The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

For our last stop, we drove through South Carolina to North Carolina where we stopped for the night at Raleigh, visiting our last special guest star, Kate.

I surprised her by showing up at her door in full-cowboy:

We visited the Raleigh Museum of Science, which sponsored Kate’s recent paleo dig and where we got to peak at the lab where they are preparing the samples.  Then a couple of meals, a bit of shopping, and a grand time was had by all.

Then after one night in Raleigh, we hit the road for one last leg, got home, and the Great Confederate Road Trip was over.

Here’s the scorecard:

– 11 states traveled through: Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida (briefly), Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia.

– Seven different hotel rooms in seven different cities: Nashville, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, New Orleans, Atlanta, Raleigh.

– Around 4000 miles driven.  (I’m sitting here in the Lexus dealership waiting for maintenance to be done on my car – I’ve past 5000 miles on this car in record time.)

– 14 days total.

– We criss-crossed Virginia: we started on the Bay and drove west to the Tennessee border on the way out, came from the southern border to Northern Virginia on the way back.

– Two truly great meals (in Austin and New Orleans), lots of other good meals, lots of bad road food eaten.

– Four special guest stars (Lucy Kirkman, Andy Dzikiewicz, Jen Bon, Kate Dzikiewicz).

– An uncountable number of dead bugs splattered across the front of my car.

– Plenty of fun and good memories.

But all in all, I’m ready to be home for a while…

From New Orleans, our road trip took us across several of the Confederate states.  Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama to Florida to Alabama to Georgia.

Wait – did you say Florida?  That’s not on the route.

Well, yes.  But I really wanted to be complete, to hit every Confederate state.  And we were going within five miles of the Florida border, so it was a quick detour, cross the state line, turn around and go back to the highway, and voila, we’ve hit every Confederate state.

Julie thought it was daft.  Ah well, not the first time I’ve done something she thought was daft.

Then, after a day’s driving, we hit Atlanta.  And had much fun, including our next road trip special guest star, Jen Bon.

Jen has been daughter Kate’s best friend since pretty much kindergarten.  She’s now in grad school for chemistry at Emory outside Atlanta, so we took the opportunity to take her out for sushi.  And a delightful meal it was – Jen’s good people.

For our full day in Atlanta, we did the following:

– Took the CNN tour, where I got a chance to play newscaster.

– Saw the Atlanta Cyclorama, a painting the size of a football field of the Battle of Atlanta.  Here’s a small piece of it, complete with tour guide to give a sense of scale:

– Visited Stone Mountain, gigantic carving of the heroes of the Confederacy.  (Atlanta is the city of Big Art.)

– Visited the High Museum of Art, a marvelously designed art museum with lots of good stuff.  (Julie called this her favorite of the many art museums we visited on this trip.)

– While we visited the High Museum, we found that it was in an arts center that included several theaters.  We took the opportunity to see “What I Learned in Paris,” a new play being put on there.  The play was a romantic comedy set against the election of Maynard Jackson, the first African American mayor of Atlanta.  The play had a real Shaw feel to it, being about an arrogant smart guy who is outdone by the life force of a dynamic woman.  Any resemblance to your author is entirely coincidental.  Great stuff.

– Enjoyed the view of the Atlanta skyline from our hotel room.

All in all, Atlanta was much fun.

Wednesday night, Julie and I were getting on the elevator on the way to our room.  A group of women who had clearly just been on an Anne Rice tour said, “Wait a moment, how do we know you aren’t a vampire?”

“Ah,” I said, in my best Transylvanian accent, “Vat do you tink you could do if I vere?”

They laughed, and then the elevator got to my floor.  As Julie and I stepped out, I said, still in full-Drac: “But you ladies are lucky.  I have already chosen my meal for the evening,” and as they watched through the closing elevator door, I bit Julie on the neck.

We finally got out of Texas.  We’re now homeward bound.  But because just heading home isn’t enough fun, we’ve got more stops to go.

When I first planned this trip and mapped out how to drive to San Antonio, my various mapping programs offered two main routes.  The first was go west from Virginia, then south to Texas.  The second was go south from Virginia, then west to Texas.  We decided to take both routes in succession, doing the loop counter-clockwise.

That southern loop happens to pass through New Orleans.  So we stopped on Tuesday at New Orleans and spent the day there Wednesday.

So what did we do?

– Went for a walk on Bourbon Street upon arrival Tuesday evening.  Tons of bars, tons of strip joints, tons of live music, tons of tourists enjoying all of the above.  Not really our scene, but fun to see nevertheless.

– Spent Wednesday morning at the New Orleans Museum of Art.  A surprisingly nice collection – we enjoyed it quite a bit.

– Had beignets at Cafe Du Monde.  These are fried dough covered with powdered sugar.  Yum!

