2018 - So Far - TrippinWithDon

And here we are again. A cold wind is blowing and the gray overcast skies have settled in above Cleveland Ohio for the winter. I am here for the holidays but don’t have much going on. So, as I wait for Santa to bring me my annual lump of coal, I figured I would type out a nice long, mostly dreaded form letter into your mailbox. Don’t worry, I’ll try to add some pictures to break up the bad grammar and spelling errors.

This year started at a backyard New Year’s Eve Party in a suburb of Washington DC. It would be euphemistic to say we were in a cold Snap. It would be better described as more of an icy compound fracture with a touch of frostbite. It was a nice effort though. . It is one of the few New Year’s Eve parties that I can remember. Most not forgotten because of copious amounts of cheap champagne and beer but because I am usually asleep long before the ball drops. But, if I had to stay up past my bedtime, I am glad that it was to share communal shivers and beers around a steel drum fire. I may be an outlier but to me that

Chatlotte Snow — Cold But Welcoming Charlotte

was a good night and permanently stuck in the good memory folder.

I had spent a couple of months in Greenville SC last year and figured it was a s good a place as any to start up a new life. Besides all my remaining possessions were in a storage unit there so that was a good a reason as any to give it a go. That is, until it wasn’t. I was sitting in a hotel room just off of I-85 when I said nope, not going to do it. For no reason really other than maybe the huge effort it was going to take for my Rust Bucket (Cleveland) engrained brain to navigate the minefield that is Southern charm and civility.

Instead of hopping into that fight, the next morning I drove north. Not far really, just to Charlotte North Carolina but it was in a snow storm so I took it as a sign that this was where I should hang my hat. I was eager to dig into big city life again and see what I could come up with. I hedged my bets though. I got the shortest lease on an expensive studio apartment as I could.

Charlotte Apartment — My apartment – At least I had 2 Chairs

To pay for it and stay busy, I accepted a contract job using my technology project management experience. The job kept me busy from 8 to 5 as those were the hours I was required to be in my 3 by 3 foot cube doing whatever it was that my job entailed which I never quite figured out. I spent my days pushing and pulling, poking and prodding but to little avail. In the end, all I really had to show for the efforts was a couple of servers in a rack. Two week’s worth of work done in 4 months. If you are not familiar with server installations, that’s embarrassing.

I quit the contract at the end of June because they really didn’t need me. I spent the rest of the summer working on my tan and trying to figure out how to fit into southern culture.

At least in my part of town, an easy way to soak in the culture seems to revolve around the craft beer breweries. I think I hit most of them and even a couple of wine bars. Alas, my rust bucket sensibilities grated against the beer prices that come along with the Craft Beer label. I have begrudgingly paid as much as $9 for a single pint of beer and I didn’t even get to keep the glass. Additionally, North Carolina has outlawed my beloved Happy Hour drink discounts too.

Charlotte is a young town, the bars are crowded with 20 somethings driven by hormones, alcohol and a good paycheck. I just want a good night’s sleep so more often than not I would just grab a couple cans of beer and some pasta for a night of channel surfing. I would just buy a couple of beers at a time because it was easier to conceal them than a 6-pack. With all the beer snobs here, it is only less embarrassing to be seen walking down the street with a cheap 12 pack then to be stuck in the slow line of hot single mothers at the Costco checkout with a carton of Depends and a multipack of jumbo sized Preparation H in your otherwise empty cart.

In short, I never really got into a social scene there and it wasn’t long before I started to read the writing on the wall. I refocused my energy to taking advantage of the location on the East coast. Unlike Seattle, one of the benefits of being in the middle of the East coast is that somewhere else is only a few hours away, even by car.

I took a weekend and drove the 3 hours to Wilmington to check out this little beach town. It lived up to its hype and I liked what I saw. I even put it on my list as the next possible landing zone. That is until the hurricane rolled through and washed it away last fall.

No worries, I think I am more of a mountain person anyway. The proximity of Charlotte and Greenville to the Appalachian Mountains was what made me look at them in the first place. I took a couple of weekends to drive up and down the Appalachian Mountains, at least from South Carolina to Maryland. The roads I drove were pretty much governed by a list of Zillow property for sale. I wasn’t really impressed with what I saw. The properties that I saw fell on a reverse bell curve at either end were plenty of Hillbilly enclaves or Uptight HOA controlled gated communities. Very few options fell in between.

I ended up giving up on the mountain property idea and just stayed busy. I road my bike on the150 mile Comet trail outside of Atlanta. A pretty flat rails to trails ride stretching into Alabama. It is a pretty popular ride, except midweek in the middle of a hot Georgia summer. I had an entire trailside campground to myself. It was so empty that the owner didn’t even come around to collect the fee. It was a hot and muggy sleepless night as I waited and waited for the locusts to finally quit their screaming (4am, BTW). I made it in 3 days and haven’t been on the bike since.

I also made an attempt at climbing the highest peak on the East Coast, Mt Mitchell. Finishing up at 6600 feet above sea level by climbing 3600 feet in 5.5 miles didn’t seem like much to me given my hikes in the Northwest Cascade Mountains. It ended up being one of the most grueling hikes I had ever done. It ranked up there with doing the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel trail to the Colorado River in one long day. Round trip, that one is 20 miles with 4500 miles of elevation. The Mt Mitchell trail route is inspiring in that at the top, the last 500 feet is shared with fat tourists that drove up and are winded way more than you are.

Beyond that, I spent the summer whiling away my days around the apartment’s pool and napping. I have a pretty high tolerance for summer weather extremes but this one was not horribly hot and humid like I was expecting. That being said, I took up running again. It was good to lace up the runners again but the summer heat and humidity kept me from breaking the 2 mile mark more than a couple of times. At least that is what I am blaming my poor performance on.

Charlotte Hurricane — Hurricane Irma rolling in

The apartment lease was up in October just in time for hurricane season. I spent the last week moving out of the apartment and just as Irma was knocking on the front door I was scurrying out the back. A perfect opportunity to take advantage of my yearly deductible trip out to Seattle.

As usual I took the slow boat since I was in no real hurry to get into Seattle. I delayed in the Cascade mountains East of Seattle. It was a good stop in that I realized how much I liked them compared to what is back on the East coast. It was a bad stop in that I met a real estate agent and now own what is best described as 23 acres of junkyard. The real estate agent called it a diamond in the rough, but to me, it looks closer to being in the uncompressed carbon phase at the moment. I spent a month working on the wreck of a trailer that was left behind so I have a place to stay when the snow melts out next spring. I am back in Ohio for the holidays and not even a soft plan for the rest of winter.