http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100608marine_union_bullying_me_to_pay_500_teacher_runs_rotc_rejects_any_benefits/srvc=home&position=5
Marine ROTC teacher possibly getting booted because he doesn’t want to join the teacher’s union.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/constitutiondeclaration-of-independence-now-published-with-a-disclaimer/
US Constitution publication comes with a disclaimer.
The final day.
Woke up and got on the road, and very quickly found myself in Tallahassee. Tooled around there for a little while, but truthfully the Florida state capitol is not the biggest thing on my list of things to see. Continued out via US27, but got decidedly bored of that and took SR59 down to US98. Much more interesting ride down in that area.
While riding down 98, came across a massive alligator in the middle of the road. It stretched entirely across a single lane of traffic, so figure in the 12 foot range. I just patiently waited for it to get off the road before proceeding, because it was a big one.
Also saw a boar that had been hit lying on the side of the road. The different animals that I saw on this trip was pretty interesting.
Got back on US27 in Perry, and kept on it until High Springs, at which point transferred over to 441 and headed home. Not too much going on for this trip, though I did stop at a bar in Alachua for lunch, where they had some incredible chicken strips. I will have to go back there sometime for that again.
In the morning, went downstairs and had breakfast. Typical stuff for a buffet. Got on the bike and headed east on SR52 out to Buckhorn, then south on SR9 to Dawsonville. From there headed west on 53 out to Calhoun, where I tried to find a treehouse that apparently does not actually exist. Oh well.
In Calhoun, I stopped at a motorcycle shop because I have been looking for a small leather fork bag for the front of the bike to hold small things like registration and such when I don’t have the saddlebags on the bike. I found one there, and talking to the owner found out a couple of things about long distance riders. I can tell I am not the type that really wants one of these giant Goldwings… they seem to promote the kind of rider that gets on the Interstate and then goes for hundreds of miles at a time. Just not my kind of riding I guess… I want to look at the countryside and stuff!
Anyway, headed out of Calhoun south towards Rome, then out the other side and into Alabama. By this time, I was starting to not feel all that great, so it was about this time that I started to think about heading for home instead of my original plan to head over into Mississippi. I started heading south through Alabama, stopping here and there for rest breaks and lunch (ate lunch at Taco Bell… it was good.)
Around 5pm or so I had gotten back across the Talledega mountains (and through Talledega itself) and was finally heading back into Georgia. Passed through Fort Benning, then met up with US27 and headed south until I got into Blakely. Looked for a place to stay for the night, but there was nothing there worth staying at. On the way out of town, just after I had cleaned the visor on my helmet, I rode underneath a tree and hit a couple of thousand little white bugs… instant white across the face, couldn’t see a thing. Had to stop again and clean the visor… again.
Rolled into Bainbridge where there was a just recently bought out Super-8 that was still in good condition. Stayed there, tried to find a decent place to eat in town, but eventually settled for a burger joint.
I saw this caption on a bumper sticker going to work today, and it had me thinking about it the entire way in.
I don’t like it.
Now, I am not going to get into an existence of God thing here… that is a completely different theological debate. What I am annoyed about with this is that it is a fatalistic attitude. It is basically saying “I am not in control of my actions.”
I consider this to be a cop-out and a dangerous method of living life.
First of all, it is basically blaming your own actions on the will of a supernatural being. With this sort of attitude, it justifies every bad thing that man has ever done in history as actually being God’s fault, and therefore not the fault of man. I call complete bullshit on this.
Second, it could be foreseen to lead to someone simply giving up on doing anything, since “it is God’s will”. Dammit, if you can’t get off your duff and do something with your life, you are a failure, and I will call you on it.
I feel that this sort of attitude promotes anti-entrepreneurial thoughts. With this sort of attitude, we wouldn’t have things like the Apple iPod, or electricity, or the basic wheel.
Headed out of Madison north on US 441, finally stopping in Cornelia. There I got to see a large red apple sitting on a pedastal in the middle of town. This was also a crossroads of sorts for more railroad stuff, so I took some pictures of the interesting engines that they had sitting there as well. There were also two cute little statues near the apple that I took pictures of.
Then I found lunch in a small diner whose location I can no longer find, but oddly enough I had actually been there before, two years ago when I made the opposite version of this trek.
After lunch continued down the road, then headed over to Highlands, NC for a bit of mountain road riding. Ended up eventually in Franklin, where I met up with a couple of folks who had been doing some long-haul riding as well. Talked to them for a little while, then continued heading west towards Deal’s Gap, despite knowing that it was closed due to a landslide. Headed west on 28 until it reached 74, then took 74. At that intersection, I met up with the same group that somehow had managed to pass me without my seeing them do it. Not exactly sure how that happened, as we had followed the same route. They commented on my bike there, as they had not seen a Triumph Thunderbird before.