– Took a bus tour of New Orleans.  Enjoyable, though it included harrowing descriptions of Katrina, a bit too recent to be fun.  I did enjoy seeing a bunch of places from the show Treme, of which I am a fan.

On the tour, we stopped at one of the New Orleans cemeteries, where they use above-the-ground tombs like this.

Seeing one that was unoccupied, I decided to try it on for size.

– Did a little shopping on Royal Street.  Bought hats.

– Visited St Louis’s Cathedral, supposedly the oldest continuing operating cathedral in America.

– Took a mule-drawn tour through New Orleans.  Our guide was superb – he’d tell some outlandish story about a culinary concoction invented at some restaurant that we were passing and turn back to us and shout: “Are you hungry yet?”  Then he’d pull up by some shop or bar and the proprietor would come out, tell us what a great guy the guide is, and make some snide and very funny comment about him.  Here he is with Julie.

– Had an absolutely superb meal at Nola.  Highly recommended.  Would be the best meal by far of this trip if the dinner at Bohanan’s in San Antonio hadn’t also been so amazing.  The two were the best meals I’ve had in some time, though.

– Wandered Bourbon Street again.  Stopped by a jazz bar and listened to a set that included a bunch of my father’s old dixieland favorites.

All in all, a terrific day in the Big Easy.  Julie and I agree that New Orleans would be worth another trip sometime, well worth spending more than just one day.

It must be Austin!

We left San Antonio on Sunday, stopped at Buc Ee’s, an amazing roadside stop that may be the beef jerky capital of the world, and hit Austin.  First stop: the South Congress shopping area, where I cowboyed up, getting a pair of boots and associated accessories.  Julie and I also stopped at an open-air bar where there was some of that famous Austin live music playing, leading to one of those wonderful golden moments when you really can’t think of anywhere on earth you’d rather be, or anything else you’d rather be doing.

We then spent the whole day on Monday looking around Austin.  It started with a massage for me, then a little more shopping.  Then we went to Zilker Park, where they have an excellent botanical garden:

They also have a delightful fresh-water spring-fed pool, a huge place where Andy and I swam off the sweat from the walk through the garden:

We then caught a quick tour of the Texas Capitol.  (I’ve lived in Northern Virginia for most of my life and still haven’t visited the US Capitol, but have now visited the Texas one.  Go figure.)

After that, it was dinner.  And then, the famous Austin bat bridge!

You see, they have this bridge in Austin where, a few years back, they added expansion joints.  It turned out that those joints were just the right size to attract a huge colony of bats.  So for many months out of the year, approximately 1.5 million bats live in the Congress Street Bridge, hiding in the joints during the day from predators, coming out in a vast swarm every evening.

We took a bat cruise, which allowed us to enjoy both the bats and the beautiful skyline from Lady Bird Lake, which in some trick that I haven’t figured out, is somehow also the Colorado River.  Here’s some shots of both skyline and bats:

Then Tuesday, we dropped off Andy at the airport and hit the road again.  Where to?  Tune in next time…

It’s been a few days since I updated, due to problems with network.  That’s now corrected, so it’s time for an update.

After Dallas, Julie and I drove to San Antonio.  San Antonio held the reason for the road trip – a convention of encaustic artists.  That’s Julie’s medium of choice, so she wanted to go.  They also had an art show related to the conference, and Julie got a painting in, so we had to attend the opening.

At San Antonio, we were joined by our next road trip special guest star.

Andy decided to fly on down and join us to get a little flavor of Texas.  So we picked him up at the San Antonio airport and then, while Julie went to her encaustic convention, Andy and I saw the city.

So what did we see?

Well, there’s this old mission in San Antonio.  They had this big fight there, and a lot of people were killed.  It played an important role in Texas history.  But what was the name… hmmm… I can’t seem to…

Remember… The…

Naw, I guess I forgot.

We also spent a fair amount of time at the San Antonio Riverwalk.  San Antonio has a small river that runs through it, and they have a set of sidewalks, about ten feet below street level, that run beside the river.  At places there’s shops and restaurants, and it’s like a magic little water city that lives just below the streets above, streets that are far less magical than the river walk and, in some places, a bit rundown.  It’s a marvelous place to wander and to have a drink or a meal.

We also visited a giant tower overlooking the city (only so-so – San Antonio doesn’t have much of a skyline to justify the scenic overlook).

Then on Friday, Julie was in her conference and Andy and I drove out to the Natural Bridge caverns.  Which turned out to be a rather excellent cave:

But there’s also a great ropes course and zipline that we did – that’s Andy getting ready to walk a tightrope about fifty feet off the ground:

There was also a nearby jungle safari, where you drive through a large open area full of animals.  Which, given that one of the major reasons for this roadtrip was the fact that I just bought myself a convertible, we did with the top down.

