April 21-23: Charlotte, NC

We were passing through Charlotte where a friend of the family from days long gone by now lives. It has been such a fascinating and wonderful aspect of the journey to connect with people from the past, and build many more new connections than I ever would have thought possible.

My friend (call him... Manfam. Yes, it's a name. Maybe. Long story) was a wonderful host with a beautiful family. Two adorable kids and a lovely wife, and they were all a complete joy to be around. He cooked us a delicious salmon dinner, before which he gave his brilliant 5 year old daughter a "salmple"... her first taste of the fish. She did not approve. But we did!

After dinner he showed us around a bit. We knew Charlotte was huge (population over 750,000) but didn't quite know what to expect beyond that. It is incredibly expansive. The downtown is only for commercial banking etc, and the art district is contained to one street.



The next day, we went exploring a bit. As it turns out, the family we stayed with are not fans of Charlotte. We weren't particularly fans either. It's just so darn big, but without much of a character connecting the community. It's sprawl at its most extreme. We went to the arts district, which isn't very big... we could only find one cafe on "the strip" and though it was "cool" I can't recommend eating there. How can a bagel be so bad?

We stayed there for a good long while. I wrote one of the last blogs you enjoyed. You know, the one about Dave & co.

From there we drove down the street a bit to the other cafe/bakery our friend showed us the night before. A french hot spot open 24 hours.
Then we checked out downtown a bit, here is what it looked like:

 We headed back to their house, which was the best environment we found in Charlotte by far. The only slight complication happened to be: KG and his allergies. He is allergic to cats, and although sometimes it doesn't affect him too severely, there were 4. He feels guilty denying the hospitality of an offered room and comfortable place to sleep, so when he couldn't breathe at night he insisted on sneaking out to the van in secret. I didn't realize he didn't want them to know (so they wouldn't feel bad? There is nothing for them to feel bad about, of course) and I slept through his text message the second morning, so he was discovered when he sheepishly knocked on the door in his fuzzy monkey pajama pants.

For our last night in town, our friend Manfam found us the best open mic in Charlotte.
Before we left, we got to put in some quality time with those adorable little ones. We showed the gal (the lad too, but he can't talk so I won't misquote him) our van.. she gasped and sang, "how romaaaantic!" Now her parents have to fear her interest in our wild bohemian lifestyle. Woops. We sang some tunes together, and she sent us off to our open mic with good-luck-hugs. I'm even told she said she hoped we were doing well before she fell asleep. She is a wonderful friend.

The open mic was a pretty great experience. The night was packed with the most eclectic music you can imagine, and some of it was very impressive. The best transition was from filthy rap ("she had me stripper-tized") to a mousy brunette on a toy guitar singing love song covers. My other favorite rappers had a very catchy and memorable chorus "You livin in your Mama's house/Sleepin on your Mama's couch/Living on your Mama's land/ Eatin all your Papa's jam". Good stuff. We stayed to watch all the way through until the end (the full house was essentially empty by then), and the last rapper decided to get intimate with the few audience members left. He sang up close at all the remaining ladies, and I was the one lucky enough to get the line, "can I slide up in ya like a visa".. to which KG adorably replied, "No sir you may not" (after he walked away).
Here are shots I snapped of a few of my favorites...

This fella calls himself "The Funky Geezer". Probably approaching 90. Real good. He also told me our set was "killer, man.":

This fella bought our CD! And his song had this great line: "And if you smoke that beer, you'll get kidney stoned."

This is the band "Ancient Cities" - they were the "featured performers" for the night.








It was a great experience. Thanks to
THIS GUY!:

April 17-21: Asheville, NC

Whenever we would tell friends family and strangers about our journey, Asheville is the place that would most consistently be met with a response such as "Oh, you'll absolutely love it there." "It's perfect for you, you'll want to stay forever!" "No one I know has anything bad to say about Asheville." Etc.

Often when so many people build your expectations of a place so much, it can be a dangerous thing. But almost from the moment we arrived, it appeared everyone's glowing reviews were warranted. We went straight to a breakfast spot called "Over Easy" (funnily enough, one of our favorite breakfast spots in Chicago shares the same name) and It. Was. Delicious. I had a scramble of locally grown root vegetables, local farm fresh eggs, cheese, potato AND sweet potato. Yep. Asheville's good at stuff like that.

The rain clouds rolled in, so we went to relax a bit in our handy apartment-on-wheels. It's a pretty nice space to lay back and listen to the drip drops.

The intensity of the downpour didn't last, and as it happened we had parked kitty corner from the Moog Museum. The "museum" isn't open as of yet, but the storefront had an open sign so we went in to play with the synths. Brilliance ensued. Plus, turns out the workshop where they build every single Moog unit is connected to the store and offers free tours  -- the next one about to begin! Yes.

