Observations from the control room....

The Denali is a great car for long distance travel. Susan even agrees with me on this, even though prior to this trip, she had not driven it more than 4-5 times and then only for a few miles. She doesn't like to back it and I can't really blame her as the view rearward from the driver's seat is not ideal. It does have the back-up collision warning system that beeps if you get too close to something, but using that effectively takes a little getting used to.

However, she didn't have any trouble driving it for hours at a time on the trip. We switched off about every 2 hours which worked out really well. It gave each of us some time to relax (even snooze a little), but kept miles rolling. It's a tall vehicle, so you get a great view down the road and it doesn't get blocked by anything except the biggest of trucks on the highway. It has plenty of power to pass slower vehicles and it's very comfy. The electric seats are adjustable for any size person and the foot pedals are adjustable for any length of leg. Up to three personal settings for the seats, pedals and mirrors can be saved and restored at the touch of a button, so it is quick and easy to change drivers. I will say however, that no matter how comfortable a seat is, 7-8 hours a day sitting will wear you down. It was wonderful just to get out and walk around outside for a while when we arrived anywhere.

The OnStar feature was great. On the outbound side of the trip, we called OnStar every day around 2:00pm-3:00pm when we were sure how far we would be able to drive that day. We gave them our specs for a room (king-size, non-smoking, price range) and what town we wanted to stay in. They would then hang up, do the research and call us back about 30 minutes later with the reservation people for the hotel on-line with them. All we had to do then was read them our credit card number and get their exact street address. We then plugged that into the GPS and presto! We were taken right to the hotel. Easy as falling off a log. We didn't use them so much on the inbound leg of the trip because we were staying in Atlanta, New Orleans and San Antonio for two nights. We used the laptop to make reservations for those cities on-line. All in all though, I definitely thought the extra $7.95/month for the concierge service through OnStar was well worth it. They were always very friendly and willing to go the extra mile to make sure we got what we wanted.

There were zero problems with the Denali on this trip. I had the oil changed once when we were in North Carolina and had it washed once when we in San Antonio, Texas (see previous post about the day we left SA). Although it did get pretty dirty on the outbound part of the trip, it sat in the driveway at my Mom's house for the two weeks that we were there and a couple of pretty intense rain storms cleaned it up very nicely. We used my Mom's car (a Buick) while we were in NC because my Mom can't climb up into the Denali. The Buick is much lower to the ground and she can just turn around and plop down into the seat.

OK, now the downside of driving the Denali 9000 miles. The gas mileage! I present the following chart which speaks for itself:

Date	Price	Gallons	Miles	MPG
22-Jul	2.649	19.635	317.3	16.160
N/A
23-Jul	2.749	17.729	308.7	17.412
24-Jul	2.439	19.675	349	17.738
24-Jul	2.349	18.759	361.7	19.281
25-Jul	2.279	19.746	336.7	17.052
28-Jul	2.499	16.407	300	18.285
30-Jul	2.579	15.9	270.8	17.031
3-Aug	2.699	20.563	356.6	17.342
4-Aug	2.459	18.565	313.9	16.908
5-Aug	2.609	16.482	304.4	18.469
7-Aug	2.619	18.714	293.2	15.667
9-Aug	2.499	15.806	240.3	15.203
10-Aug	2.469	18.631	305.6	16.403
15-Aug	2.569	21.41	318.6	14.881
20-Aug	2.499	21.412	281.1	13.128
24-Aug	2.399	17.09	277.3	16.226
26-Aug	2.499	20.807	321.4	15.447
26-Aug	2.399	18.653	319	17.102
28-Aug	2.369	13.511	216.2	16.002
28-Aug	2.359	16.956	313.7	18.501
30-Aug	2.679	20.53	305.5	14.881
30-Aug	2.599	19.238	317	16.478
31-Aug	2.459	16.268	281.5	17.304
1-Sep	2.589	12.359	225.7	18.262
1-Sep	2.959	14.024	239.1	17.049
Avg price	2.531
Avg MPG	16.651

The one line above with the N/A on it refers to the one time that I failed to write down the mileage after filling the tank in Utah the second day we were out on the road.

The best mileage we got (19.281) was on the 300 miles downhill from Denver to somewhere in Nebraska. You can also see that the mileage gets much worse as we stay in place for more than one night. Two nights in Chicago, five in Marquette, two in Baltimore, 14 in North Carolina, 2 in Atlanta, 2 in New Orleans and 2 in San Antonio. We did a fair amount of local driving in each place and that brought the mileage down dramatically. There was also the nightmare day on I95 as we headed south to NC where we crept along at less than 25 miles an hour for several hours.

Note that as we leave the west coast gas gets cheaper. It is very cheap in the middle of the country and then gets more expensive again on the east coast. Note the jump on the last day as we drove back into California from Arizona. A dramatic difference! The last fill-up was in El Centro, California out in the desert east of San Diego.

Dealing with the aftermath....

After 9000!!!! miles in 41 days, the Denali was a mess. There were bug strikes jammed into every conceivable forward-facing orifice on the vehicle. Took it to a car wash in town and instructed them to pay extra attention to the whole front-end. It looks like the OCD wax job I did before I left paid off. All the big chunks came off pretty easy and a little extra rubbing by the drying team after passing through the mechanical car wash finished everything up nicely. I think one more time through the process and it will be really spiffy again.

Jesse planned to cook a pig for some friends of his over the Labor Day weekend (September 5-7). I didn't do much, but I did help him a little. He has now been through the entire process from beginning to end, so I think he is ready to solo the next time he wants to cook a pig. He said it turned out great and that everyone (about 70 people) had a great time.

While we were on the road, one of our tenants moved out of a rental unit we own. It was empty for nearly a month, so we really had to scramble to get it ready to rent again. I was down there working for about 6-7 hours a day for the past 5 days. Nothing major, just very dirty and in need of a little TLC. It's not quite there yet, but should be ready for move-in on Saturday, September 12. I showed it to several people who responded to the For Rent signs we put out, but none offered up a deposit check. Then today I was down there replacing several window screens that had gotten badly damaged and another person came to look at it. By 6:00pm I had a deposit check. I am very relieved.