There was another old codger there on a Valkyrie 2000, and he also commented with the added comment that Triumph had to go to a three cylinder design in order to beat out the Valkyrie in size. Something bothered me about this comment, but it has taken a while for me to boil down just what it was that bothered me about it. I think the thing about it was that he considered displacement of the machine to be the end-all of what was important about the ride, which is really the furthest thing from the truth. I feel that what is important is that you are comfortable with the ride for what you are trying to do. Obviously you would not feel comfortable riding a large cruiser on a dirt track, but it is the application that is what matters.
Trying to find my way into the area of Deal’s Gap turned out to be a real pain, and eventually I gave up and started heading down to where I wanted spend the night, at Amicalola Falls. Got there, got a room, and had dinner to a wonderful sunset.
Never even turned on the television here. I had internet, and connected to Jango in order to get some music piping into the room that I wanted, and I was done for the night.
Good day riding… weather was gorgeous, and the roads relatively clear. Took US441 north all the way to Homerville, GA, then headed east to Waycross, where I visited the Heritage Center. Some very interesting things in there, and I took a number of pictures of the train that they have there.
From there I headed off to Douglas, GA in search of Captain Muffler Man…. didn’t find him, but I did find a nice place to eat at Hanna’s Cafe. I had the roasted prime rib sandwich with homefries, and was quite satisfied with it.
From Douglas I headed north on US441 again to McRae, GA, where I got to see a replica of the Statue of Liberty in the town center, along with a replica of the Liberty Bell.
Moving on I headed out on US23 to Eastman, GA, passing a great scrap metal yard where the guy had taken a bunch of scrap metal and made different things with it. After that was a view of the world’s first Stuckey’s in Eastman.
Next thing was heading north and making my way to Madison, GA to see Bruce Weiner’s Microcar Museum, but by the time I arrived in Madison it was too late to go see it, so I found a place to stay instead.
Ate dinner at Pacho’s Mexican Grill, whose food is pretty decent though the service is a bit slow. I had the beef fajita, which was quite decent and had some really nice cilantro flavoring to it. They also have a salsa with their chips that is quite good. It is a mild sauce, and has a touch of chipotle in it, but not so much that the smokiness of chipotle overwhelms everything else. Yummy!
Went to Fuji Hana Sunday night for a quick meal. Decided that I was just going to eat at the sushi bar because I really only did want something quick, and didn’t want a ton of food.
The place is really quite nice, and the owner and workers there take a lot of pride in what they have created. It took a couple of months for them to actually open the place initially, because they did an incredible amount of work in preparing the place for business. It is a combination sit-down restaurant, sushi bar, and hibachi.
I have eaten there more than once, so I have experienced both the sushi bar and the restaurant portions of the place, but have yet to go to the hibachi side of things… that will wait until I have some people to go with to make it a proper event.
Anyway, back to the food. I ordered two rolls, with water. The first roll was a volcano roll (I like spicy stuff!) and this thing comes with both some spiciness and it is tempura’d, so it comes out nice and warm. Wonderful!
The other roll, unfortunately, I have no idea what it was called or even what was really in it. It was good, but for my tastes not as good as the volcano roll (I am also writing this almost a week after the meal, so some memory is hazy.)
In all, the meal was quite enjoyable, and I will be going back there again and again. I consider them at this time to be the best sushi place in town.
So, I was on a ride… hrm… this actually was a longer ride than usual, and requires that I start at the beginning.
So, Friday evening I decided that I was going to go to a gun show at the American Legion post in Trenton, because I had never been to a gun show and it somewhat interested me. Get up nice and early and start heading out there. On the way an older classic plated car pulls out right in front of me, to which I had to brake pretty heavily. You would think that the owner of a classic vehicle would be more concerned with what they are doing and not pull out in front of traffic like that. Kept heading down the road, and eventually reached Trenton only to find that the main street of Trenton is completely blocked off for an arts and crafts festival.
So I park the bike and take a walk around. Lots of quilts and stuff floating around, which I took a couple of pictures of. The pictures are in the camera still, so they won’t get posted here at the moment.
Turns out the car that pulled out in front of me earlier was heading for this show as well, to be an exhibit in the street. I considered accosting the driver, but decided to pass on it… if they get into an accident, serves their own damned fault!
So, finish with walking around and get on the bike to start heading out, only to find that in order to start heading towards Bell, where the Legion hall is actually at (despite the name), I have to go through a bunch of side streets and stuff because the main street is blocked off and there is no easy way around. Oh well… not that big a deal on the Intruder.
Get to the hall, and pay my entrance fee. Looked at the guns for a while, but it just didn’t interest me all that much. Left pretty quickly after that and started to realize that I was getting hungry, and I really didn’t want anything back in Trenton, so I kept heading north on SR 129 until I got to Branford, which had…. NOTHING. Little po-dunk town with a gas station and nothing else.
