Carolina Trip

Drive Down

This is a long post but it has pictures! :-)

I was a bit surprised that my dad wasn't waiting for me when I got home from work. I fully expected to see him in the driveway, car idling, looking irritated and saying, "Let's GO!" That happened about fifteen minutes later.

We're headed down to 'the cottage' before going over to the Carolina vs. Duke game on Sunday. The cottage is this family place in North Carolina that I grew up at going every summer since I was born. It is truly a summer place, so it always feels a little sad to be there off season, but it's still wonderful and quiet. I wont go into details unless you ask me in the gym but let's just say this place is core to my identity and I treasure it.

Which is why I took the table saw. There's a green shed that was built in 1957 that is undergoing water rot in its door and I was going to fix it while my dad played scrabble over at his brother's house. Sumptin to do.

Not much to report on the way down there except I was either betrayed by that evil bitch Samantha (TomTom) or so involved with some gym story (I think I was bragging about my forty-five minutes on the stair climber) that I missed a turn forcing us to take the long way. God's punishment for my prideful arrogance.

The other thing was this weird space/time inversion that occurred. Somewhere on the West Virginia Turnpike my father got bored and slotted in this Willie Nelson CD and starts BLASTING it out the stereo. I like Willie OK but I'm fighting the giggles and biting my lip trying hard not to say, "WILL YOU PLEASE TURN DOWN THAT CRAP YOU CALL MUSIC?!" I had heard that phrase once or twice in the ago.

We get to the cottage at 1:30am - call it a nine hour drive.

The cottage - It's prettier in summer :-)

The cottage view, the Zoysia grass is dormant, so brown

Day One
I slept hard and woke up at the ungodly late hour of 7:30am. I start the water running - it's well water but is has this sulfur smell like it's freshly served straight from hell unless you run if for a good while, which of course lends a nice ambiance to the cottage of rotten eggs. Once the stink is gone I brew some coffee, I try not to think about it because coffee is essential to life... really.

My dad staggers down and we shoot the breeze and I'm making a list (and checking it twice) on that moleskine I always have with me. 'Town' is about a fifteen mile drive away so you try to give it some thought but in the summer I usually end up going in there at least once daily. I wont have that option here since the sole car will be gone today and tomorrow for scrabble playing.

Have you ever played it? It's actually a pretty fun game once you get a handle on the strategy.

I then go for a walk with my dad which is the first chart. See Bubbles, I'm behaving Also my aunt couldn't make it up so dad and I are now bachelors, starvation is likely but we're game, filled with poison coffee and walking past the old family house 'Belvedere' which is no longer in the family heading out to the goat farm and back. The goat farm has always mystified me, what do you do with hundreds of goats?

Belvedere, the little house to the right was the school

Near the goat farm my cell phone starts working, AT&T might have lots of bars, but not HERE. I call Freddie, a family friend, asking if I can barrow his truck so that I can get the door. As I sit here typing this let me clue you in on the electronics. You have to drive an hour south to Durham to find a Starbucks if you want to get an internet connection. We have satellite TV but its currently disconnected (the holy wars that break out between the children and the old folks over what's going to be on, FoxNews or Nickelodeon can be amusing at times) and if I was so inclined I could pick up a fuzzy WRAL out of Raleigh and we have a phone but I'm giving serious thought to disconnecting that because I'm growing tired of shelling out $30/month for something that's used about two weeks out of the year. In short, it's quiet here, I hear owls and birds and the occasional motor boat and I have no prayer of checking my email. This is what I see from where I'm sitting:

I bet my blood pressure is near non existent.

Freddie is mystified as to why we're walking anywhere when we have a perfectly good car! As dad and I are headed back Freddie pulls up in the truck and I hop in. Freddie and his wife Melanie are Godsends. They keep an eye on the cottage during the off season for us and Freddie will be very helpful when it comes to fixing that door.

By the time dad comes back Freddie and I have got a handle on the door situation and its decided that we'll tackle it in late May when I bring down TomS and we get serious with the place. So instead we drag a bunch of debris that washes up from the lake to a big pile that we burn later in the summer. The bonfire is one of my son's highlights, as he's gotten older his interest has waned going from an hour to about ten minutes.

I take the car into town and stop at its three major locations, Lowes (which houses the most unmotivated clerks on the planet) for furnace filters, Walmarts (now a super Walmart!) for everything else, and Skippers for barbecue and Brunswick stew - the best I've ever had.

I get back to the cottage about 1:30 and dad is asleep upstairs, he calls down mumbling something strolls into the kitchen, wolfs down his barbecue sandwich and grabs the keys to the car and is gone to party with his brother. When he became the teenager I'm not sure.

I lay on a couch, read some, fall asleep and then walk the property line with my little GPS. I note its about a thirty foot drop from the cottage to the lake and consider some sort of Bubble's interval workout where you have to carry this log up and down the hill. I want to see what Google Earth does with the data, if it's interesting I'll post it.