I went back to the gym the day after we returned. I did a foreshortened version of my workout for three days in a row and then had to give it up to spend more time down at the rental condo cleaning up. I don' t feel too bad about that though, as it was very hot and the work was pretty physical. I came back home exhausted and drenched in sweat each day that I worked down there, so I figure that I got my exercise. I went back to the gym this morning for the first time since last Friday. It felt good and I think that I will probably sleep good tonight.

Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment, so I get to sleep in! Wow, that's going to feel good.

Wow! Home at last....

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 3:30PM. Forty-one days on the road.

We're home! We're home!

OMG! I love it. Everything about it!

Last leg.....

We blew into Casa Grande, Arizona about 4:30pm this afternoon, only it was really 3:30pm (I think). The whole time zone thing is a little confusing because you cross one or two of them in the couple hundred miles between Van Horn, Texas and here. We are now letting our cell phones be our guide to time zones as they shift automatically when you cross over from one to another (at they shift within the first 10-20 miles or so).

Anyway, we were expecting another dusty, desert town like Van Horn (see picture of Chuy's attached to previous post). It's not like that at all. It seems to be a brand new town where none of the buildings appear to be more than 5-10 years old. Lots of new houses, new businesses, new malls, etc. It really reminds me of Temecula, California about 10 years ago as it began to boom.

Susan stumbled across a place that piqued her interest for dinner. It is called Picazzo's Gourmet Pizza and Salads. Turns out that there are several of them around the Phoenix area. We were looking for a nice place with tableclothes where we could have a glass of wine and a pizza. We found it!

Picazzo's is great! If you are ever in the Phoenix area or Casa Grande for that matter, please do yourself a favor and give it a try. We split an excellent chopped salad and then a pizza they called the Vortex. It was excellent.

The place was in the old downtown section of Casa Grande and it was pretty clear that the town WAS a dusty desert town a couple of years ago. The old downtown area is mostly for lease and empty and it appears they are making some attempt to create a "historic" old town down there. Five or six blocks surrounding the downtown area are really old and shabby, but as soon as you move more than six blocks away, everything is brand new and modern.

We're spending the night here and then rolling on to home in the morning. We should be home by mid-afternoon. Can't wait!

Home, sweet home....

We left San Antonio Sunday morning about 11:00am and we are now focused on getting home. The night before we had been struggling with how to do the remaining miles: 1) two long days behind the wheel and be home Monday night or 2) three medium days and get home Tuesday afternoon.

We opted for number two and are currently in Van Horn, Texas. It was a fairly easy 5.5 hour drive from San Antonio to Van Horn and we got into town about 5:30pm. We stopped for about 45 minutes just outside San Antonio to have the Denali washed. The night before when we went to dinner at Pappadeux, we parked under a tree. When the sun went down, the tree became to home to about a hundred black birds who crapped all over my car.

If it wasn't Sunday night, we would have passed on the hotel's recommendation, but it turns out there was nothing else open. We had dinner at Chuy's Mexican Restaurant which turns out to be a shrine to John Madden. Most of you guys know that John travels to football games by private bus because he has a phobia about flying. He first stopped at Chuy's in Van Horn, Texas in 1987 because he wanted to watch a football game on TV and get something to eat. He has mentioned Chuy's on numerous broadcasts since then and stopped here every year. They have pictures on the wall of John with all the staff and John's wife and kids as well.

John's favorite dish is Chicken Picado, so naturally I had to try that. It was very good! If you are ever in Van Horn, please give Chuy's a try.

We hit the road early tomorrow morning for Casa Grande, Arizona. The last stop before home. Man, oh man! We will be home Tuesday afternoon. I am going to sleep for a week and not leave the house at all.

My San Antonio rose.....

We arrived in San Antonio, Texas after a very long day behind the wheel from New Orleans. Our luck with cool weather ran out in SA. It was over 100 degrees and very humid. It rained the first evening there.

My impression is that SA is a great city, very clean with lots of attractions. Two other cities we visited (Chicago and New Orleans) have a riverwalk in the downtown area, but SA raises the concept to a whole new level.

The riverwalk in SA is beautiful and there are lots and lots of high-rise residences, hotels, offices and restaurants with outdoor cafes on the river. This riverwalk was designed in 1929 by the famous architect, Robert H.H. Hugman who grew up locally and graduated from the University of Texas, SA. After serving an apprenticeship with an architect in New Orleans, he returned to SA and drew up the plan for riverwalk. The city didn't have the money to build it due to the Great Depression, but in 1939 got some federal funding through the WPA and that was the beginning of the riverwalk as it exists today. It is an intergral part of the downtown SA environment, beautifully designed and executed. Lovely place to walk along the river and enjoy refreshments. An artesian spring fed by an underground lake about 30 miles long continually pumps fresh drinkable water into the river in the middle of riverwalk. I have included a picture above of the spring as it flows out of the limestone aquifer. It's a terrible picture, but they wouldn't allow us to stand up on the barge to get a better picture.

We arrived late the first evening, so we just wanted something quick. The hotel recommended Aldaco's Mexican Resturant. Don't go there if you go to SA. They charge you $8 to park, it is loud and cold with no ambiance at all, there are no tacos, burritos or quesadillas on the menu and you cannot order ala carte. Other than that it is entirely mediocre.

The next day, we went to see the Alamo (of course, how could you not). I had heard it was small and it certainly is. It is hallowed ground to all Texans, however. I have included the obligatory picture of the entrance of the Alamo, but I also included a picture of a magnificent live oak that is over 150 years old in the courtyard. The picture doesn't do it justice because the courtyard is completely walled in and you simply can't back up far enough to get the whole thing in the picture. It really made for a very cool, shady space to enjoy a beautiful summer day.

There was a street fair on just in front of the Alamo and there were a number of classic cars parked on the street as part of the fair. Some nice vehicles, but there weren't nearly as many as at Crusin' Grand in Escondido every Friday night. Still, they were nice to look at.

