Florida to Lynchburg, VA

Thursday July 15 3 am
I set my alarm for 4 am but it’s 3 am and I am wide awake so I finish my last chores and pack my refrigerator food in BEYOND and at 4:30 am.....
I am off again. BEYOND has a new transmission and i am headed for Maine. I love leaving early in the morning. The world is quiet, the roads are clear and you can always find wierd music on the radio. The DJ on WMNF was excited about a new album by Dinosaur Junior. I listened to them in college. They played some and it was good but then I shifted to catch the end of the late night jazz and then Morning Edition.

This morning I am on a timeline so I stay on I75 through Tampa North on 275 north of Ocala where I jump onto 301 and follow my usual route to A1A and when I reach I 95 I pull over and sleep for an hour. refuel and at 9:30 I jump on I95 and about 10 miles later I cross the border into GA. BEYOND is rolling right along at about 80 MPH. Feeling good. I make it through SC and refuel in Lumberton, NC. Then I roll up to I 40 and turn north to Raleigh, NC. Just before I40 the sky opens up and then rain pours down and the thunder booms. Luckily the road is not very crowded and I keep rolling. Them storm is over before I reach Raleigh. I take the Lake Wheeler Rd exit and cruise on out to my cousin Cabell Garbee’s house. I arrive about :4:00 pm. My Aunt Polly and Uncle Bob have arrived from VA. After hugs and handshakes we sit around and catch-up on family news.

Dinner is steaks on the grill. fresh tomatoes, a loaf of crusty bread and some fresh sautéed veggies. We freshen up and then Cabell drives us to Durham and the new performing Art Center where the American Dance Festival has a performance by Paul Taylor Dance Company. I bought my ticket on the internet and was seated in the second row center. Way too close for the stage for my liking. I felt like the dancers were going to step on my head! They are performing 3 pieces tonight. Mercuric Tidings, Scudorama, and Beloved Renegade. The first dance piece was very well danced.

Then there was an intermission so I went up to speak with the others. They had fabulous seats center mid way up the orchestra. Since the whole row in front of them was empty I stayed and enjoyed the final two pieces much more where I could see the whole piece. The second piece the dancers were wiggling around like bugs or aliens. This piece had scenery and costumes by Santo Loquasto and all three were lit by the amazing Jennifer Tipton.

We enjoyed the third piece a lot and then drove home and I was soon off to bed. It’s much cooler here at night so I headed out to BEYOND to sleep. It feels good to be traveling again. On the road again!


Friday July 16
I was pretty close to the road so early traffic began to wake me up.
Cabell and I were up at 7 to say goodbye to Polly and Bob then we went back to bed and got up about 9 for breakfast of grits, tea, and eggs. We spent the morning in conversation and I was able to get my friend Janet on the phone. She was in a training but has Saturday morning free so we arraigned to meet for breakfast.

Cabell and I went to the farmers market for fruit and veggies. He has a different car now. No more VW Jetta. Now he has a 20 year old Porkchop! It’s a Porsche 944 S2 (Performance was quoted as 0-60 mph in 6.7 seconds (0-100 km/h 6.9 s), with a top speed of 240 km/h (150 mph) (manual transmission)). It is a sweet car and needless to say but it can move!..

We made a quick trip to the NC farmers market is wonderful especially this time of year when all the local farmers are selling tomatoes, corn, and huge sweet cantaloupes! We went back to the house and had cantaloupe for lunch. Luscious! Cabell normally doesn’t work at the NC DOT on Friday but does massage work. But he was scheduled for a meeting this afternoon. I went along with the plan of working on my computer. We got to his office and upon checking his email discovered that his meeting was canceled! Grrr. So we worked for a bit. Enough for his boss to see him there and then drove to his gym so we could get wet. You all know how I love to swim!

Nice eye candy too as there were many attractive ladies in the pool. It was only 3.5 feet deep but there a couple of water slides! I went down both and wondered if they were designed by my friend Michael Blau in Albany. He worked for a water feature design company for a while. After a swim and a shower we got to the car right as it started to rain and it really poured. A really gully washer!

We stopped for ice and then drove carefully back to the house. His refrigerator is on the fritz so we have food in a cooler and he just cam back from a week at the beach and has lots of left over beer. Some new flavors too! So we iced down the beer. Had a lie down. Cabell gave me a locally produced independent film to watch. “The Last one” about Popcorn Sutton who is one of the last of the old time moonshiners. You can see an excerpt from the film on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nes5AXdwUWw
In the film he constructs and old style wood fired still and makes a batch of whisky.

He was recently arrested for making a different still and then died before his arraignment. t is a fascinating film. Too me back to junior high school where we were studying colonial america and for a project I built a model of whisky still! My teacher loved that one. We had recently acquired the Foxfire books and I was really having fun reading about Appalachian life. Wikipedia says “The series is an effort to document the lifestyle, culture, and skills of people in southern Appalachia in a mixture of how-to information and first-person narratives and oral history.”

