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the awesome road trip
Been gone for well over a week and it was pretty awesome. Mary Beth and I hit the road the Thursday before last (July, 14th). We drove to Asheville, NC for the first stop of our trip. We took Mary Beth's Kia and it was a pretty good drive in spite of its not having cruise control (I was the sole driver) and the seat being a little too high for my preferred head-to-ceiling ratio. There was one weird thing about the first part of the trip. The front of my right leg went numb. It started after about an hour of driving. Okay, long trips of driving and especially without cruise control, stuff going numb isn't too unusual. It seemed to have started a little early, but whatever. I just kept up. Nothing really changed the one time we stopped for gas/bathroom, but that was just a few minutes. After we were hanging out in Asheville a while I started to realize that it was just the front of my leg, I guess my shin, and it seemed to be just on the surface of my skin. The back of my leg was normal. My foot and toes were normal. But the front part stayed numb and it didn't diminish all night. Kinda weird, but then it stayed the whole next day. I was starting to get worried. That second night we tried beating on it but the numbness didn't change. I felt a little better when the NEXT morning it seemed a little less numb. Throughout the day there seemed to be more and more feeling in that part of my leg. And the day after THAT it was all back to normal and stayed normal the rest of the trip. So I don't know what all that was about. It was weird as hell. We got to Asheville a little sooner than expected. We were expecting something of an 8 hour drive and made it to our motel in something like 7 hours and 9 minutes. It was still afternoon/early evening so we hit downtown to do stuff.
Downtown Asheville is a lot of fun. It's small, but packed with stuff and there's a lot of people. One neat thing is there are a lot of street musicians all over the place. They also have this tiny park in this little square-type situation in the middle and they have more officialish performances as well. I'm not gonna say the music's all good, but it's neat hearing it all drifting in and out as you're walking by. I also didn't realize Asheville was such a food town. It makes sense, I guess. The whole local, fresh foods thing is just a given about everywhere you go. And the place is loaded to the gills with awesome restaurants. I'll say we ate so much awesome, rich food the whole trip that it's actually a bit nice getting away from it. My digestive system couldn't compete with that much and I certainly gained a significant amount of weight in a week. Oh well. Our first stop was at a place called Tupelo Honey and it was really fucking good. One thing about Asheville is that it's very white. We didn't see many black people at all, or other ethnicities for that matter. Kinda weird. It also lives up to the preconceived stereotypes of a small college city in the mountains (i.e. on the hippie side of things). I had brought my digital recorder and had fun recording bits of walking around downtown Asheville.
Okay, Friday was our trip to the Moog factory (you know, my reason for picking Asheville as a destination in the first place). First we had breakfast at the Early Girl Eatery and that was really good as well. I had dragged my Voyager up to get serviced (as well as the improved aftertouch mod) as well as my two delay pedals to get the spillover mod. The tour was as expected. Pretty awesome seeing all that stuff. We started off in the performing area (which they said is usually last, but they were expecting a band to do a session that afternoon and didn't know if we'd get in later). So I got to play around a little bit, but I was a little shy and held back. I played on a Voyager XL which was awesome, but didn't really do a whole lot. I should have requested some patch cables to really get into it, oh well. We were waiting for another person to show up who was scheduled to share the tour but he never came. That and, like I said, my nervousness kept me from really playing with stuff too much. I really should have messed with a theremin too, oh well. And they had a fuckin' Model D set up in there. It wasn't plugged into anything, but I should have asked if I could set it up just to have fuckin' played on one! Alas. Those are regrets, oh well. I was surprised at how much of the tech staff was made up of middle-aged women. I don't know why. That's pretty cool though. The rest were mostly young hipster dudes. They've only been in this new warehouse building at most a couple months. It's pretty nice. My favorite part was hearing the squealy sounds as the new machines were being tested out. One of the guys building Voyagers had a copy of A Scanner Darkly sitting by his stuff. The guy who gave the tour was really nice. You could tell he was in sales by the way he talked about the stuff, though. I don't think it was even conscious on his part, but it was kinda funny. As I say that, it'll probably sound like he was pushy, but he wasn't. They're making a showroom as their own in-house store, but it's not finished yet. It would've been cool to get some souvenirs, but that wasn't in the cards either.
