Jonathan’s Mindless Blog

Friday I got a personal tour of Chattanooga and took some (I think) pretty cool photos. I’m working on post-processing on a few of them to put up on flickr… maybe finish those today. My outlook was broadened quite a bit. I thought the only thing there was a hospital and a lot of stinky industrial factory type industry, but IT’S NOT TRUE! There really is a downtown, even though I’ve never really seen it, and it has quite a bit of old architecture that’s full of character. One of the things I noticed was an extensive use of glass blocks in a lot of the old buildings, also, when looking from the pedestrian bridge over the river, one notices that blue is the requisite color for new architecture in the city. Lots of really neat out-of-the-way kind of places around as well. We ate at Durty Nelly’s Pub for lunch which was pretty good, where I had a reuben, which was VERY decent. For supper we went to the Bluff View Art District and mosied through the sculpture garden and cool courtyards and ate at Tony’s Pasta which was incredible. I had a dish of Baked Chicken Pesto, but that’s not entirely the proper name… It was excellent food and atmosphere anyway.

Now to satisfy the title… I grew up in Cheatham County, which borders Metropolitan Davidson County, but seems a lifetime away from the city. One of the great things about this time of year, right about the beginning of September is the time when the darkfire tobacco gets smoked in the barns. This produces an incredible amount of smoke, usually enough to fill the valley the barn is in with smoke and it hangs like a thick fog. The smell is INCREDIBLE!! It’s not like a cigarette or any finished tobacco product, it’s just unique unto itself. Well, since I have a motorcycle now, and, in my opinion, it’s the best way to experience the sight and smell of this phenomenon, we tooled around part of the county yesterday looking for some of this in action. I expected to see maybe a few barns, not really expecting to see more than five or six, but we saw 30 barns in about 35 miles! Almost every turn yielded more smoking barns, and statistically speaking, that’s about a barn per mile! It was one of those evenings to remember, everything nice and calm, fall in the air and the sight and smell of home everywhere. I think I’ll go back today and try for some pictures of the best ones…

I love it when the weather man is actually correct. Yesterday was an incredibly beautiful day so I took off from work and took a little road trip. We went up to Franklin, KY then across to Scottsville, down through Red Boiling Springs, then down past Cordell Hull Lake and Dam (where I took a few pictures),
and then back home via interstate from Carthage. The Cordell Hull overlook was really cool, and we stopped for a while to rest, but the coolest rest stop was in… well the middle of nowhere beside this little church. We were ready for a break and the side of the church lot had two huge oak trees on it and lots of shade next to a gravel parking lot that really wasn’t much gravel anymore since the grass had kind of taken over. Ended up sitting under the tree for a bit, and while we were chillin’ (all laid out in the grass) a car horn starts honking as it passes… weird since that’s usually a sign that somebody knows you and we shouldn’t have known anybody out there, so I sit up to see the back end of a gold wing trailer and another Gold Wing behind that who also tooted their horn and waved, just saying howdy. It’s almost like a club when you’re on a bike; other riders are usually very friendly and helpful and everybody waves.
We did right at 250 miles for the trip, but by the time the getting to and from the rendezvous point is added I put on about 300 miles yesterday. This morning I’m riding with another friend, but I don’t know exactly where we’re going yet, maybe ride the Natchez Trace. Can’t be out too late though, ’cause I’ve got a date this evening! We’re going to see the Gabe Dixon Band open for Jamie Cullum at TPAC, now I need to get the meal part worked out… Talk about procrastination in planning! All this after this morning’s Political Breakfast with the District 17 folks, I guess you could say I’m a bit busy? Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, or so I hear, so if that’s true I shouldn’t be constructing anything evil in the near future.