We then went for a walk down on riverwalk and then up to the cathedral of San Fernando where the bones and ashes of the heros of the Alamo are interred. We were unable to go in the church because there was a wedding in progress. We then rode one of the tour barges that plow along through the area. The barge driver was very knowledgeable about the history of the town and riverwalk, so it was worth it. We then found a place called Mad Dogs British Pub and had some wings and a drink.

Later in the evening we went to dinner at Pappadeux Seafood House. If you have ever been to Texas, you have probably seen these as they are in almost every large town in the state. They serve Cajun style seafood and they are great. I don' t think they have reached California yet, but they have spread as far west as Phoenix. I highly recommend giving them a shot.

The big easy....

OMG!!! New Orleans was fun. We arrived around 4:30pm on Tuesday, checked in and headed out to find a drink and an hors d'oeuvre.

BTW, the hotel is a great place. It is called Le Richelieu and its in a quiet part of the French Quarter. It is just far enough away from Bourbon Street to be quiet, but near enough for a quick walk to all the cool things to do. It is a little old and shabby, but that is not uncommon among hotels in the FQ.

We were in room 226 and right across the hall (room 227) is the Paul McCartney Suite, so named because he stayed there for 2 months during the filming of "Wings". Anyone can rent the PM Suite and it is quite elegant. It has a small, but full kitchen, a sitting room and then the master bedroom suite. I tried to get a decent picture of the sitting room and the bedroom, but you can see that my photography skills are lacking. One whole wall of the bedroom is mirrored, so I wound up with Susan and myself in the picture.

It also has the distinction of being the only hotel in the FQ with FREE parking for guest's cars. This is a great feature as street parking in the FQ is very limited and all other hotels charge anywhere from $10 to $35 per day for parking.

They also have a nice little restaurant that is open from 7:00am to 2:00pm and a bar that is open until 2:00am. They serve excellent coffee and a full breakfast in the morning and the bar had Oban 14 available.

Anyway, we walked down Decatur Street and decided to go into a place called "The Corner On The Corner", so called because it is a corner bar on the corner of Decatur and St. Phillips. We ordered up some chicken wings that turned out to be outstanding. They were spicy, but dry and crispy rather than all gooey with sauce. Really good!

We also met Jordan the bartender (black and white striped shirt in the picture above). She helped us quite a bit by steering us to a couple of places where the locals eat and drink. Taking her advice, we went to "The Gumbo Shop" for dinner and had a great meal. I had chicken (what else?) gumbo and Susan had a Cajun Shrimp Salad. Both were very tasty and Susan's salad was loaded with spicy shrimp.

The next day (Thursday) we slept in until 10:00am. I guess the drive down from Atlanta was a little tougher than I thought. We went to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for lunch and split a Shrimp Po' Boy. It was very tasty, but there was simply too much bread.

We then walked down to the N.O. Riverwalk to do a little shopping. Once again, we entered a large indoor mall and there were no more than 2 dozen customers in the whole place. I asked one of the people who worked there and she said that it was a little puzzling why, because they had a pretty good summer, but all of this week was simply dead. We speculated that it was because everyone was getting their kids back to school. This weekend is the Gay Pride Parade in N.O., so they were all hoping that business will improve.

We then walked back to the hotel and got the car to drive down through the Lower 9th Ward to see first hand was is going on down there. It's pretty sad. Along the main throughfares, many, many businesses are still abandoned and boarded up. On the side streets, at least one third of the homes are abandoned and boarded up.

Thursday night, we took the advice of the owner of the hotel and went to dinner at Irene's. I was surprised to find the place packed. It is apparently a local favorite. We split an appetizer of steamed mussels that were great. We also split a caprese salad and then Susan had the seafood cioppino and I had the fish of day which was drum. We finished up with coffee and baked alaska. It was an outstanding meal and I hardily recommend Irene's to anyone going to the FQ in NO.

We were once again extremely lucky with the weather. I have been in NO before in December and thought I was going to croak. It was nearly 100 degrees with 98 per cent humidity. This week, however was great. It was hot during the middle of the afternoon, but not too much so. We got a little steamy walking down to the Riverwalk and back in midafternoon, but the evening was very nice and comfortable.

After dinner Thursday night we walked down Bourbon Street until we found a club with live music that suited our fancy. I have included a picture inside the club of the group on stage. I also included a picture of the cocktail waitress that was constantly bugging me to buy a shooter from her. I finally gave in and bought a couple, as you can see the picture above.

Beautiful day in the neighborhood....

Tuesday was a lovely day in Atlanta. The weather was perfect, not too hot, but sunny. Susan and I met Kell, Peter, Andy, Robert and Doug for lunch at Fat Matt's Rib Shack. Kell and Peter, along with another guy named Jeff, built a great company called Onyx Technologies which was acquired by the Telecommunications Division of HNC Software where I was VP of Operations back in 2000. Andy, Robert and Doug were three of a team of very dedicated employees that they had recruited to their company.

I worked with them for about two years until HNC Software was acquired by Fair, Isaac and Company. I think these guys are one of the best teams of software engineers that I ever worked with in my career. I am happy to see that they are back together again at Rent Bureau (except for Kell). I miss working with them, but I would do it again in a heart beat if the chance ever arose.

Fat Matt's serves up some of the best baby back ribs that I have ever eaten. I shouldn't have, but there was no way I was going to be in Atlanta and NOT have some of those delicious ribs. So once again, I fell off the wagon and ate some red meat. Oh well! I'll have to be extra good when I get back to SoCal.

After lunch, Susan and I headed to downtown Atlanta and went on the CNN Center tour. Kind of interesting, but nothing special. I certainly won't pay $13 to do it again. After that tour, we walked over to the Georgia Aquarium. This was definitely worth it. If you get the chance to be in Atlanta looking for something to do, I can highly recommend it. I have included a couple of pictures above. The entrance of course and then the main attraction there which are the Beluga whales they have there. The male in the center of the picture is about 12 feet long and weighs in at 1700 pounds. After we left the aquarium, we strolled though the Olympic Centennial Park where I took another picture.

