I recently took a long vacation to Asheville, North Carolina, where my brother owns a cabin. It's very convenient to have a brother not as fucked up as I am who owns property. I've recently realized that the most valuable item in my apartment is an expensive bottle of Scotch whiskey. I'm a class act.
My flight was at 6:20AM, which is too early to take public transportation, so I called my good friends at SuperShuttle (aka SuperShitty). As it was the day of the San Francisco Marathon and there were to be street closures, I agreed to have them pick me up at their absurdly early time- 4AM. I woke up at 3:15 to get read to shower, just as my neighbors were coming home from Midnight Mass (the movie series, not the church service). I should have just gone to that and not slept.
On the first leg I was seated next to a 3-year-old, which always makes for a smooth flight. The kid's father had a child on either side of him, both of whom he ignored while he read his New York Times. Way to go, Awesome Dad!
I got into Greensboro, NC, met my brother, then had to drive two more hours to get to the cabin. Damn, it was a long day. The next morning, my brother was off to a business conference for the next three days, leaving me alone in the cabin. Amazingly, I didn't burn it down.
Oh, and here's a plug: If you're going to Asheville you should stay there. It's a great cabin with four bedrooms, a mountain view, and a hot tub. More info here, on the website that I built. (See I do know how to make a website without frames. This one is retro.)
I had big plans for those three days alone. I was going to treat it as a combination writer's retreat and fat camp. I'd get up early, go for a run, then retire to write all day with the view of the Blue Ridge mountains in the background. I'd also eat healthy and think about big life decisions.
Well, I got as far as going to the grocery store to buy healthy food. I also bought a 12-pack of beer and started in on it immediately. I didn't even open my 2-inch binder of work I brought, or any of the four books I brought to read. I didn't go for any runs at all. Instead, I spent those few days getting incredibly drunk and high, watching cable television, pigging out, and hanging out in the hot tub- naked.
I was relieved when my brother came back from his trip, because I needed an excuse to get off my ass and out into nature. One day we went mountain biking at Ben Creek- this forest area with lots of trails. I had the crappy bike with the seat that didn't adjust from the lowest setting. He rented a fancy bike. In our hours there, we managed to take all the wrong trails- the ones that only headed uphill on impossibly steep grades. We were lost most of the time. At several points on the hike we had to turn around and go in the opposite direction when we realized where we were headed would likely kill us. Still, shit was fuuuuun.
The next day, we drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway (basically a multi-state scenic drive along a mountain ridge) to Mount Mitchell. That's something like the highest point east of the Mississippi. There weren't too many hiking trails there, so we took the longest one we could find- a paltry three miles. Naturally we got lost and that turned into more like eight miles, in what became a thunderstorm. Here are some pictures:
The next day we did some more hiking in the Pisgah National Forest. (It's a lovely word, Pisgah.) We did a shortish hike with the dog up to a great view. On the way back, we got lost, but only a little bit this time!
That was the entirety of the physical activity on the trip (more on the child activity in the next log). Instead of having this trip be fat camp, by the end I was just fat Camper.