I’ve now been here for a couple of days and this is a really cool place. Yesterday I took Kevin’s bicycle and went all over downtown and around through North Portland. The downtown area is really bicycle friendly in layout as well as the people, and almost the entire way from their house has dedicated bike lanes, very nice. I wish Nashville had more lanes than just the one near Vandy. Thai food is everywhere here, and so far it’s really good too. The Portland Central Library is impressive on the outside, but more impressive on the inside. There is a huge marble staircase going to the second floor, with fairly intricate engravings of vines and leaves and birds all in the stairs. I visited REI, the Columbia store, the Library, Riverfront Park, the North Face store, ate at Pizza Schmizza (which was good and the greek salad was perfect), and visited Powells Books. I must expound a bit about Powells… Holy Cow that place is cool. Being the information hoarder that I am, I was very disappointed to know that of all of these awesome books that I would like to have for cheap would have to be shipped home if I bought them. If this place was anywhere near Nashville, I’d have to line my entire house with bookcases. For those of you tech heads out there, there’s a Powells Technical Books as well, which I visited too, of course. And just to give you an idea, there are several copies of lots of books, good books too, ranging from math to networking to engineering and any other technical topic you can think of. One of the copies may be a new book, one a used book, another an early edition, another a hardback and some of them were even in special packaging, and the prices vary accordingly. It was enough to make me drool through the whole store.

Last evening, Kevin and I went to the Rogue Ales Public House and had some incredible food. We then proceeded to check out 23rd Ave. and the panoramic view of Portland from the top. Today we’re going the the Columbia River Gorge and check that out, then watch Katie and the Break Neck Betties whip tail at Roller Derby.

Ok, now I’ve seen some beautiful scenery in my time, but this area is incredible. The green hills with the vinyards and the fog in the mornings is a sight to behold. Yesterday we visited two wineries. The first was Guglielmo, a family owned traditional affair of three generations. The place grows 13 acres of grapes and does all the pressing and bottling on sight. The guy giving the tour was from the Netherlands and reminded me a lot of one of the guys in my office; a great sense of humor and can truely play the part. The second stop was at Clos la Chance. This was a much newer facility with high tech gadgets and large facilities. They grow about 70 acres of grapes and monitor soil conditions like humidity and temperature. They also bottle many wines with a screw-top. The tour director gave a long explanation about all the benefits of the different types of corks and bottling methods for the different wines, but it really takes a lot of the romance out of the whole “waiter opening the bottle at the table” thing. The drive out and back was incredible, the San Jose valley was originally agriculture and most of that was orchards. The valley is surrounded by mountains, duh, it’s a valley, but beautifully rugged and it has all these monstrous houses tucked in on the tops.

Today is finally over, it’s always the most boring, yet necessary, part of the conference. From here on out it’s much more interesting. Over half of the attendees this year are first-timers, so there are lots of new faces and many new ideas. It’s late, but I’m off to more networking time

I love going to conferences as long as it’s not too many in a year. This year I think I’ll only get to do one and it’s NOW! I’m in San Jose, CA for a technical conference and NES is picking up the tab. The weather is incredible and I can see why people would want to move here. The sun is out and the night time temps are about 55F, daytime about 70F and a breeze is almost always blowing. I guess this is kind of like a vacation since I get to sightsee today (Sunday). Yesterday we drove up to San Francisco and drove by all the sights, like Alkatraz island, fisherman’s wharf, telegraph point and the Golden Gate bridge. It’s a really neat old city. Today is a wine tour of the Napa Valley, should be quite interesting with the bunch of techies. Pics will be coming soon There was a huge cruise ship in port as well. It was quite a sight from up close, about 15 stories above the water line.

The best part is the ensuing true vacation, I get to see K&K in their new city of PORTLAND! And I will be priviledged enough to see Katie kick tail at a Roller Derby bout. I also found out that my new yearly (or maybe twice yearly) vacation destination has been moved from Ancorage, AK, to Colorado Springs, CO! Tom & Corinna have gotten confirmation that the next station of duty (Air Force) will be there and, I think, at the same base that is associated with the Air Force Academy. I’ll have to check that to be sure, but it sounds pretty cool to me. Tom wants to do a long backpacking trip hopefully towards the end of the summer, which will be awesome!

Oh, and Loveless Cafe, long known for thier wonderful breakfasts, I discovered, also has incredible dinners. We were out riding the motorcycle and passed by and decided to stop and eat, what a great spontaneous idea! If you’re ever in Nashville, you should make it a point to stop in.