Bob was on the road for a good portion of the month while Camille stuck around the home place and hung out with her friends. Life’s pleasures are not always equitably distributed.
BROCCOLI SPAWNS HOME GROWN ADDICTION
Camille flushes with inordinate pride over the simplest of accomplishments, a head of back yard broccoli. Although she has had her hands in the dirt for years, this is quite likely her first solo-grown vegetable, not counting parsley and tomatoes. Watch out world!
JORDAN LAKE DAM TAIL RACE
A Sunday afternoon walk yielded this rousing footage of a very full spillway.
SCREEN DINING
Bob’s new job took him to six cities this month: Baltimore, Maryland; New Orleans, Louisiana; St. Louis, Missouri; Peoria, Illinois; Ottawa, Ontario; and Mitchell, South Dakota. Stopping for a beer at the Houston Airport, he was introduced to the next level in airport dining: tabletop iPads which customers can use to order food, check flights, and play games to pass the time.
NEW ORLEANS, HERE HE COMES
Bob’s plane landed in New Orleans shortly after the New Orleans Saints beat the Philadelphia Eagles 20-14.
Bob absorbed the post-win energy with a strolling beer in the pulsing French Quarter.
THE WAY BACK MACHINE
This is the home, cul-de-sac island, and verdant ditch Bob played in as a child, the school he went to in second grade is behind the house (although it’s a new building). His family moved from New Orleans to Ghana, West Africa when he was nine.
COMFORTS OF DINING OUT
Trendy kitsch at the Hard Rock Café (the horse is for Camille) and his best Impossible Burger yet at Breads On Oak.
ART IS WHERE YOU FIND IT
On the street or in a gallery. Sidewalk tree roots erupt from their concrete restraints. A tuxedo-ed cat celebrates the New Orleans Saints.
ST. LOUIS
Next stop, St. Louis with its landscape-dominating arch and ubiquitous brick homes.
WHITE CASTLE SLIDERS
Hamburger chains all over the country have added the mildly addictive plant-based Impossible Burger to their menu.
STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE
Six nights at home and Bob is off again. Here is the view of the winter landscape above Peoria, Illinois.
PEORIA
A buried bike in front of One World Restaurant, and the target of Bob’s auditing expertise, an ethanol plant in what once the largest distillery in the United States belonging to Hiram Walker. He noticed tropical bird calls inside the plant compound and found out they were being broadcast to keep birds away from the grain silos as he suspected.
O’HARE AIRPORT
Chillin’ in Chicago on his way to Canada, Bob took in some airport art and watched the ground crew de-ice the planes. The black and white art panel reminded him of the airplane views in the pictures above.
RAMEN NIGHT AT CHATHAM MARKETPLACE
Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Camille enjoys an evening out with Zoila, Buffy, and Jennifer. Her first real ramen bowl (not the kind you get in a packet) was incredibly delicious. We all hope Chef Inhee and her family offer another Ramen Night soon. Thanks for the photos, Zoila!
ANTICIPATION PACKETS
This year we added a few new seeds to our collection, including medium-heat Orange Spice Jalapeños, Brussells Sprouts, Edamame, and Cantaloupe.
BOB’S FARGO MOMENT
Bob’s after-dark drive from Sioux Falls to Mitchell, South Dakota during a polar vortex breakout was no fun at all. The next day he followed a truckload of corn to yet another ethanol plant for yet another audit.
Note the corn symbol on the mud flap.
CORN PALACE
Mitchell, SD, population 15,000 boasts the World’s Only Corn Palace, and although this isn’t exactly true, the corn cob art is most eye-catching.
RUNAWAY VORTEX
The temperature on the outside of Bob’s rented jeep read -22 °F on his way back to Sioux Falls. During his two-day stay in South Dakota, he learned to pull his knit cap snugly down over his forehead after sustaining a “Brain Freeze” during his first short walk from the hotel to the jeep. The locals showed him how to start his vehicle from inside the building, something every one around there does in winter.
This distortion in the Polar Vortex happened because there was a shift in the high-speed winds that keep the frigid air contained at the North Pole (there is a vortex at the South Pole, too), which allowed cold air to escape and terrorize the rest of the planet. It happens from time to time, but this month’s incident saw record-breaking lows in Iowa (-30 °F) and Illinois (-33 °F) and, although not record-breaking, actual temperatures of -56°F and -56°F were recorded in in Minnesota and Illinois. Lucky for Bob he was in balmy South Dakota.
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THIS MONTH’S QUOTES:
“The sense that you’re agreeing to this intrusion, that you’re collaborating (“It’s for my own good”), is worse than demeaning; it combines all the excuses and evasions that helped to create the oppressive dictatorships and tyrannies of the past. The stripping, at all airports, of the traveler’s dignity, forcing the traveler to submit, is the antithesis of what one seeks in travel.” – Paul Theroux in Deep South
“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.” – Tim Kreider, author of We Learn Nothing
“Despite its bad reputation, gossip plays an important social role by reinforcing community values: it makes people feel closer to each other, it unifies people who play by the rules, it helps people get a sense of the values of their community, and it exposed the misbehavior of those who cheat on their spouses, don’t return phone calls, or take credit for others’ work.” – Gretchen Rubin from The Happiness Project
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