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie. Soon the beer was cold so we sampled beer and shucked corn for dinner. Fresh silver king corn, yellow squash with zucchini and onions and we split the last steak. With fresh cherries for dessert. A wonderful meal. Good conversation and some tasty beer! We talked for a while after dinner and then I headed out to BEYOND to sleep. It wasn’t too long before a big thunderstorm came rolling in. I was up a few times in the night due to the thunder and pouring rain. It was pounding on my turtle shell!

I was up about 8 am and called my friend Janet at 8:30. She was still available to get together so Cabell and I jumped in the Porsche and roared over to Durham. We meet janet and her new partner Shelly and kids at the Durham farmers market. It is much smaller and more arty crunchy than the Raleigh market. True to her word Janet hooked us up with some really tasty handmade cheese danish. Oh my it was tasty.

I got some iced raspberry tea and coffee for the other and we feasted. THen we walk around and looked at all the stuff. There were lots of heirloom tomatoes in all colors from deep purple to bright yellow. I really wanted to sample but individual vendors weren’t giving samples like they do in Raleigh. They had one area were they were sampling all the tomatoes but the line was very long so I gave up. Someday I will get to sample purple tomatoes!

Goat cheese, bread, basil and tomatoes with purchased by Janet’s gang and Cabell bought a loaf of multigrain bread. Then we drove over to see where Janet and company are living. They have a cool house back in the trees and vines. It reminded me a little of my jungle at home. We took the tour and then Janet had to go back to her seminar and Shelly was running Max to martial arts class so we said our goodbye and headed back to Raleigh.

Just about the time we got on the highway my phone rang and Janet and I had a nice chat during our respective drives. Cabell and I stopped at the supermarket for supplies and more ice for the coolers and then headed home. We took and reading break and then had to fruit and a sandwich for lunch and drove a couple of miles down his street to a restored mill that he passes everyday but has never visited. It was a cool old building with a big waterwheel that was used to grind corn and wheat into meal and flour.

I paid a few dollars and we took a tour and learned all about the history and reconstruction of the mill. It had been sitting empty for 30 years and a hurricane breached the dam a few years previous so finally the University, the County and local folks raised the money and worked to have it restored. It was a good tour and cool to see the mill actually grinding corn into meal. It’s a much less involved process than grinding flour. They sell cornmeal but we decided not to purchase. After out tour they closed up so Cabell and I toured the Museum and then took a nice walk around the millpond.

When we got home it was time to drink beer and cook supper. We ate more corn and squash mixture and grilled some pork chops. Tasty. Fresh corn is so good and pork is very cheap right now so we had some excellent pork chops. More conversation and we transferred some tunes and I wrote in my travel log until my eyelids were drooping. A quick shower and then off to bed. THe weather was cool enough that I have been very comfortable in BEYOND. It’s been a real treat.

I am up about 7:30 and Cabell and I have some tea and fruit and then spend a few hours cutting the brush and vines between his land and the road so you can see the traffic better when you are trying to get out of the driveway. The trees and brush were thick but we tore into it and cleared all the way to the top edge of his property. Lots of small trees all tangled up with grapevines. It took a while but the end result was good. You can see oncoming traffic so much better now!

After that we made a well earned brunch of tomatoes, mushroom and cheese omelets, pork chops and tea. It very very tasty after all that brushwork. Then I took a shower packed my gear and put my foot in the path north to Lynchburg, VA which Aunt Polly and Uncle Bob Garbee live. Cabell’s folks. It was a beautiful afternoon for a drive and I took 40 west to Hillsborough then 69 up to 29. I really like 29. It’s a small divided highway that you can drive 70 mph and make good time while you see all the towns and churches fly past.

I arrived at the Garbees and parked next to the house and then help Uncle Bob work on his gate. SOme of the wood poles were slipping some we strapped them up. But it also seems like the welded pipe frame has sagged a bit. The latch is not lining up. This gate was built in 1963 and has lasted pretty well! We tried using my car jack to bend the steel back up but couldn’t get a good angle on it. Oh well. If you push hard it will shut. Then I had very tasty tomato with pepper and Janes Crazy Mixed Up Salt for lunch. It had very nice flavor and was a bit purple in color!

Then after a rest the three of us went a party thrown but the local french club in celebration of Bastille Day. It was fun. I dusted off my high school french and was able to carry on some limited conversations! We had a nice potluck dinner and some good wine and conversations in French and English! Then we drove to a friend of Polly’s who lived nearby and watch some slides of her grand kids at their home near Jackson Hole Wyoming. There were some nice photos of the Grand Tetons which took me back to my 2006 trip.

Then we went home and Polly and I had fun look at the quilts she is making and picking out fabrics for them. She is crazy about quilting and does beautiful work. She made the purple and green quilt that is on my sofa at home. Then I took a nice hot shower and headed for bed. It’s been smooth driving and the weather continues too be cool. When I turn on the cold water i get real cold water not tepid! What a great thing! See you tomorrow.