We went to some bookstores after that, but I'll divulge the contents at a later date when I can go back and sift through my stuff. I did get some stuff at The Captain's Bookshelf that day. We had some good food at 12 Bones. This reminds me also of Asheville size. There would be places on the "other side of town" from downtown but it'd take like two fuckin' minutes to get there. Driving around we wandered by this place that was having an exhibit on Moog stuff. The place was called The Artery and it's a tiny space, but they had a nice little setup. It was called Pushing the Envelope and they'd have performances some nights, but not while we were in town. There were a small number of art things inspired by Moog stuff, and a Micromoog and a modular prototype in cases to look at. We also got a little exhibit of a theremin and sound waves with water and sand and stuff. There was a Voyager to play with and I did. There was this awesome chocolate shop called French Broad Chocolate Lounge (all ethical, yay!) so we had some awesome fucking chocolate (which is something I almost never get to do out). And stepping out of it saw the guy we got our tour from at Moog (which was funny 'cuz we had talked about it with him and he plays shows there). Dinner was at this awesome place called Salsa (which sounds like generic Mexican, but they do crazy combinations).
Saturday morning we let our stomach catch back up with us by just eating leftovers, but then we were pretty busy going out. More book shopping at Downtown Books and this awesome record store across the street that we just happened to spot called Static Age. They had a bunch of good stuff and I got used: Oval: Process, Pharoah Sanders: Tauhid, Sun Ra: The Magic City, Can: Flow Motion, and Windsor for the Derby: Difference and Repetition. We also went to Battery Park Book Exchange which is also a wine bar and they almost only have hardbacks (focusing on how they look on the shelf, but they had some good stuff). As I said, all those finds'll be posted later. Also, the rest of our trip will be broken up into another(s) post(s). But damn, livejournal seems to be broken. When will I be able to post!? ...And it's the next morning/another day/trying again... Jesus christ, it's still fucking down. Okay, now it's the damned afternoon: another go. Getting on to fucking evening, can this shit ever post? Okay, now it's the goddamned night, about 24 hours later. Will it post? I wasn't an uncle of two when I wrote all this and now I am. It's now another morning, yet another date (I guess I should add that this post was originally written on the 25th). NOW will you please work? Afternoon again, really? And now it's another night, 48 or so hours later. I read that lj suffered a ddos attack. Blast. Yet another day. I don't see this going well. We are getting into the late afternoon. Is this really all because of a Russian political conspiracy? Ooh, now it's night and the webpage seems to be loading. Let's see if this'll post.
Downtown Asheville is a lot of fun. It's small, but packed with stuff and there's a lot of people. One neat thing is there are a lot of street musicians all over the place. They also have this tiny park in this little square-type situation in the middle and they have more officialish performances as well. I'm not gonna say the music's all good, but it's neat hearing it all drifting in and out as you're walking by. I also didn't realize Asheville was such a food town. It makes sense, I guess. The whole local, fresh foods thing is just a given about everywhere you go. And the place is loaded to the gills with awesome restaurants. I'll say we ate so much awesome, rich food the whole trip that it's actually a bit nice getting away from it. My digestive system couldn't compete with that much and I certainly gained a significant amount of weight in a week. Oh well. Our first stop was at a place called Tupelo Honey and it was really fucking good. One thing about Asheville is that it's very white. We didn't see many black people at all, or other ethnicities for that matter. Kinda weird. It also lives up to the preconceived stereotypes of a small college city in the mountains (i.e. on the hippie side of things). I had brought my digital recorder and had fun recording bits of walking around downtown Asheville.
