Using Utensils

US Road Trip, Part V

19 November 2008 – 11:43 pm

Kentucky is one of the few states that actually matched the concept implanted in my head by books and movies: wide-open spaces with small horse farms on rolling hills covered in bluegrass… and nothing else to do.

Louisville

There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Louisville and it felt like a 9pm curfew was in affect for the entire city.

After spending the day in Mammoth Cave I just wanted to find a place to grab dinner but it took a while before I found a place that was open. I end up on Bardstown Rd which had a bunch of college-esque type stores and restaurants, actually it felt a lot like Park Ave in Rochester.

Sleeping until noon the next day, I headed back down to Bardstown Rd again to try Mark’s Feed Store and wander around the area a little before I head off to the Smoky Mountains.

It was a cute area and the small blue Scientology house with a crappy sign was a complete departure from what I’m use to seeing in the Bay Area. Maybe I’d like it here more than I originally thought. 

Kentucky / Tennessee Border

Time to visit new places, to quote Dorothy, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.”

Fireworks Super Store and Playground

I’ve see fireworks stores before, but this was a first, a fireworks store with kid rides and gasoline.

Fireworks Super Store had a ferris wheel, clowns, animal rides, and oh yeah, M80s, roman candles, and multiple other ways to blow up your kids.

I have no issues with adults having fireworks but the combo of kids, fireworks, and gasoline doesn’t seem completely thought out.

Smoky Mountain Knife Works

Nearly to the Smoky Mountains I started seeing signs for the world’s largest knife store, the Smoky Mountain Knife Works. It’s the world’s largest so of course I have to stop.

Massive, this place had multiple levels with galleries, stuffed animals, and nearly ever kind of bladed item you could think of: bayonets, hunting knives, counterfeit Nazi knives, Star Trek Bat’leths, medieval swords, et al. It even had Confederate bikinis.

While I can understand that the hunters are “proud” of their kills, I never understood the reasoning behind stuffing animals. Why not just take a picture as proof?

It just disturbing to see dead animals mounted in fake positions covered in dust and fur/feathers faded in the sun. Even more unsettling are the combo animals… like the mouse / longhorn mix they had hanging on the wall.

In any case, I did end up buying a slingshot and we had a blast trying to hit trees and bushes in Shoreline park when I got back to California.

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US Road Trip, Part IV

17 November 2008 – 11:49 pm

Nashville

Definitely not a country music fan, but like Graceland in Memphis, the Grand Ole Opry was only a few minutes from my hotel so I felt somewhat compelled to at least check it out. So my last night in Nashville I decided to make the drive. And I have to say, I was pretty disappointed.

Like Graceland before it, the rain-gods paid me a visit again and by the time I got there it was pouring. So trying to wait it out, I grabbed dinner near-by.

It’s definitely not the country barn theatre they try to portray… rather it’s a huge complex called Opryland USA and it’s attached to a full-blown mall. While I may not be a fan of the music, if I was, I’d be pissed off at the misrepresentation.

Unable to get any pictures the night before, I swung by a great place called the Pfunky Griddle for breakfast in the morning. After cooking my own breakfast on their in-table griddles and eating my fill of pancakes, I headed downtown to take a few shoots before driving to the bluegrass state:

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

Heading towards Louisville, Kentucky, I took a detour off of I-65 to check out Mammoth Cave National Park.

I’ve been spelunking multiple times in the old gypsum mines in my hometown and more recently in Hezekiah’s Tunnel under Jerusalem, however this was my first natural cave system.

From the outside, it’s nothing more than a large forest with small winding roads but the caves underneath are, for lack of a larger lexicon, gorgeous.

One of the park rangers recommended the New Entrance tour for its scenic value and said not to be deceived by it’s short distance. At only ¾ of a mile long, it was a third of the length of the other tours but as she put it was two hours long and the other ones were “slow easy walks for old people”.

After two-plus hours of climbing steep grades, taking pictures, and contort like gumby I’m not ashamed to say that it kicked my ass, but it was definitely worth the it.

And now I can add toured the world’s longest cave system to my list. 

more to come…

On a side note, while leaving Mammoth I ran across a whitetail deer that was being more than a little aggressive in his grass eating style:

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US Road Trip, Part III

16 November 2008 – 4:54 pm

Jack Daniels Distillery

With a full tank of rare Nashvillian gas, I hit the road again to check out a town in the middle of nowhere and with a population of only 361… Lynchburg, Tennessee.

The tourist center was packed with an eclectic crowd: Harley biker gangs, families, and international tourists from all over the world. All of them just milling around checking out the whiskey making process and waiting for their tour number to be called.

The tour-guide we end up with had worked for the distillery and now in his retirement years gave tours. His quick-wit and knowledge mixed with being a Southern gentlemen made him a great guide.

On the tour, we were shown all the different steps: how they made the charcoal, the spring where the water came from, the distilling process, the filtering process, barrel making, bottling and packing facilities.

While all of the steps were interesting, I have to say I was most impressed by the bottling line. There is a single bottle line for all the Jack Daniels bottles and they bottle and package everything one barrel at a time in a medium-sized room!

During the tour we found out that we wouldn’t be able to sample any of the whiskey. Sadly, Lynchburg is in a dry county and it was illegal to sell or serve any alcohol.

However the tour-guide told us they found a loophole a few years ago. The distillery could sell collector edition bottles because the buyers will likely never drink the alcohol. So technically the buyer is buying the bottle and not the alcohol in it. 

The tour ended in what looked like a homey restaurant bar and we were all served lemonade and hidden in the back corner was a room selling the collector editions.

