In the Country

Another Saturday, another day of adventure and new experiences. This time it was a next door neighbor's piece of land south of Tuskegee where we played with some horses, tried to catch cat fish, and looked at some cows.

The drive through Tuskegee was extremely pleasant. Our next door neighbor and his wife had grown up in the general vicinity and shared a lot of nice tidbits about the area, the way people live, etc. In fact, they pointed out two houses, both opposite one another, that were the exact same. Huh, why's that?, I wondered. Well, it turns out that the homes were both built by the same man. The first home was built for he and his wife to live in, and the second home was built to satisfy a stipulation of his divorce from the same woman that he build her a home that was its exact mirror. Hence, two houses, opposite side of the street, exact mirrors of one another. Spooky.

The first stop of the day was the hay field to check on the bailing process which my friend and his pops had worked on earlier in the week. Not too much progress had been made, but form what I could understand, there were some mechanical issues involving sprockets, and flanges, and hinges, etc.

And here's where my yankee-ness comes into play. We had stopped at a nearby farmer's house who had helped with the cutting and the bailing. This man was my father's age, and had been raising beef cows his entire life. And much like the time I was in Maine and spoke to a Maine fisherman and had a really hard time understanding what he said, I had an equally hard time understanding just wtf this guy was saying. I've noticed that there is bit of a lag time between what people down here say to me, me mentally filtering out the accent, and then me fully comprehending what they've said.

We went over to the barn and took the opportunity to put our neighbor's 5 y/o on a horse and take a spin. I think she had a lot of fun

The horse, maybe not so much.

Just kidding.

After this we took a quick spin over to the lake where the cows were resting, and we did some fishing. MMMMM.....Black Angus

Hey, you in the back. I am going to eat you eventually!

Last, but not least, it was time to take the little one in the tractor. Again, it looks like she had a great time.

BBQ in Alabama

Place: Birmingham, AL. about 2 hrs from Auburn, AL.

Event: Stoking the Fire BBQ Festival

Otherwise known as, Eat the Pig, Stuff your Face, I Love Butt, etc.(I'm just kidding. Those aren't the alternate names) But some teams did have some really funny names. case in point: Butt Rubbers, whose motto was, "Keep it Wet, and Do it Slow" Truer words have never been spoken. And while I didn't try the butt rubbers pork butt, the rest of the butt we did try, was very good indeed.

Interesting note before we move on, the pork "butt" is not actually the butt. The "butt" is the shoulder, while an actual pork butt is called the hock, as in ham hock. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's move on.

The event itself was held at Sloss Furnaces, a national historic landmark. I took a picture of the landmark sign, here: The story goes, from I could gather, was that the furnaces intersected 2 rail lines, making it a pretty logical place to set up and make very heavy things made out of metal so that transporting them long distances wasn't difficult. And while the vast majority of the operation was no longer working, you could tell the furnaces were impressive by their sheer size and scope, as evidenced in the pictures below:

This one doesn't do nearly as much justice to the "largeness" as the one below.





























See what I mean? This photo, from the opposite side of the structure, gives a little bit better idea of how big the place it is.


Anyway, the comp- etition has four categories: chicken, ribs, butt, and people's choice. The others are self explanatory, but people's choice refers to Saturday afternoon when the gates to the festival open up for the vast majority of people to roll in and taste the pork bbq (made out of the butts), that the teams have been smoking for the past few days. You then vote for your favorites. The results, for most of the teams, were delicious.

Post bbq, slightly buzzed stoopid faces

We met up with the college roommate of our next door neighbor here in Auburn, and he treated us to a few ribs, which were fantastic, and a couple of nice cold, high gravity beers. Sipping beer and eating ribs and bbq (by the way, if you are eating shredded, or pulled, or chipped pork with bbq sauce, you are eating bbq specifically. If you are eating ribs, or brisket, or anything else "bbq", you are eating bbq generally. Got it? Yeah, I was confused, too.) Man, it was good, as evidence by our silly faces. -->

We walked around some more, trying bbq, sipping beer, and then headed over to the stage where the organizers announced the winners of the competition. And because part of the furnaces are still working, the prizes were cast in iron right on the site, which I thought was pretty cool

There were also some pretty funny "sculptures" that the teams had set up, as evidenced here (ewwwh), and below

Good times were had by all, and while our friend's friend's team didn't win, these people know how to cook pork. God, I am glad I am not Jewish or Muslim.