Okay, Friday was our trip to the Moog factory (you know, my reason for picking Asheville as a destination in the first place). First we had breakfast at the Early Girl Eatery and that was really good as well. I had dragged my Voyager up to get serviced (as well as the improved aftertouch mod) as well as my two delay pedals to get the spillover mod. The tour was as expected. Pretty awesome seeing all that stuff. We started off in the performing area (which they said is usually last, but they were expecting a band to do a session that afternoon and didn't know if we'd get in later). So I got to play around a little bit, but I was a little shy and held back. I played on a Voyager XL which was awesome, but didn't really do a whole lot. I should have requested some patch cables to really get into it, oh well. We were waiting for another person to show up who was scheduled to share the tour but he never came. That and, like I said, my nervousness kept me from really playing with stuff too much. I really should have messed with a theremin too, oh well. And they had a fuckin' Model D set up in there. It wasn't plugged into anything, but I should have asked if I could set it up just to have fuckin' played on one! Alas. Those are regrets, oh well. I was surprised at how much of the tech staff was made up of middle-aged women. I don't know why. That's pretty cool though. The rest were mostly young hipster dudes. They've only been in this new warehouse building at most a couple months. It's pretty nice. My favorite part was hearing the squealy sounds as the new machines were being tested out. One of the guys building Voyagers had a copy of A Scanner Darkly sitting by his stuff. The guy who gave the tour was really nice. You could tell he was in sales by the way he talked about the stuff, though. I don't think it was even conscious on his part, but it was kinda funny. As I say that, it'll probably sound like he was pushy, but he wasn't. They're making a showroom as their own in-house store, but it's not finished yet. It would've been cool to get some souvenirs, but that wasn't in the cards either.
We went to some bookstores after that, but I'll divulge the contents at a later date when I can go back and sift through my stuff. I did get some stuff at The Captain's Bookshelf that day. We had some good food at 12 Bones. This reminds me also of Asheville size. There would be places on the "other side of town" from downtown but it'd take like two fuckin' minutes to get there. Driving around we wandered by this place that was having an exhibit on Moog stuff. The place was called The Artery and it's a tiny space, but they had a nice little setup. It was called Pushing the Envelope and they'd have performances some nights, but not while we were in town. There were a small number of art things inspired by Moog stuff, and a Micromoog and a modular prototype in cases to look at. We also got a little exhibit of a theremin and sound waves with water and sand and stuff. There was a Voyager to play with and I did. There was this awesome chocolate shop called French Broad Chocolate Lounge (all ethical, yay!) so we had some awesome fucking chocolate (which is something I almost never get to do out). And stepping out of it saw the guy we got our tour from at Moog (which was funny 'cuz we had talked about it with him and he plays shows there). Dinner was at this awesome place called Salsa (which sounds like generic Mexican, but they do crazy combinations).
Saturday morning we let our stomach catch back up with us by just eating leftovers, but then we were pretty busy going out. More book shopping at Downtown Books and this awesome record store across the street that we just happened to spot called Static Age. They had a bunch of good stuff and I got used: Oval: Process, Pharoah Sanders: Tauhid, Sun Ra: The Magic City, Can: Flow Motion, and Windsor for the Derby: Difference and Repetition. We also went to Battery Park Book Exchange which is also a wine bar and they almost only have hardbacks (focusing on how they look on the shelf, but they had some good stuff). As I said, all those finds'll be posted later. Also, the rest of our trip will be broken up into another(s) post(s). But damn, livejournal seems to be broken. When will I be able to post!? ...And it's the next morning/another day/trying again... Jesus christ, it's still fucking down. Okay, now it's the damned afternoon: another go. Getting on to fucking evening, can this shit ever post? Okay, now it's the goddamned night, about 24 hours later. Will it post? I wasn't an uncle of two when I wrote all this and now I am. It's now another morning, yet another date (I guess I should add that this post was originally written on the 25th). NOW will you please work? Afternoon again, really? And now it's another night, 48 or so hours later. I read that lj suffered a ddos attack. Blast. Yet another day. I don't see this going well. We are getting into the late afternoon. Is this really all because of a Russian political conspiracy? Ooh, now it's night and the webpage seems to be loading. Let's see if this'll post.