They were only selling five different runs, three normal bottles of Jack Daniels with scenes from Lynchburg and two award winning years in custom bottles from 1981 and 1954.

After hearing how much they cost, I bought 4 of the 5.

They were about a 1/3 of the cost of what they are online and coming with a seal showing they were bought directly from the distillery only increased there value (I would have bought all of them but the one Lynchburg scene bottle was a little cheesy looking).

It sounded like a good investment to me .

If you’re ever in the Nashville area, the tour is definitely worth the three-plus hours round trip to the distillery.

more to come…

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US Road Trip, Part II

15 November 2008 – 6:09 pm

Natchez Trace State Park

After being stuck in a rainstorm for a couple days, I finally out ran the clouds when I left Arkansas and headed back into Tennessee.

While heading to Nashville, I stopped in Natchez Trace State Park for a couple hours. It was a cute little park but it is was nearly vacant… I think I saw one couple in the entire park.

Shortly after I hit the road again to Nashville.

Nashville Gas Shortage

My first interaction with a Nashvillian was with a bored cashier sitting on a lawn chair behind the counter of a gas station. All of the gas pumps were off at the empty station and the cashier stared at me with contempt as I asked where I could find some gas.

That’s when I found out the entire area was suffering from a gas shortage. I shot some video of the gas lines and blogged about it in another post: Nashville Gas Shortage

more to come…

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US Road Trip, Part I

13 November 2008 – 6:05 pm

Memphis

My latest road trip started out in Memphis and shortly after landing I was greeted by two surprises: a rental mini-van instead of a car and a rain storm that didn’t want to stop.

The next big thing I noticed was the choice of radio stations: Country Music, Religion, Football, and a single Hip-Hop station. I’m not a huge fan of the first three so I stuck to the Hip-Hop station, HOT 107.1 (I often stream it when I’m working from home now).

Hoping to catch a break in the weather I headed over to Graceland. While I’m not a huge Elvis fan, its not often that Graceland is a ten minute drive away. The weather never broke so after exploring the area for a couple hours in the rain I grabbed some Southern fried chicken and hit the road for Arkansas.

Arkansas

I’ve always wanted to visit the Mississippi Delta, so after crossing the river I took the closest thruway exit after the rain stopped and started exploring.

Driving for a few hours, I ended up in a handful of towns and they all had a couple recurring themes: they were surrounded by fields of cotton and sorghum and their water towers had the town’s name along with the name of the Native American tribe that use to live there on it.

Being a former farm boy, I’ve seen a lot of different crop fields, but I have to admit that it was pretty exciting to see fields of cotton for the first time. 

more to come…

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US Road Trips: 94% Done

12 November 2008 – 11:43 pm

Over the years I’ve crisscrossed the country multiple time attempting to take a different route each time and until recently there was only one major area of the country that I hadn’t been in, the deep south.

So the day after I got back from working in Israel, I flew into Memphis, rented a car, and crossed Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana off my list.

North Dakota, Alaska, and Hawaii are the only states that I’ve haven’t driven in yet.

Alaska and Hawaii should be easy find a reason to visit… I just need to come up with a reason to visit North Dakota. 

It was a great experience and it’s not often a person can say they’ve been in a spice market in Jerusalem, a Sultan’s palace in Istanbul, a cotton field in Arkansas’s Mississippi delta, and the French Quarter in New Orleans within days of each other.

Stay tuned… I’ll post pictures shortly.

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Update

Here are related posts about the trip:

• US Road Trip, Part I: Memphis and Arkansas
• US Road Trip, Part II: Natchez Trace State Park and Nashville Gas Shortage
• US Road Trip, Part III: Jack Daniels Distillery
• US Road Trip, Part IV: Nashville and Mammoth Cave
• US Road Trip, Part V: Louisville and Kentucky/Tennessee Border
• US Road Trip, Part VI: Great Smoky Mountains
• US Road Trip, Part VII: Alabama, Mississippi, and Katrina
• US Road Trip, Part VIII: New Orleans French Quarter
• US Road Trip, Back in CA

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Istanbul Flashback

10 November 2008 – 10:31 pm

In my normal fashion, I took a ton of pictures when I was in Istanbul back in September and now, months after the fact, I’m finally posting some of them. 

I took a few short videos when I was there too: Take me back to Constantinople

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Joe the Plumber

15 October 2008 – 6:18 pm

Last Presidential Debate of 2008

Ahhh… talk about the damn issues, enough about frickin’ “Joe the Plumber”! 

Joe the Plumber Video

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Update

Is ‘Joe the Plumber’ a plumber? That’s debatable, AP:

“Joe the Plumber’s story sprang a few leaks Thursday. Turns out that the man who was held up by John McCain as the typical, hard-working American taxpayer isn’t really a licensed plumber. And court documents show he owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes…”

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YouTube References

11 October 2008 – 12:28 pm

Gotta love The Office and their YouTube references.

Here’s Michael Scott talking about his initial discovery of YouTube:

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update

Hulu took down the video click

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Religulous

4 October 2008 – 3:23 pm

Just got back from watching Larry Charlies and Bill Maher’s Religulous and I have to say, I was a little disappointed.

While there were a lot of funny parts, like so many other movies, it didn’t live up to the hype.

They been selling it as a funny and hard-hitting movie about organized religion and in my mind I was envisioning a hybrid of Richard Dawkins and Borat.

In any case, I had a good chuckle before the movie even started when I noticed that the song playing in theatre just before the previews was Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. 

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