Photoshop Disasters, Alabama style

I would say this belongs on photoshop disasters, but the stuff they post is typically very well done and sometimes difficult to spot and notice. This, however, is illustrative of what I've found down here.

People love their football.

And if you can get the coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide to support your candidacy, then you're sure as shit to get in.

Wow. That's truly horrible.

I love the quote from the candidate when presented with the original picture:

"They said we could do it this way," Davidson said.

Props to the Birmingham News for tracking this one down

Dinner @ the President's House (funny story at the end, I promise!)

As new faculty, the wife gets invited to a bunch of "stuff". For example, we went out for dinner last Friday night with a couple of her colleagues, she gets free tickets to the university theatre productions, and she gets invited to the new faculty reception, hosted by the president of the university and his wife. So, as we were invited and never wanting to miss a party (or a free meal and booze), we put on our best and headed over.

The president's house is very nice (Apologies for the poor picture. It was the best I could find. It doesn't really give you a proper feel for the scale of it, nor the inside, which is very nicely decorated.), and is located in the heart of the campus. It has very nice gardens, and an air conditioned "Terrace - reception" area, comprised of a essentially a ballroom and an art gallery like space, half of which was "patio-ed". (God, what a horrible description. Anyway...)

We mingled with a few folks, eventually "settling" with new professors in the communications, history, and psychology departments. The conversation was good, considering all of has had just met and were feeling each other out, essentially. Dinner was a very nice, catered spread comprised of roasted chicken, pork, fried green tomatoes, and grilled asparagus, squash, etc. Dessert was banana pudding and peach cobbler with ice cream. Two words for both of those:

1. Yum -
2. EEE

During dinner, the president came to the table to sit and chat for a few minutes. He sat next to me, and we (as a table) talked bbq (he's partial to the mustard based sauces and the bbq you can find at Price's, although he does like the vinegar based if the meat is really high quality. He also doesn't like Dreamland bbq, which isn't surprising considering its a chain. He said students dig Mike & Ed's, while the locals like Byron's), and the lack of recognition sports other than football, golf and Nascar get in the Birmingham newspaper, (especially on game-days in the fall). A very nice, gracious man, who the wife described as her idea of what a Southern politician would be when we eventually come across one.

The story of the night had to be, though, when I was getting the peach cobbler from the dessert table. As I handed my plate over (already full of banana pudding (she gave me too much!)), I said something to the effect of, "Try to get some on, will ya?" The older, white woman looks at me and asks, "Where you from?"

"Connecticut"

"I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!," she screamed.

"Uh, ok."

"Are you, by chance, I-talian?", she asked.

"Wow. You're good. I am."

"I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!," she screamed again.

I asked, "I'm impressed. How could you tell?"

She replied, "Well, my sister-in-law married a man from up there, and he's I-talian, and you all look the same! You don't know him, do you? Last name is (unintelligible due to the Southern accent).... No?... You don't? Oh well...."

It was the first time I felt Asian or black.

"They all look the same!"

Got my riding group!

Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings, brought to you by the good people of East Alabama Cycling Club!

Wednesday nights start @ 5:30 and are usually around 25-30 miles of beautiful rolling hills around Auburn. We "roll" at about 18-20 mph, so its a nice 2 hr ride that isn't too stressful or hard. Given that I ride to the meeting place, it adds a few more miles, making the total (last night's, at least) to be 35 miles. This is about as much as I can do in one go before I have to eat something, so dinner is always welcome when I get home.

Saturday's ride begins at 7:30 am, breaks up into about 4 different groups (based on riding ability and length), and always ends in breakfast. (Yay!). This ride is much more social and significantly larger than the Wednesday night group, as well as accommodates riders of all abilities.

To be honest, this is my first real riding group. I didn't ride in a group in NYC because if you didn't have a high-end ride and weren't snooty, they didn't want anything to do with you. I didn't group ride in CT because I just didn't get my shit together. But I really like riding in a group. It gives you people to talk to, safety, and most importantly, people to draft. Everyone goes faster when riding in a group.

Also, I get to essentially "tour" my new area by riding around the neighborhoods. I've read before that riding one's bike around a new town is a great way to go sightseeing. And experiencing it for the first time here in Auburn, I can say their right.

I am digging the riding group and the people in it. Hope I can make some friends out of it.

It's my birthday!

And to celebrate, the wife and I went down the Gulf of Mexico and the Redneck Riviera! (Seriously, they themselves call it that, so I can too. So, there.)

Anyway...

