haul today in some hot weather. There's very little hotter than the back seat of an 11-passenger club wagon, let me tell you! The cargo van has AC but the passenger van does not. I sat all the way in the back today partly to spell my colleagues but also because there's a bit more room to spread out. I installed the power converter today as well, so keeping my Powerbook charged up the whole ride was a great convenience. Nothing like using a $2K+ machine to play a little solitare. In fairness, I did do a bit of writing as well.
The day did not start off well, however, as Kevin forgot to release the emergency brake on the cargo van. After about 20 minutes of driving, smoke started coming out of the right rear wheelwell, and you could smell the burning brakes. So we stopped at a gas station and they looked into it. No major damage, because the brake pads were practically new, and the emergency cable hadn't been re-installed right anyway. But it did set us back about 2 hours.The route took us from North Carolina down I-85 through South Carolina and into Georgia. We drove through downtown Atlanta, and are now in a Comfort Inn in Birmingham. This is my first time ever in the state of Alabama. Although I've seen it before, I still marvel at the kudzu which shrouds many of the bushes and trees down here. It casts a very ghostly pall, sort of just presenting the outline of trees and shrubs, as if a green blanket had been laid atop everything. Very eerie in a way.
Sights of interest today included the Appalachian foothills in Georgia, a water tower in the shape of a giant peach in South Carolina (almost rude in its phallic undertones), the Talladega SuperSpeedway, and part of the Talladega National Forest. One of our rest stops was a Dairy Queen in Estoadota AL, within a stone's throw of the speedway, and which was a tribute to everything NASCAR. All sorts of racing souvenirs, T-shirts and caps were there for the asking. Not only that, but genuine Stuckey's peanut brittle, peanut log roll and assorted Stuckey's peanuts (milk chocolate, praline, etc.) were on sale. The piece de resistance were some boiled peanuts. Kevin had never seen boiled peanuts, and made no effort to hide his displeasure when introduced to the sight and smell of them. Both varieties, Cajun and original, were merrily boiling away.
The evening was topped off with some very, very good Bar-B-Q at Nick's across from the Comfort Inn. I pigged out (pun intended) on some baby back ribs and pulled pork with Mac the Cheese and Cole Slaw. And they had a wonderfully nutty local brown ale from Atlanta called Sweet Georgia Brown that become a bit hit at the table. I have breakfast and lunch in the doggy bag for tomorrow.Shreveport is going to be a bit tricky. The house we've been given is a three-bedroom house, which means we'll be four to a room. The motels apparently are full up with evacuees from New Orleans, so we're lucky to have any bed at all. But the weather looks to be positively unbearable - heat indexes of 100-105 degrees are forcast for tomorrow, and the entire week is supposed to be in the high 90s. I did not pack any shorts except excercise/bedroom shorts, but I do believe I'll have them on in the van tomorrow. It was so hot today that I had to take off my shirt to stay cool. Tomorrow doesn't sound like fun. Hopefully I'll be able to stay cool in Shreveport. I only have a few workshops to do, and none on Monday, so I'll be searching for some air conditioning for sure.
For some reason I have been unable to upload pictures the past two days to the Blogspot site. Don't know why not. In the meantime, remember to check out new pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/twloughlin. I've started a new album for photos of the fall touring leg. Hope you enjoy them! -TWL
No comments:
Post a Comment