It was a truly Texas day, in a place where the buffalo roam, the deer and the antelope play, and the sky was not cloudy all day.  Yes, I did sing to the animals – why do you ask?

I took lots of pictures, and often had the curious experience of looking through the camera snapping shots, then lowering the camera to find that the subject had gotten a whole lot closer than I realized.  Like, a foot away.

A bit disconcerting, that.

That evening, we joined Julie at the opening of her art show.  Where we were once again joined by our niece Lucy, who drove down from Dallas to attend the opening, lend support, and join us for dinner by the Riverwalk where we were serenaded by wandering mariachi bands.  Here’s a bunch of shots from that evening.

Is Andy contemplating the meaning of life, or just bored with all that art talk?

The next day, Julie was in her conference, and Andy was taking a day to wander San Antonio by himself.  So I visited some of the missions that were built three centuries ago, missions that formed the heart of San Antonio.  I found myself surprisingly moved.  While I’m not religious, this was a place where simple men went to do their best to bring God and civilization to a strange people in a land far from their homes.  I’m sure the men were not all perfect – the last few years have brought harsh evidence of just how bad a priest can be – but I believe that their efforts sanctified the places where they worked.

Here’s a modern day Franciscan monk: I bought Julie a necklace from him.

(I suspect that the placement of the light above his head is not accidental, and that he knows just where to stand when a tourist asks to take his picture.)

Then it was one last San Antonio dinner, and off to Austin and another blog post.

(And oh, if you ever find yourself in San Antonio, do yourself a favor and have dinner at Bohanan’s.  A truly amazing steakhouse – Julie and Andy agreed that it was the best steak they ever tasted, and I’m not inclined to argue the point.)

Switching this to the Great Confederate Road Trip, largely because it occurred to me that on this trip, we’ll be traveling through 10 of the 11 Confederate States, and not hitting Yankee territory at all.  And who knows – I’m thinking of doing a brief detour to Florida, just so we can be 11 for 11.

Anyway, when last heard from, we were a little east of Nashville.  We got up, avoided a huge traffic clot, and made our way west.  We stopped off at Memphis to try some Memphis Barbecue – delicious stuff, and Julie said she couldn’t make it better, which is pretty much her highest praise for a restaurant meal.  Then a quick look at the map, and what did we see – we were just a couple miles from Graceland.  So Graceland it was!

And there I am, giving my best Elvis sneer (which, now that I look at it, isn’t all that good), next to the Elvis monument near his grave.

So how was Graceland?  A little cheesy, I must admit.  Which probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise.  Of course, Julie was mostly upset that Elvis, with all his money, didn’t see fit to collect art – all the paintings in his house were either prints, or shlock.  But that’s just Julie.

Then it was on the road, several hours more driving, and we got to Dallas.  From where I write this.

Today we spent the day in Dallas.  We spent the morning visiting Dealey Plaza and the site of JFK’s assassination.  Here I am, standing on the very spot where the fatal bullet hit him, with the Texas Schoolbook Depository behind me on one side, the Grassy Knoll on the other.

Then we took our niece Lucy, who lives in Dallas, and her boyfriend Justin to lunch, followed by a trip to the Dallas Museum of Art with Lucy.  The visit was a delight: both Lucy and Justin are artists, and we got a chance to see their terrific art.

Now it’s quiet time back in the hotel before we go grab dinner, and before we hit the road again tomorrow.  Which is, of course, a story for another day.

Just time for a quick update.  After deciding that the management of Treater was not for me, I’ve quit the company.  At around the same time, Julie had an art convention she wanted to go to in Texas. So, ROAD TRIP!

We’re now somewhere a little east of Nashville, having spent all day yesterday driving west from our beach house, where we had a marvelous weekend hosting a group of good friends.  We’re hoping to get to Dallas by tonight, which will be something like 24 hours on the road in two days.  Wish us luck!

More to follow…

Been a while since one of these.  And wow – looking back on what I’ve read that I haven’t written up, it’s hard to believe it’s been quite so long.  This list is not chronological: I couldn’t recall the order I read these if I tried.  And there might be some in here that I mentioned before – my record keeping leaves much to be desired.

Ebooks on the iPad:

- The Longest War by Peter Bergen.  A history of the War on Terror.  Bergen’s got an interesting point of view.  He believes that both sides on the War on Terror misplayed it terribly.  Al Qaeda made a terrible mistake when they thought that 9/11 would cause us to pull out of the Middle East, and further made even more mistakes when they used terror tactics against other Arabs.  We, on the other hand, did terribly when we responded to 9/11 by going into Iraq and torturing, etc.  In any event, this is an excellent history of the war which, curious, was published about a week before bin Laden was killed.  If only there were a follow-up…

- Man Hunt by Peter Bergen.  And here it is!  Bergen’s history of the hunt for bin Laden, covering where bin Laden went after 9/11, how we found him, and the raid that killed him.  Also excellent.  (Bergen, by the way, is one of the only western journalists who met bin Laden, having interviewed him for CNN in the late 90’s.)