Eventually I got to Live Oak, which I know has food. Unfortunately they didn’t have anything that I really wanted at the time. I am somewhat picky when it comes to barbecue, and I really wasn’t in the mood for it in the first place. They also had a mexican place there that did look somewhat interesting, but I also wasn’t in the mood for that. I was really looking for a bistro, somewhat fancy, and it just wasn’t happening. I guess I need to learn to lower my standards a bit. There was a diner there that I checked out, but walking in it felt too commercial, so I walked out of there after perusing the menu and confirming my suspicions that it would be your typical american fair.
Headed east out of Live Oak heading towards Lake City, and of course skipped all of the fast food joints that were along the main drag near the interstate. Got into the main part of town, and went up and down the main street. There were two places in there that looked semi-interesting, but one of them was closed for the day (apparently only serves dinner) and the other looked like they weren’t serving either.
By this time I was bloody hungry, and just about anything would do, which is why I then went to Mexico Lindo. It is in the south part of town, between route 41 and 441. I was the only one there when I walked in, and was greeted by a very nice little mexican girl.
She initially came out with the standard chips and salsa. The chips were standard, but I found the salsa to be a bit too wet. Some sort of thickener needed to be added to it to make it actually stick to the chips a bit more.
I ordered a burrito thing, and I took pictures that are still on my phone, but it appears that my phone is currently having issues sending anything anywhere, so that will have to wait. I found it to be quite tasty, with a sauce added to it that I could not quite identify. Somewhat salty (the sauce), with a sort of weak caper taste. Very interesting and a nice flavor.
Only one other patron walked in while I was sitting there having my meal… a family who looked as if they had just come back from soccer practice or something.
So, the meal was quite nice and I would recommend them again to others.
This past Friday I went to the Copper Monkey in Gainesville for lunch. It is a restaurant that is highly recommended by my work mates, so we went there.
This is basically a burger sports grill. The offerings are what you would typically find. One of my coworkers calls it the best burger in Gainesville… I disagree, but that is probably a matter of taste.
We were a group of six, three of us having never been there before. Those three were also from China and had not really been to the typical American sports bar, so that was interesting and kind of fun to share.
We all ordered burgers, and the host of the meal also ordered an appetizer of twenty wings… I think they did pretty well with these. I feel that they were baked as apposed to being deep fried, which I consider to be a superior method. The sauce was applied just right… not too weak, and not so much that the wings were swimming in it. They were ordered with a medium hot sauce, which I consider way too weak, but the taste was good regardless.
Moving on to the burger, I ordered the “University Avenue Burger”. This is a burger that comes with sauteed onions and mushrooms, plus onions, lettuce, and pickle. Fries were also included in the basket. The fries were actually pretty decent… standard sized fries that held up throughout the meal without getting soggy or hard. The burger had good meat in it, but I feel that they are missing something in the mix. It needs a bit more salt to really bring out the flavor of the meat.
It is good food, don’t get me wrong, but I can not label these burgers as the best in Gainesville. I feel that there are better out there.
The Copper Monkey is located at 1700 West University Avenue.
So, I managed to get my hands on the Lego Imperial Flagship (10210) on Tuesday, despite it not being available for at least another two weeks. For whatever reason, the Lego store in Orlando has started selling them early. Yes, it was an expensive night for me, because I also bought the Grand Emporium (10211) at the same time. Let me just say this: The Lego sets in the 102xx series are bloody expensive (though worth it). I am not amused with them releasing two of them so close together in time.
I worked on building the ship last night (and a little bit this morning), and I have yet to get up to the main deck. The keel is laid, the bow is complete, as is the stern, but the guns have not been laid in yet. The bowsprit I think is going to be coming up quite soon, as will a completion of the anchor windlass.
I should mention that the galley is complete, though I have to put together any of the minifigs… so it is not occupied with a cook at this time. There is a chicken roasting, though!
I was thinking of doing a pictorial log of the build, with minifigs and stuff working on it, but it doesn’t really fit the storyline that I want to present. Instead, I think I might get the pirate ship (Brickbeard’s Bounty, 6243) and do a pictorial of that getting built by normal folk, then right before the sails are raised, have a bunch of pirates come in and take over the ship, hence it becoming a pirate ship. 
Just some thoughts, I guess.
I have some other plans that I am thinking about, once I have completed the Grand Emporium. The first is to see what kind of parts I have that I can use to put together a sailboat or two. I have seen one put together on the web that I really liked the lines of, so I am thinking I might emulate that a bit. Beyond that, I have plans to redo my city layout a bit so that I can incorporate the train. I also want to see about incorporating some of the buildings from Town Plan (10184) and molding them into the form factor of the modular buildings. In particular I am thinking of the garage and what can be done with it.
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