We strolled through the Atlanta Underground and discovered that it is mainly a tourist trap. Lots of stores selling tourist crap. Nothing special.

We then cast around for a place to have dinner in downtown Atlanta and decided on McCormick and Schmick. It was very, very good (Duh!), but expensive. We did enjoy it, especially the Georgia popcorn shrimp.

E-i-e-i-oooo....

OK, this is where I grew up although my Mom's house didn't look much like that when I was a kid. It wasn't yellow, it was white. It didn't have a garage, my Mom added that after my Dad passed away. It didn't have the enclosed porch on the front of the house either. The yard was full of big pine trees also. Over the last 55+ years, the pine trees were decimated by disease, hurricanes and lightening strikes, so they were all taken down.

The white house is my brother George's house and is located just to the right of my Mom's house as you face the house. The photo with the white house way off in the background is the road frontage of Mom's farm. It is located just to the right of George's house as you face the house. The white house back in the field is where my Mom grew up and I lived there for a short time before the yellow house was built.

The house in the field was originally the local school house. My grandfather bought it and moved it to it's current location on the farm in 1931. Both my grandfather and grandmother attended school in that building. My grandfather was born in 1888 and assuming he started school when he was about 7 years old, that would make that building at least 114 years old. It was originally located about 1.2 miles away and it was moved by horses rolling it across logs. My Mom gutted it and completely refurbished it about 5 years ago. It is now a rental house.

There is a close-up photo above of the soybean crop on the farm. Not too exciting to see. There is also a photo of me in a tobacco field. Down in NC the type of tobacco rasied is called flue-cured because it is place in a barn and dried by forced heat. This type of tobacco ripens from the bottom of the plant to the top of the plant, three or four leaves at a time. The bottom three or four leaves are simply knocked off on the ground and swept up when they ripen because no one will buy them. Since they touch the ground, they get covered with dirt and are very hard to process into usable tobacco, so they are simply discarded. The tobacco field in the picture has had one good harvest of three or four leaves per plant removed. The harvest was in the morning of the day that picture was taken, so you can still see the tracks of the mechanical harvester on the ground.

When I was a kid, the harvesting was all done by hand. The people doing the harvesting were called "croppers" and they walked through the field all day bent over at the waist breaking three or four leaves off the bottom of the plant. The leaves were stuffed under your arm until you couldn't hold any more, then you walked over to a trailer pulled behind a tractor and place the leaves in the trailer. It was a fun job! You started off at 5:30am-6:00am in the morning, freezing your butt off because the tobacco was covered by dew. By 10:00am, it was most likely in the 95-100 degree range and you were sweating profusely.

Hot-lanta....

We left NC early on a very dreary Monday morning. It was overcast and misting rain, but it was still quite warm. We didn't see the sun until we got down into South Carolina. We stopped for a break at "South of the Border", a really cheesy fake Mexican "resort" just across the NC line into SC. I remember this from when I was a kid when we traveled south on old US301 before I95 existed. You would (and still do) see these ridiculous billboards advertising the place for a couple hundred miles and when you go there it was a huge disappointment. We didn't know any better then and thought it really was like Mexico. It has grown tremendously as you can see by the list of attractions on the one sign in the picture, but it is still a disappointment. I have included a couple of photos of South of the Border for your enjoyment. You can see the cheesy Mexican sombrero on top of the tripod for about 10 miles down the road.

We stopped for lunch in Columbia, South Carolina at Lizard's Thicket (I'm not kidding). It advertised southern style cooking and it was very good. I have included above a picture of their sign out front and the menu on the wall of the place.

We arrived in Atlanta about 5:15pm after a pretty easy 7.5 hour drive. We were really excited to be able to go out for sushi. That is the first time we have had sushi since we left SoCal (over 4 weeks ago). We ate at Nickiemoto's which was introduced to me by one of the old Pyxis guys (Scott Bostick) while I was on business travel. They used to be in Buckhead, but have now moved down to mid-town on Piedmont Avenue. Great place, great service, good fish!

Best BBQ...

The best BBQ in the the world is at Parker's Barbeque in Wilson, North Carolina. I know that is an arguable point, but since I am writing this blog, I get to decide which is MY favorite. This place has been around forever. My Granddaddy used to take his tobacco crop over to Wilson to sell at the market there when I was just a little shaver and he would take me along for the ride. After the auction at the market, we would go to Parker's for lunch. You know what an old guy I am, so you know how long that place has been there. And it was an old place when I was going there back then.

Anyway, Susan and I have never been to North Carolina without a trip to Parker's for BBQ. This time was certainly no exception and I have included some pictures of Mom, George, Susan and I at Parker's as well as a picture of the outside of the place. As you can see it is not a fancy restaurant, but the food is outstanding. We always eat "family style" when we go there and they bring you some of everything that they make. And they keep bringing it until you can't eat anymore.

Their entire menu consists of pork barbeque, fried chicken, barbequed chicken, slaw, boiled potatoes, green beans, Brunswick stew (a local concoction of vegetables and a little bit of chicken in a thick tomato sauce), hush puppies, corn bread sticks and ice tea (pre-sweetened ice tea of course).

I must admit that I fell off the "no red meat" wagon for this meal. But, I must also tell you that we all think that they have the world's greatest fried chicken also. Their fried chicken is Mom's and Susan's favorite. Yummy!

Week two....

Week two in North Carolina. Everyone, including Mom is tired of eating out. Monday we returned about half the clothes she bought the week before. Once again, we went to JC Penney's, Elite Fashions and the outlet mall over at Smithfield.

Tuesday, Mom was tired so we just did the lunch thing, then hung around for a while. We went out and bought a pizza from my Mom's favorite place, took it out to her for dinner and then went back to her house. The maintenance guy from the assisted living facility came by with the available colors of paint for Mom to choose for her new room.

Wednesday was a day of running around getting flowers sent to Barbara's family and taking some food over to the family. Since my Mom is unable to cook, she asked me to go get some BBQ and accessories to take over.