I got to speak with my wife earlier before the cell capriciously cut out. She went to the gym today and I already miss her and my family terribly! She was pleased she went to the gym.

Well, to quote my Uncle 'B' I'm going to, "sit here and watch the day go by."

Day Two
Dad and I got up and after I made it, ate breakfast. This trip is turning out to be a bust with regards to dietary misbehaving. For breakfast I had two scrambled eggs, turkey sausage and a bagel. Yesterday I managed to find one ancient Klondike bar in the freezer and ate it. Other than that I have fruit - bitter sigh. I expect there wont be much drama at weigh in on Tuesday.

We futzed around the cottage and then did our three mile walk.

The three mile death march

View from the ground of the death march

The weather was beyond gorgeous, and on the way out to the goat farm we saw a couple walking back. I said to dad, "I told you they'd lap us." They laughed and we talked for a bit just hanging out. They live at the lake year round and they were trying to place our cottage, "Are you out by the big rock?"

"Yep, turn left just past it."

The big rock

When we got back we were so tired we took a nap. I laid on the couch listening to birds and motorboats (crazy fishermen who just fly on the lake getting to the fish with 300HP motor boats, their boats flat and low to the water line. Me? I have my Uncle B's 1963 Fabuglas with a little 40HP four cycle engine on it that can pull a skier if they're not too heavy. I was too heavy, maybe I wont be when we're down there in June, it's been a few decades since I've been pulled by a boat. I'd like to 'get up' again.

I ate a barbecue sandwich which consists of pork barbecue and coleslaw on a hamburger bun. It was good. Then dad called my Uncle Nat and it was time for scrabble! I tagged along this time. Nat and Nell are great, Nell being a Southern lady had cooked us 'dinner' (Southern for lunch) which consisted of baked chicken breasts, green beans, corn bread, corn pudding, and yams. I had scratch baked chocolate chip cookies for desert and sweet tea. It's 8:15PM as I sit here writing this and I'm still full.

The battle raged throughout the day while I read a book. My father going down in ignominious defeat with an overall record of 2-8.

Scrabble Warriors - Don't Mess with These Two

I spoke to my wife on the phone and apparently she had a rough go on the elliptical today. If you see her give her a pat on the back, those 'off' days are tough! I told her to hang in there and I'm dying to get back home to message her thighs, she needs me!

Game Day
I had trouble sleeping, probably because we had to set the clocks ahead one hour and that always kicks my butt. I was also worried that we'd forget to set a clock and show up at the game around half-time.

It was another beautiful day, dad had foolishly watched the news (something I'm paying less and less attention to) and had learned that Ty Lawson, Carolina's point guard, had suffered a 'turf toe' injury during Friday's practice and now the game was over.

"We can't win if Ty Lawson doesn't play," said my dad glumly.

I'm a bit more upbeat about it. I was with dad about four years ago when Carolina was down by seven or so points with sixty seconds to play and dad was wanting to leave. I was looking at him a bit askance since I do not get to go to these events all of the time. Carolina came back and won it, so strange things happen in these games. When Carolina tied it around thirty seconds to go or whatever I looked at dad and said, "You ready to go?" getting up out of my chair and grabbing my coat. I still rib him about it. Carolina won it all that year.

We left early and went to my Cousin Sarah's house. Both she and her son suffer from MS and are one of the primary reasons my wife and I formed 'Team Bubble-U' but I'll mention that at a future date. They are both two of the nicest folk you'd ever meet and her son John is a rabid Carolina fan; he was quite envious of our tickets. So we stopped by her house which is beautiful and not just because of the the Chapel Hill address and hung out. John shared my father's dark thoughts about Lawson.

We then left for the game about 2:30. This is an event in every sense of the word and it's fun to be there through all of it. Even the TV time outs every twelve seconds. At least I can watch the cheerleaders or what not instead of someone trying to convince me to buy a Ford or get in on the latest class action lawsuit. When I first got there I HAD to buy a t-shirt from hallowed ground.

You probably think I'm six ways weird.

I don't care.

The view from our seats

I sat in my seat next to my increasingly uptight dad and waited for the game to start. It was very warm in the Dean Dome but there was so much going on just to look at that I didn't mind it much. It was loud. And raucous. And fun.

Game On!

Carolina, the team representing goodness and light defeated the evil Dook Blue Devils. It wasn't nearly as tight as the game I witnessed four years ago but just as sweet. It was Tyler Hansbrough's last game and he was quite emotional about it.

Both my father and I went to Carolina, I hope my son and daughter will but time will tell on that. Being at the game with him, well to paraphrase that commercial, "Priceless."

Thank you father! I had a wonderful time.

Now, what did all you gym rats do while I was away? Hmmmmmm? I would like to think you had as much fun as I did!!!