Is This Thing Still On?
My week on the road is drawing to an end as my plane chases the sunset to Seattle. After a couple of days in Milwaukee, which included another Strategic Planning session, we boarded the corporate conveyance and headed for our plant in Georgia. As the dearth of posting implies, there was not much of an exciting nature to report. The town we go to down there appears to have been a charming little place sort of like the town in the series In The Heat Of The Night, the one with Carroll O’Connor in it. Since I don’t have a car of my own when I’m there, I don’t get to go out and explore. Worse, the motel we stay in is on a busy highway without a decent sidewalk or right-of-way, and I can’t get any kind of running done. The result is, we eat too heavily, I don’t get much exercise, and I present a complication for Northwest in their takeoff weight calculations.
About the only amusing thing that happened - our pilot and I found ourselves across the street from the motel one night for dinner at a godforsaken tavern, the kind of place where if you’ve got teeth, and you’re wearing socks, you’re marryin’ material. The unique offering at this place is a crab race. I don’t mean the one that probably takes place in the rest rooms, where they warn you not to throw toothpicks in the toilets because “the crabs can pole-vault”. This race involves a circular table about 7 feet in diameter with a line drawn around its perimeter about 6 inches from the edge. In the center, under something like a domed steamer lid, awaits a cadre of about a dozen hermit crabs, each festooned with a shell that has been painted with some theme or another. At least half bore some form of the Confederate battle flag. Can you imagine them under there, sweating their crab sweat and glaring at the others, like Russell Crowe in Gladiator? Anyway, the race commences when some madcap music starts blaring, the domelid is lifted, and someone starts squirting the crabs with cold water, which animates them inexplicably. Furtive bets are made, and the first crab to stumble across the perimeter line is the winner. We made sure our pizza bore no species of seafood whatsoever.
Friday night I drove up to Lake Hartwell, as I did last month, to spend the night at my brother’s place there. Because the lake has tendrils that radiate out in all directions, getting to their place requires some nifty navigation. The driving directions, “turn left at the Baptist church, go 500 feet, turn right at the Baptist church, go about 100 yards, run the stopsign and turn right at the Baptist church”, while technically accurate, were nonetheless bewildering.
(Click any photo to enlarge)
A sect I hadn’t encountered before
We passed a pleasant evening grilling steaks, shrimp and corn, boating in the moonlight and, the main event, the nightly arrival of some flying squirrels at a feeder near their deck.
Keeping one eye out for Boris and Natasha, as well as metal-munching moon monsters.
While it’s always good to be flying home after a long week on the road, Saturday provided a particularly nice view of the Cascades…
I believe that’s Glacier Peak
…and of the city as we approached Seatac.
The arrow points approximately to our place.