Thursday, my brother George and I prepared to move Mom to a new room on Friday. We had to spend a couple hours on the phone with the cable TV company and the phone company to arrange to have the cable and the phone transferred down the hall to her new room. We also hustled up some boxes and the carts that were available from the facility to use in the move the next day.

Friday was moving day. Didn't know if the painters were going to finish or not because they didn't even show up until 3:30pm on Thursday, but they knocked it out in about 1.5 hours. Started about 10:00am with my nephew Ryan and myself. George showed up a little later. It went pretty rapidly and we finished all the big stuff around 2:00pm. In the meantime, Mom had gotten hungry, so she went to the dining room for lunch. The rest of us took off at 2:00pm to lunch. We got back about 3:00pm and put up bulletin boards, put linens away and generally polished up things until 4:30pm. I went back to Mom's house to shower and change, then went out to get a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and a small vanilla Frostie (her favorites) for Mom's dinner. I then ran back to the house to change again for Barbara's funeral.

George and I went to Barbara's funeral to represent the family at 7:00pm Friday night. There was no visitation before the funeral, only after. We hung around and spoke to Barbara's daughter and her husband and then headed home about 9:00pm.

Ristorante magnifico!....

I was convinced that there really wasn't any "fine dining" in my home town. There's plenty of good food and its pretty cheap to eat here, but most of the restaurants around town are basic and plain. Then we discovered Pupetta's. It is situated in the old F.W. Woolworth's building in downtown Goldsboro and the interior is wood paneled from floor to the 15 foot ceilings. The ceiling itself is the patterned sheet metal like the old Victorian homes. The wait staff are uniformed in black and there are white table cloths.

I met the owner/chef (Sal) and he said that he didn't decorate the place, a previous restaurant owner had done that work. It suits his business very well, however.

As you might guess, the food is Italian. I had a Chicken Vodka that was excellent. A vodka sauce is a mix between tomato sauce and cream sauce and it turns out to be sorta pink. The sauce in this dish had sliced black olives, mushrooms and a little bit of onion. The chicken breast was grilled to perfection and it was served over angel hair pasta with the pink sauce. I gotta say that I have no qualms recommending this place to anyone.

Interestingly, there were no Italian restaurants in this town when I was growing up here. No pizza places either.

Their beautiful wood paneled bar with granite inlays has a nice selection of wine and served up a great tira misu. Try it out if you are ever down here!

Tragic loss...

My Mom and the whole King family were deeply saddened yesterday at the passing of Barbara Smith. Barbara was a close friend, confidant, housekeeper and driver to my Mom for more than 20 years. She had a big heart, loved helping others and was a loving Christian woman whose greatest joy was traveling to exotic locations. She worked long hours to be able to go on her yearly trips all over the world.

Barbara came to my Mom's house to prepare for our visit three weeks ago and shortly after entered the hospital. She was very ill, underwent emergency surgery and was in the ICU for the last three weeks. My Mom never got the chance to see her while she was in there. After a brief and tragic struggle, she passed away yesterday afternoon.

Barbara was 77 years old.

Goodbye, Barbara. You will be in our hearts always.

A day trip to the coast....

On Saturday, we took Mom to lunch and then headed for the coast. My first cousin Donald and his wife Barbara invited us and my other first cousin, Johnny and his wife Anne down to his place at the coast for dinner.

Since Johnny was already down at his own place at the coast, we picked up Anne and took the quick 1.5 hour drive down to Vandemere, North Carolina. It is a quaint little town and their house sits right on the Neuse River about 10-15 miles inland from the ocean. The house originally belonged to Donald's mother (my Mom's sister, Mary Clyde) and was originally much smaller. Donald has added on several times to create a great getaway for his children and grandchildren. I have included a couple of shots of the house and the local environment above.

We enjoyed wine with cheese and crackers on the screened in porch looking out over the water. Barbara then called us into a fabulous shrimp dinner. We have the recipe and intend to try it out when we get home. It was unique for me because I had never had shrimp with feta cheese before. It was Yummy!

It was great to spend some time with my two cousins.

I am so far behind, I'll have to speed up to stop....

We left Richmond Monday morning, August 10th for an easy 3 hour drive down to Goldsboro,
North Carolina. Arrived mid-afternoon and settled in to my Mom's house.

Wow! We finally encountered some hot weather. It was over 100 degrees with humidity in the 80% range when we arrived. We left SoCal prepared to deal with a lot of this kind of weather, especially in the mid-west around Chicago, but it just never really developed that way. Everyone in the Wisconsin and Michigan areas we visited complained that they have not really had a summer this year. It was comfortably cool everywhere we went and Marquette could probably be described as chilly.

The hot weather didn't last long, however as thunderstorms moved in on Wednesday and cooled things down. For us SoCal types, it was pretty cool sitting out on Mom's back porch at night with thunder and lightning going on. We see so little of that kind of weather in SoCal that it is refreshing to experience. After about a hour though, the lightning got very intense and started hitting pretty close. We decided that discretion being the better part of valor, it was time to go inside.

There have been thunderstorms and rain at night all week, so it has given us minimal relief from the heat.

Mom lives at an assisted living facility these days that is just about 1.5 miles down the road from her house. She's not too mobile, so she doesn't get out of the facility too often. My brothers (George and Warren) both live here in town and they pick her up and take her out whenever they can. One of my goals while I am in town is to take her out to lunch and dinner as often as I can and I have done that almost everyday since we got here. She gets tired very easily, so this kind of hectic activity tends to wear her out quickly. When I leave, she needs to rest up for a while. So far, we have tried almost all the decent restaurants in town and have also ranged out about 40 miles to other towns. We are going to have to start repeats soon.

Other than eating out, the other activity that my Mom likes is shopping. Tuesday, we picked her up about 11:00am and went shopping for clothes. We went to JC Penney's and Elite Fashions downtown. We also took her to a dental appointment. On Wednesday, we took her over to Smithfield, North Carolina to the outlet mall where we shopped the better part of the afternoon.

