Occasionally Wright

An Open Letter To Cook County

Dear Cook County, GA,

At no point in the future will I ever intentionally stop in your county to spend a solitary cent. If there was a way to get to Florida without driving through your county I'd do it. Who, in their right mind, imposes a 50 mph speed limit on an interstate through a rural area directly in between two 70 mph zones? I'm sure it's a great revenue generator for the county, but you won't generate any more revenue from me.

Going to Nashville

Wow. 6 weeks since my last post. I'm not into resolutions but let's see if I can get back to posting at least once a week.

Anyhow, I'm going to be in Nashville this weekend and I'm looking for stuff to do, particularly on Saturday. Any recommendations? I'm looking for a good site with live music listings since Pollstar is only showing a few bands, and this is Nashville we're talking about. There's got to be stuff going on.

Really? That's All I Get?

What kind of diner charges $3.50 for a glass of Coke and then doesn't offer free refills? An Ottawa diner. That's what kind.

It's just downright rude. Coke has a whole ad campaign based around being generous with the Coke fountain down here.

As good as it was to spend five days in Ottawa, there are things I just don't miss about the place.

Off to Ottawa

I'll be in Ottawa for the next five days, spending time with my family who are all flying in for the national Remembrance Day ceremony. An odd thing to do perhaps, but it's not every year that my brother gets chosen out of 20,000 or so RCMP members to be their sentry at the national war memorial on November 11.

If you're in Ottawa and want to get in touch I'll be checking email sporadically.

More Fun Travel Quotes

"Oh, you're bags aren't lost. They just aren't here."
"Well where are they?"
"I'm not sure."
"But they're not lost?"
"No. You'll have them within 24 hours."

- A conversation with a Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport baggage claim representative two hours after our flight got in on Saturday night.

20 hours or so later the bags were delivered to our house.

Who'd Have Thought?

The vending machine wouldn't take her bill so she tried again. No go. She turned it around. Flipped it over. Turned it again.

"Is there any trick to getting this thing to work?" she asked the cashier at the snack counter a few feet away.

"Well, I don't think it takes American money."

-- Overheard/seen in the Charlottetown Airport waiting area inside the security gate.

Going Home

It's been entirely too long since I've been home to PEI.

And it's still home. I don't know if or when that'll ever change, even though I'm now a homeowner and greencard carrying permanent resident of the United States.

But now we have plane tickets booked to go to the Island, and by the time we get there it will have been just under two years since our last visit. Back then I was living in Ottawa and had just accepted my job down here.

It's going to be weird, going back home for the first time as a married man and with a career I can be proud of.

I'm really excited about it though, and it's going to be a great eight days or so. Poking around on the Island blogs I see there are plenty of new places to eat that I haven't been to- Brits Fish and Chips, the new Confed Court Mall food court and Sim's Corner (does Jon Sim know about that place yet? His brother did marry an Island girl).

As for you few Island folks that still read this thing- let's get together the first week of August.

Blue Ridge

There's a new photo album up to the left. We spent a week in Blue Ridge, Georgia for our honeymoon and had a great time. The cabin we rented was outstanding and there was just enough to do in the area that we were able to do something different each day without feeling like we were rushed to fit all of the activities in. Just busy enough to be relaxing.

I'll add captions and titles sometime in the near future. If you;re curious about any of the pictures let me know.

Crazy Retirees...Crazy In A Good Way

I had lunch with a few friends from work yesterday and one of them told us about a retired couple who bought her family's old Suburban to pull their RV trailer all over North America. Apparently they sold their house and all of their stuff and bought the truck and trailer and now they just drive around the continent and live out of the trailer.

How awesome is that? And how awesome is it that they have a website with all kinds of crazy pictures? The ones of BC road signs from the mountain passes are awesome.

They also have a map of the route they've taken across North America. They started in northern California and are now in Wisconsin. They got there via Yellowknife, St. John's Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Check it out.

Where's the Water?

It's been over a year since I've been home to Prince Edward Island. A year. It hasn't felt like that long because I spent Christmas in New Brunswick with my sisters and their families and my mother so it's only been 7 months since I've seen my family. But a year since visiting PEI? What that really means is that it's been a year since I've seen the open ocean. For someone that spent a good chunk of their including every summer up until the summer of 2002 living on an island that's a long, long time to go without seeing the ocean. Thinking about it almost makes me feel claustrophobic. When that happens I'm reminded of a guy I met in grad school in North Carolina. Not long after I moved down there I met a bunch of people through a church group and went hiking with them in Pilot Mountain State Park. When we got to the top of Pilot Mountain (which is probably only 1000 feet high or so) we looked around in all directions. Something about it felt really weird but I couldn't put my finger on it until this guy, who was from Hawaii, nailed it.

"Where's the ocean? Why can't I see any water?"

We were 7 hours inland from the North Carolina coast. At that point in my life it was probably the farthest I'd ever been from a major body of water and it was an extremely unsettling feeling.

Thankfully I have a trip home planned for the week before Labour Day and my sister and her family are renting a cottage on the Argyle Shore. You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to it.