Perdidio Key is southwest of Pensacola and a part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. The drive from Auburn took about 4 hours, but that's only because Google maps had us take the Blue Angels Parkway, a one lane road that could have been avoided by going the way we went home (along the 110 into...oh, wait. I just realized I am doing that thing that my adult male relatives do after they've arrived somewhere. That's another post at another time.) We headed straight for a bar that I'd heard of from people both here and in Connecticut. The Flora-bama

The carnival

Good god, what a shithole. It strattles the Florida - Alabama border on the beach, and is an amalgamation of tents, coverings, wood platforms, and other assorted crap glued and screwed together to somehow pass code. It's a classic hole in the wall bar, as evidenced by a shot I took of the inside to the right.


See what I mean?

There are other "areas" that are all sort of cobbled together. You have multiple stages for performers to set up on, so forth and so on, and lots of individual bar stations. One thing I did notice was that there weren't too many TV sets, which was nice. Nothing I hate more when I go to a bar is to have nothing to look at except TV's.

Oh, and did you notice what was hanging from the clotheslines up there? Here's a better picture.

"Oh look, there's mine!"

Lots and lots of bras. Gives the place character and class, doesn't it?

Since we hit this place up right around lunchtime, we weren't expecting it to be crazy. But as evidenced by the underwear, clearly good times had been had here.

As it was lunch time, oysters and fish po-boys had to be eaten.

Yes, please!

After lunch we headed back to the beach and laid out on the beautiful, white sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. And they truly were stunning, until you walked up and down the beach and saw the oil response clean-up teams, their equipment, and tar-balls. Lots of little tar-balls.

The following show the tar stained beach and the equipment used by the teams:

Tractors and other "stuff"

Crews getting ready to hit the beach

Used sand sifters. Not small enough to get the majority if the tar balls if you ask me

Oil stained sand

Lovely, right? Sigh.

Pack? check. Beer? check. It's dark. Let's go!

You may also have noticed me with a backpack on my shoulders. That's because the wife and I camped on the beach on Saturday, and we had to hike in about a mile to get to where we were allowed to stay on Perdido Key (the photo was taken Sunday morning on the way out). But here's me gearing up ready to make the trek out at night.

And here we are in the morning after a not so great sleep (due to lack of pillows, a thermarest with a hole in it (grrr.....), hellacious temperature and humidity, and lack of breeze through the floor of the tent (which will be remedied on the next tent purchase.))

Good morning!

Sunday saw us stopping off at the IHOP for breakfast, driving to Pensacola Beach for the, well, beach, and then to the Pensacola Art Museum for a little bit of afternoon culture. Incidentally, the museum has a very nice collection, which we would have seen if they weren't playing a movie about Marc Chagall at the same time we visited.  :-(  Oh well.

We traveled back to Auburn after the museum and drove through a pretty horrendous thunderstorm, one that had a lighting strike right next to our car and which sounded like a shotgun! Fun stuff! It was f'ing terrifying, but, we were alright. Just a little rattled.

All in all: Great trip, glad we went, and we'll certainly go again when it gets a little cooler.

The joys of home working

That is my foot. Under my desk. Being used as a pillow. By my cat.

Late night Mud-riding

I was thinking I really should have pictures for this post, but I don't think they would capture the thrill of barreling down a dirt road in the middle of the night. How do you express the joy of riding a roller coaster to someone through words or pictures? It somehow doesn't do the experience justice, and I certainly want to give the proper props to this.

It's late. It's the middle of the night. You're in Alabama, and there's several acres of woods with a"road" cleared out through them, leading to a pond in the middle. The road is the red clay of the South, not gravel or asphalt. Now, you've gone off-roading before, when you were growing up, living in Connecticut. But it somehow doesn't live up to what you think you are about to do, because, let's face it: You're a stranger in a strange country, and you've placed blind faith in a person you've just met because they told you to get in the truck and not to ask questions. You're going for a ride, and that's about all you know.

You drive down the road, and turn off, facing the "road" that goes straight into the woods. The driver puts the peddle to the metal and away you go, flying torwards trees before the wheel is turned and you're faced with another set, the headlights illuminating just what's directly in front of you and nothing else. You hit the clearing where the pond is, stop, pile out of the truck and look up at the moon, and all the stars, and listen to the silence, something you haven't heard in a long time because of the years you've spent living in New York City, or Bridgeport, CT, the drone of I-95 constantly in the background.

And it's here that you thank yourself for trusting people, for believing that people are inherently good, and that you've missed the woods, the stars, and the silence.