Thursday, we took Mom to lunch and then did the tour of her new room that she is moving into Friday, August 21st. The old room is a little tight with all the furniture that she brought from home, so the new room is a little larger to accommodate it more easily. Thursday night Susan, George and I went to my brother Warren's house for dinner. Charlotte, his wife, made a local favorite called Chicken Pastry that was absolutely delicious. She also made homemade cornbread and had sliced fresh garden tomatoes that were both delicious. Warren's whole family (son Ryan, daughter Hollie and her three daughters Victoria, Haley and Mary) were also in attendance.

Friday night we got the whole family together at a place called the Hibachi Grill. There are two pictures attached above of the whole King clan at that restaurant. The waitress who took the pictures didn't get everyone in a singe picture, so I included them both. Everyone was there except for Adam who is in Iraq working for a contractor and Henry (George's sons). Of course, my son Jesse is back in SoCal and he couldn't be here either. We missed all of them.

Home of the Confederacy...

After 11 grueling hours on the road, we finally made it to Richmond and stopped for the night. Stayed at a Comfort Inn on Broad Road, it was adequate and quiet. We arrived around 9:00pm and not much was open, but the hotel clerk directed us across the street to a place called Byram's. To be honest, it didn't look too promising and it was quite threadbare inside. However, we were pleasantly surprised by the menu and our waiter was as chipper and friendly as if he had just started his shift. I took a chance on grouper and it turned out very good. Overall, we were quite pleased with Byram's, although it would be hard to recommend just based on aesthetics.

The next morning, I went down to the lobby to score some coffee and discovered that they shut down the free breakfast (and any chance to get coffee) at 9:30am. I ran back upstairs and went on the web to find the nearest Starbucks. It was about 5 blocks away and so I jumped in the car to head over there.

The Starbucks is in a very charming old neighborhood near an elegant street called Monument Street. It is two lanes of street separated by a beautiful, lushly landscaped promenade with a Civil War monument in a traffic island every two blocks. The one that sticks in my memory is Stonewall Jackson on horseback and the inscription says "Killed At Chancellorsville 1863". Both sides of the street are lined with large, old homes of the architecture predominate in the Old South at the turn of the 20th century. They are mostly brick, two to three stories and have large front porches decorated with white wooden columns or railings. Huge oak trees lined both sides and the promenade is grass dotted with beautiful dogwood and ornamental plum trees. The side streets off Monument Street are dotted with businesses like Starbucks and little boutique restaurants. It is an absolutely beautiful old neighborhood. If you ever get to Richmond, Monument Street is just a couple of blocks off I95 and well worth the drive though.

Nightmare on Interstate 95....

Saturday night, before we left Tony and Lilla, we discussed the next day's travels and decided that it would be cool to take a leisurely drive down the New Jersey coast. Neither Susan nor I had been on a ferry since we were kids, so we thought crossing from New Jersey to Delaware on the Cape May ferry would be an adventure. First bad decision.

Tony told me that I should make a reservation on the ferry because it gets pretty busy in the summer. I looked at the ferry web-site and saw that they were indeed sold out for a lot of Saturday, but the next day showed all green across the board. We also didn't have an exact schedule for leaving the next morning, so I thought it would be difficult to predict when we would get to the ferry. Anyway, I didn't make a reservation and took the chance. Second bad decision.

Around 11:15am we finally hit the road and quickly found out that you don't see anything except trees driving down the Garden State Parkway from Sea Bright to Cape May. We arrived at the ferry terminal at 2:00pm and discovered that the ferry was sold out until 6:00pm. We decided that we really didn't want to hang around Cape May for 4 hours, so we turned back north to Wilmington Delaware to get on to Interstate 95. Third bad decision.

The drive north and west across southern New Jersey was actually not bad. The roads were good, the traffic light and we passed through some pretty little towns like Dennis and Vineland (Lilla's hometown). We saw some road side markets and a wine festival in progress.

We entered the New Jersey Turnpike going south on the second to last entrance, about 10 miles north of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. It was still a pleasant drive until we got to the toll booths at the end of the New Jersey Turnpike. The traffic backup was unbelievable. It took us about 45 minutes to get off the Turnpike. Then we hit the same situation twice more to pay the toll for the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the toll to the great state of Delaware for the privilege of crossing less than 10 miles of their sovereign territory on I95. Holy moly! It's $3.00 to cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge and $7.00 to cross less than 10 miles of Delaware. All East Coast people who have to drive these roads should be PISSED to have to wait in line for 45 minutes to pay that much money to drive about 25 miles per hour for 10 miles. What a giant ripoff! I know that Tony is laughing at me right now.

Anyway, it took 11 hours on the road to get from Sea Bright to Richmond, Virginia. We thought about pushing on to North Carolina as it was only another 3 hours, but we were just too tired. We stopped in Richmond for the night.

Some beach, somewhere.....

After seeing Susan's Aunt Zena, Susan and I wanted to see Frank (Aunt Zena's son) and his wife Barbara. Unfortunately, Frank has recently experienced a hospital stay and didn't feel up to a visit. We were disappointed not to be able to connect with them and wish him a speedy recovery.

We blasted out of Baltimore and up to the Jersey shore to see Tony (Aunt Zena's other son) and his wife Lilla at their new beach house in Sea Bright, New Jersey. We had a pleasant drive up Interstate 95, the New Jersey Turnpike and then over to the shore. We hit Ocean Boulevard just north of a town called Long Branch and turned north toward Sea Bright. The last three miles between Long Branch and Sea Bright took over one hour to drive. The traffic on Ocean Blvd. was a a standstill. Little did we know what a harbinger of what was in store for us that was (more later).

The first night we arrived, Lilla gave us the grand tour of the new beach house. It is very roomy and quite lovely. Lilla is in the midst of furnishing and decorating it with her inimitable good taste, style and flair. Tony has also made his contribution with the very interesting and classy prints that they have framed and hung as the central decorating theme in the house. The house is very light and airy with lots of windows and bright colors. Congratulations to both of you!

