Historical Sites & Retail Haven

H and I are in St. Augustine to enjoy the historical sites.
We started off at the light station which has been turned into a museum. The big attraction is the 164' lighthouse. Climbing to the top is an adventure in itself for those of us who have a fear of falling. There are 219 narow metal mesh stairs that spiral to the top that are crowded with comers and goers. The view from the top is worth it. You can see for 20 miles.
After the lighthouse we went to the Castillo. It is the oldest mortar fort in the continental US. The walls are made from conquina which is a type of limestone formed from millions of tiny shells. The US park service provides a self-guided tour of the fort. We also saw them fire one of the small cannons. It only has a range of a mile and a half. The big cannons have a range of three miles.
After the fort we headed over to historic St. George street. Despite knowing better, I hoped that it would be a living museum set up showing the town as it was in the days of the Spaniards. It is a living museum, but not one that is frozen in time. The buildings have all been preserved and there are plenty of ways to get the history of the place, but there are no actors. Instead St. George street is a thriving commercial area. There are a lot of shops and eateries. Some are tourist traps, but most are nice. While the insane purist on me wants to keep the history free of shallow comercialism, the realist in me knows that sometimes the best way to preserve history is to allow it to change with the times.

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Group Dynamics

On the long drive to FL I started catching up on my backlog of "This American Life" podcasts.
One episode was about people who ruin it for the rest of us. The intro was about a study that proved that there are three personality types that can poison a group. They are so infectious that they erode any group they encounter. The types are: jerks, slackers, and depressives.
The intro also talked about studies that prove that a group is only as strong as its weakest link. An amazingly strong group member can not make up for an amazingly weak one.

Two Lanes?

Why is the major north/south highway on the east coast only two lanes through the Carolinas? Today seems to be the day that all the Northeasterners who are too cheap to fly to Disney (H and I included) decided to clog 95 south. We were joined by all the Floridians returning from Christmas visiting. The result was a six hour drive through SC.
SC may have some beautiful places, but the 95 corridor is not one of them. It is flat and homogenous. It is the kind of landscape you want to fly through at 80.
Today the drive was a lot like bad sex. You zoom, then slow to crawl, then zoom, then suddenly stop, then zoom... And so it goes without such as a glimmer of eventual release.
Then there was Santee, a foggy oasis of fast food and crap. The perfect way to break the fun.
Thank god for Georgia's three lane high way!

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Two Guys Grill

Today's leg of the Journey started off well. The roads were clear and traffic moved swiftly. Then somewhere in NC we hit a massive traffic jam. In over an hour we moved about 3 miles.
Lunch brightened the day we stopped at Two Guys Grille in Lumberton, NC. I got the southwest chicken salad and it was sublime. The Cajun spiced chicken had just enough kick to clear the sinuses and the cheese was just enough to balance it all out. H got a salad 'freddie' style. It was topped with the innards of a hoogie. It was a little greasy, but not too cheesy.
It gives me hope that the next 400 miles will fly by.

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"Flying" to Florida

H was feeling a little guilty about never visiting my Mom in FL, so we decided that Christmas would be a great time to go. It is also the most expensive time to visit. The cheapest flight and car rental combo H could find cost $1000 and had terrible flight times. Joking, I said we should drive...
So now we are in a Days Inn just outside of Petersburg, VA after a very long day of driving.
One bright spot on the trip (other than getting to spend time with H) was an Itallian resturant named Giuseppe's Pizza in Ruther Glen, VA. The food was simple, cheap, and good. The atmospher was casual. It really hit the spot after 10 hours of traffic.
One other thing that made the drive go by was a Christmas present. H's Dad gave me a Griffin AutoPilot so I can play my iPod through my stereo and keep the iPod charged. Egg 2.0 has an auxilary input, so the audio plays crytal clear. The AutoPilot pulls the audio signal from the dock connector which means there is no messing around with trying to align the volumes.
From the technology incompetence file: We tried to get the GPS to plot the route to my Mom's house while zooming down the Garden State Parkway at 70, but it would just lock up. This was very upsetting because it has been a trusty piece of gear until this point. Eventually we stopped at Dick Clark's American Bandstand for lunch. (It was as bad as the name implies.) While waiting for lunch we decide to give the GPS a chance to redeem itself. After an eternity of calculating it finally pops up with a route. H checked the route over, decided the thing is busted, and hands it to me to check out. The route takes us off of the highway and down a series of back roads.... The last time I had used the GPS was on the bicycle... The GPS was working just fine. I was impressed that it managed to figure out a bike route from NJ to FL. Once I set the GPS to route for a car it spit out excellent directions.

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