- For the Win by Cory Doctorow.  What would happen if all the gold farmers in all the online RPG’s went on strike?  A fascinating book aimed at young adults in which Doctorow teaches a lot about globalization and economics in a terrific story.  Also, an interesting companion piece to Stephenson’s Reamde, which covers much of the same ground.

- Epigenetics by Richard Francis.  Epigenetics is the science that studies how one goes from a genetic code represented by DNA to create us.  Lots of interesting things in this book, much of which has personal relevance as it covers the ways in which twins can be vastly different in spite of sharing the same DNA.  Plus, some things about epigenetics made me think about the abortion issue in a new way.

- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.  I first came across the science of cognitive biases, which studies the ways in which we typically make mistakes in our thinking, when I worked for a short while at a lab at George Washington University in the early 90’s.  That field was founded by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two psych researchers.  I found their work fascinating.  Now Kahneman, who since won a Nobel Prize for the work (Tversky did not share the prize as he had died some years before), has written a book about it.  It’s one of those books that is likely to change my life.  It covers how we often act irrationally, and is full of fascinating and disturbing facts.  For example: judges are more likely to give more lenient sentences and grant parole to prisoners whose cases they review soon after eating.  Which seems just wrong.  Anyway, strongly recommended.

- The Righeous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics, by Jonathan Haidt.  My son Andy recommended this one.  He knows Haidt, a psych professor at UVA.  It was a good recommendation.  This makes an interesting companion piece to the Kahneman book.  It covers the field of moral psychology, or how our minds determine what is right and wrong.  As such, it covers much of the same ground as Kahneman, discussing how irrationality affects our moral judgments.  Haidt’s view is that there are differences between how conservatives and liberals make moral choices, but both approaches have valid aspects and are valuable.  An interesting read.

- End This Depression Now! by Paul Krugman.  I’ve been reading Krugman’s articles and blog posts on the economy for several years now, and I’m generally convinced by his point of view.  I enjoyed this book, but it does seem to be a bit over-simplified at some points, and a bit lacking in specifics of what our policies should be.

- Redshirts by John Scalzi.  An excellent idea – it looks at life on a ship much like the USS Enterprise from the perspective of the redshirted minions whose only purpose seems to be to die showing what the monsters do.  In execution, not as good.  The characters are largely cardboard, the plot not quite involved and twisty enough.  But fun anyway.

–The Hunger Games Trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay) by Suzanne Collins.  I really loved these.  The central character is fascinating both in her strengths and her flaws, the anti-war message is well presented, and the story itself is compelling.  These books have been a huge success, and they did not disappoint me.  (Note: while usually I use the iBooks interface on the iPad, I read these with the Kindle interface as they were not available for iBooks.  I much prefer the iBooks interface, which I find to be much more elegant.)

And Audiobooks:

- Bring up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel.  I loved Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which I listened to on Audibook a few years ago.  This is the sequel, and I loved it as much.  It’s the story of the trial of Anne Boleyn, from the perspective of her major persecutor, Thomas Cromwell.  Cromwell is a fascinating character as presented by Mantel, and her prose is a delight.  I can’t recommend these enough.

- Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.  Steampunk with zombies set in the Seattle underground.  Need I say more?  Fun stuff, not terribly profound, a nice way to while away the commuting hours.

–  Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff.  What a fascinating person was the Queen of the Nile!  A nice biography.  Special bonus for me: when Cleopatra took Julius Caesar on a tour of Egypt, they visited many of the sites that Julie and I visited last year.  It was exceedingly cool to see these sites from the perspective of Cleopatra.

– D-Day by Antony Beevor.  A history of the D-Day invasion, the Normandy Campaign, and the liberation of Paris, all in WWII.  Good stuff.

- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.  Somehow I managed to never read this before.  I absolutely do not believe Card’s depiction of small children – had Ender started the book at 12 and not 6, I might have bought it, but not as it is.  Other than that, I enjoyed the book.

- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.  Another one that I managed to not read before.  I liked it with a whole lot of caveats.  The violence against women did not make for good reading, and having a prickly young girl drop into bed with the first author-surrogate that she encounters was a bit much.

- Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.  Yeah, I read this one before.  Nice little audio-book experience, though.

- 11/22/63 by Stephen King.  A nice little love story wrapped up in a time travel yarn.  The time travel stuff and the stalking of Lee Harvey Oswald droned on a bit, but the love story was nice.