The pictures above are some outside shots of their place. It is situated right on the river that leads inland from the ocean, has it's own seawall and they could tie up a boat right in their back yard if they wished. The long distance shot with the two boats above was taken from across the river in Rumson, New Jersey. I apologize for the quality of the shots, they were taken using my iPhone.

Tony took us for a long walk on the beach while Lilla prepared dinner and we discovered that you can see New York City in the distance. Dinner the first night was Yummy! We had both lobster and shrimp!

The next day was Saturday and everyone was kind of lazy, so we didn't do much but hang around on the deck out back by the river and chit chat. After a wonderful lunch of handmade panini, we got things in gear and Tony took us all for a tour of the beach cities nearby. We went by Bruce Springsteen's estate in Rumson and I took a picture of his front gate that I have included above. You can't see anything else from the road because of the lush landscape. We went through Rumson, Long Branch, Asbury Park (where both Springsteen and Bon Jovi got their starts playing the beach clubs), Bradford Beach and then back to Sea Bright. In Bradford Beach we discovered Beach Plum, a little place that serves up great homemade ice cream.

Saturday evening we went to dinner at Angelica's, a short walk around the corner from their house. It is a noisy and crowded Italian restaurant full of locals, so you know the food is good. We shared a couple bottles of really good wine and walked back. Very nice evening!

The next morning we bid adieu to Tony and Lilla and headed south with high expectations of a leisurely drive down the coast. HA!

Can you hear me now?.....

So I am now in North Carolina and I have some time to catch up on the blog. First though, I have to solve the problem of internet connectivity. My Mom no longer lives at her house and my brother canceled her cable service to save money. The result is that I'm pretty much stuck at her house with my iPhone as my only connection to the outside world.

My brother lives right next door and has a Netgear Router/Switch in his house that he installed so that he could connect multiple computers in hard wired fashion to the internet. It just happens to have a wireless interface that he doesn't use because none of his computers even have wireless capability. The last time I was here in May, I borrowed my nephew's laptop which has a wireless interface to test the range of the wireless network in my brother's house.

I was able to get a tenuous connection from Mom's house, but only outside on the back porch. If I moved into the house, I would lose the connection. That sorta worked, but there are two serious problems. One: in the mornings the back porch of her house gets direct and intense sunlight (if the sun is out) making it very difficult to see the LCD screen on a laptop and Two: the weather in North Carolina is not always conducive to working on the back porch.

Before I left San Diego, I ordered an additional Netgear wireless access point called a RangeMax Wireless Network Extender that supposedly extends the range of a wireless network 10x-15x. After about 2 hours on the tech support line, I finally got the thing working right and it is now on the end of a 30 foot ethernet cable and sitting on the window sill of the only window in my brother's house that faces my Mom's house. The signal strength is definitely better, but there is no way that it is 10x-15x.

I now have a much stronger signal on the back porch and there are two places in the house that I can get and maintain a connection. One is in the laundry room which has a window facing my brother's house and the other is a bedroom which has a window facing my brother's house. In both cases, the signal is weak compared to being outside on the back porch, but it will work. I am typing in this post from the laundry room.

If Laurence is following these posts and has any suggestions, I would appreciate hearing them.

On the road again....

Once again I have found it difficult to keep up. We have been on the move since Cleveland and I have found it very difficult to spend so much time in the saddle and to keep up with the blog. We have finally reached North Carolina where we intend to stay for approximately 2 weeks, so I should be able to bring the blog up to date.

After leaving Cleveland, we drove straight across Ohio and Pennsylvania to Catonsville, Maryland to spend some time with Susan's Aunt Zena. At least 50 miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike is undergoing some kind of construction or repaving, so it was difficult driving at times. The traffic was moving along pretty well, but the road was constricted by those concrete barriers and consequently was very narrowly defined. It was not a situation in which you could enjoy the scenery because it required a great deal of concentration and focus.

Anyway, we arrived in Catonsville about 4:00PM and checked in to the Comfort Inn. Turned out to be adequate with clean, quiet rooms, friendly personnel and free breakfast in the morning. The downside was that our room was on the second floorand there was no elevator. I grabbed all our rolling overnight luggage and headed for the room only to find that I had to leave some of the luggage in the busy stairwell while I carried two peices at a time up the stairs. Admittedly, a minor annoyance, but it is the only situation like that we have encountered.

We headed over to the assisted living facility where Aunt Zena lives and took her out to dinner at a locally recommended restaurant called Kibby's. No one who has ever been to the Baltimore area would be surprised to find out that Kibby's is a seafood restaurant specializing in crab. Nearly everything on the menu was some form of crab, had crab meat in it or crab meat on it. Everything was delicious. We called it an early night and got some much needed sleep.

The next day we picked up Aunt Zena at 11:30am and took her to lunch down at the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. We had lunch at the M&S Grill on the water. I'll bet you can never guess what we had for lunch? That's right.....crab.

After lunch, Aunt Zena surprised us by saying that she thought it would be fun to tour the sailing ship Constellation which is a museum parked at the harbor waterfront. It turns out that the top two decks of the ship (main deck and gun deck) are wheelchair accessible, so we went on board. It was interesting to see how primitively sailors in the days of sail power lived on board ship. You can see the Constellation in the background of the picture above of Aunt Zena, Susan and I at the harbor.

After the tour, Aunt Zena was pretty tired so we took her back to her home so she could rest before we went out to dinner. Dinner was at a restaurant called Matthew 1600 in Catonsville. Very nice. I can recommend this place to anyone who might be in the area. I had chicken St. James which was a sauteed chicken breast covered with mushroooms in a demiglaze and CRAB.

We were only in Catonsville for about 36 hours, but I had enough crab to last me for a while.

We were snails the next morning and didn't get on the road up to Sea Bright, New Jersey until nearly lunch time.

Anybody home?....

I was surprised by the lack of people on the streets in downtown Cleveland and the number of large buildings that are sitting empty. There were a number of people around the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of course, as well as the nearby harbor where there are some maritime museums. Just a few blocks up the hill from the harbor, however was a commercial area of retail store fronts on the street level with good sized office buildings above. Many retail store fronts are empty and there are very few people walking around on the streets in the middle of the day except around the Federal Building. Susan and I went to an indoor retail mall called the Galleria around 4:00pm and we were virtually the only people in there except the workers in the food court. Even the upscale area I previously wrote about (East 4th Street) had few people about at 4:30pm. Michael Symon was sitting at a table outside his restaurant talking with a couple of other guys, but not much else happening.

When we stopped into Flannery's Irish Pub for a drink, I asked about the lack of people and was told that downtown Cleveland has been like that for a number of years. While the current economic situation has exacerbated the situation, this is a rust belt city that has been in decline for a long time. I was told that Cleveland was booming about 30-40 years ago, but it has been steadily going downhill since then.

It's a real shame. Downtown Cleveland is very clean and the people who work down there are all very friendly and helpful. It has a nice safe feel to it. There are some nice attractions (Rock and Roll HOF, Science Museum, Browns Stadium, Indians Stadium, etc.) and the East 4th Street area is really nice. In fact, as we moved on from Flannery's to Lola's for dinner, the East 4th Street pedestrian area started to fill up with people. By the time we left Lola's around 7:00pm to head back to the hotel, all the restaurants in the area were buzzing.

I guess the bottom line is: if you get the opportunity to go to Cleveland and hang out for a day or two, we can recommend it. We had a good time and certainly ate well.

Put the hammer down....

We have now been on the road for two weeks and approximately 3500 miles. Today we reached Baltimore, Maryland where we are going to spend some time with Susan's Aunt Zena. I consider our travels to have reached coast to coast.

As we have driven interstates, state highways and county backroads, I have observed that nowhere in this country (with one exception) are the speed limit laws observed. More than 99% of drivers on the road (in my estimation) exceed the posted speed limit by at least 5 mph all the time. Many consistently tack on more than 5 mph. In my observations, even those warnings and threats about "fines are doubled in work areas" that you see wherever there is road construction are completely ignored by almost all drivers. Those signs are nearly always accompanied by reduced speed limits, but if drivers slow down at all, the best they do is to cut the 5 mph that they originally tacked on.

The one exception to my observation were the drivers in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The drivers there are, without a doubt, the most law abiding drivers anywhere in the US. The posted speed limit in the U.P. is 55 mph everywhere except near the towns where it is posted as lower (45, 35, 25 etc.). The Yoopers, as they like to call themselves, nail the speedometer at 55 mph and settle in for the long haul.

It is a 3.5 hour drive from Marquette to the bridge at Mackinac City where you pick up Interstate 75 going south to Detroit. It is unlikely that you will ever be able to exceed 55 mph for that trip, unless by some incredible stroke of luck you never get behind a Yooper. If you do get behind one, it is very difficult to pass, as the road is full of no passing zones and besides you will just move up behind another Yooper pretty soon.

As soon as you cross the bridge at Mackinac City, the speed limit jumps to 70 mph and every driver on the road immediately puts the hammer down and runs at least 75.

After crossing Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisonsin on interstate highways with speed limits of at least 70 mph (some at 75) and driving just as fast as all the other drivers, driving across the UP felt like we had entered a warp in the space and time continuum where everything seemed to be moving in a very thick liquid. It was a most frustrating experience.

Congratulations to all those law abiding Yoopers! I don't think that I could drive like that on a regular basis. I'm pretty certain that I would lose my status as a citizen of Southern California where exceeding the speed limit is considered a basic right guaranteed by the Constitution. I would probably explode.

South bound and down.....

Monday morning we headed south to Novi (near Detroit) and stopped there so we could spend a little extra time with Susan's Uncle Pete. Anita and Rawland (Susan's cousin and husband) invited us over to their house, along with Uncle Pete, Mark/Joy (other cousin and husband) and Brynn/Josh (Gloria's daughter and husband who live in Detroit). Anita and Rawland's two daughters Dana and Kimberly were also there.

We had a very nice evening with all those folks and enjoyed something we hadn't tried before, a "corner" pizza. Apparently quite the rage in Detroit these days. It is a deep dish pizza that is made such that every piece is a "corner" piece. It was very good.

The pictures above are Anita and Rawland's house and the gardens in the back. Rawland has quite a green thumb, as you can see from the pictures. He has a fantastic vegetable garden with broccoli, peppers, beans, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins, onions and peas, among other things. He and Anita also put in a beautiful perennial garden and a pond with frogs and goldfish that remind me of the English gardens we saw at all the bed and breakfast places we stayed in when we toured the UK a few years ago. Thank you Anita and Rawland for the hospitality!

For some reason, neither Susan nor I slept very well that night and we got up early to have breakfast with Mark and Joy before hitting the road. We had a great breakfast at a golf course that Mark frequents, said our goodbyes and took off.

Although it is not very far from Novi to Cleveland, we were both pretty tired when we got there. We checked in to a hotel which offers a package deal for visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You get the room, breakfast, two tickets to the hall and free parking. Pretty cool deal!

We grabbed the tickets and headed down to the hall. We spent about 4 hours there and it was very interesting. They have stage clothes, instruments, documents and album covers that tell the story of the careers of the movers and shakers in the rock and roll music business. It is all presented in chronological order from the beginning of rock and roll. It opens up with a lot of stories about the earlier influences from the genres of rythm and blues, jazz, gospel and folk music. Several musicians who have made large contributions are prominently featured. Elvis of course, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others. Of course, there was a tribute to Michael Jackson and there was a special exhibit on Bruce Springsteen.

In the pictures above, I included a shot of Susan and I at the entrance to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

After 4 hours walking around in the hall and reading all the displays, we were completed wiped out. We headed down to a cool little area of Cleveland called East 4th Street for a drink and dinner. We had a relaxing drink at Flanery's Irish Pub and then dinner at Lola's which is owned by television's Iron Chef Michael Symon. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep at 9:00pm.

I have included some pictures above of Flanery's, Lola's and East 4th Street area of Cleveland.