The tour was pretty cool (especially because it was free). Every single Moog instrument ever made was hand made and tested there. The tour guide, however, was extraordinarily lackluster. He was new, and already seemed as though he'd lost all interest in his job. Crack some jokes! Crack a smile! Wow us on the units! Enjoy your life! He did none of these things. Our opinion of his knowledge decreased intensely when we were talking to him about early Moog recordings and he mentioned The Beatles "broke up in 1971..." Oh, sir. You should probably work somewhere else.

This is JZ's! It was damaged beyond repair in Hurricane Sandy

That was a nice way to spend the afternoon. We wandered, as we do... here is photographic evidence.

 We ended up at Mellow Mushroom, Yoshi always narrowing our options to the nicest looking patio. It was very nice looking. See?

We thought it was the one and only Mellow Mushroom, native to downtown Asheville... Therefore we ended up frequenting it twice for the $3 imperial stout. As it turns out, we have already seen it 3 times since in various locations.

That first night in Asheville was to be our very first "couch surfing" experience. We had arranged to stay with a fellow named... well, let's call him "Frank" (his name is not Frank.) We were a little nervous about it, but the site had been highly recommended to us and we felt ready to conquer our social shortcomings.

We arrived at his place (a beautiful house in west Asheville) after dark, and timidly walked up the front sidewalk. We saw he was on the phone on the porch. He waved to us, but didn't end his conversation. We felt strange walking up to the porch while he was talking, and an adorable dog ran up to us so we sat down on the front sidewalk to pet it. Eventually he walked over, and instead of inviting us in he sat down on the sidewalk with us.
Frank: "You chose such a lovely place to sit, beneath this cherry tree. I can't believe I've never thought to sit here before."
Us: "Um, yes. thank you. It is lovely. Beautiful house!"
Frank: "Yes. I live here with six other people. I don't know what kind of people you are, but tonight I'm going to a hippie spiritual song circle."
Us: "Alright, that sounds interesting... what kind of songs? Do people sing what they've written, or songs everyone knows?"
Frank: "Oh, it's mostly just spiritual earth songs."
Us: "Oh, ok. That sounds nice."
Frank: "Yes. I don't know them all, but I do know this one.... *Frank proceeds to serenade us an out of key 'we are the earth we are open to the earth the earth is open we are the open earth' type ditty*... it goes on longer than you'd think. Luckily, we were able to keep our composure. But I'm not sure you understand how surprisingly hilarious the whole thing was.
Us: "Ah... very nice!"

Then the many roommates begin to appear, and we follow them to the backyard. "Frank" disappears, and we start a conversation with a blonde gal, we'll call her "Molly". I don't actually even remember her real name, there were far too many of them. It was very overwhelming. Almost none of them even knew that there were strangers coming to stay for the night, though no one seemed to mind.
We chat with "Molly" for a good long while, she is nice. "Molly" disappears. Mind you, all of these 7 roommates are milling about conversing with each other and clearly always very "together". (By "together" I may or may not be insinuating there were cult-y vibes, "Frank" being "Leader". You decide.) So, now we are sitting with a few other roommates. They are all in and out of the conversation and we (and Yoshi) are very socially lost. "Frank" reappears. He tells us "I'm leaving, but "Molly" says she's taking you guys to the bar, so I'll see ya later." Ok... so much for our spiritual enrichment offer. We do not see "Molly" again, by the way. If there was a bar excursion, we were left out of that. Now we are conversing with .. say... "Daisy" (**sidenote: re: "Smoky mountains camping"... our dear friend Dave, when he couldn't remember my name, referred to me as Daisy. Not even close, but a nice option. Additional sidenote: Dave is Dave's real name. We doubt he'll discover the internets.)

So Daisy is nice, she cooks everyone that is left at home some pasta and talks to us into the night. We offer to hand wash all the dishes (even though they had a dishwasher, but that seemed too easy). When the clock strikes twelve, some people still milling about ask us if we need pillows and blankets for the couch or if we're staying in our vehicle. We say we have a perfectly nice bed in the van, and don't mind staying there for the night. We are finally alone, and can admit out loud to each other how strange that all was. Kevin says, "I couldn't tell if you were into it or not." What? Do you remember when he sang to us about the earth? And we laughed and laughed, in very non earthly-open fashion. But it was FUNNY. It just was. If you'd have been there..

We shower in the morning and notice the community white board has a note from the Leader: "To whoever washed the dishes last night, they were stacked too high! My favorite hand made mug almost fall off! Please, slow down and be gentle!" * grammatical error accurate* We leave the group home, knowing we would be far too fast and un-gentle to live there any longer. It was "chill" in a very strict way.

We went to a breakfast place nearby, and once again it was all local farm fresh deliciousness with an adorable patio for the pooch. Then we wandered the streets and eventually drove to the park on the river. There was a dog run there where we ended up talking to a man for over an hour who was originally from Detroit and then upstate New York. In the south, even people originally from the north are ready for a good long chitty-chat. If they're from Michigan, it's usually about how tragic Detroit is.

Later in the evening on a walk with Yoshi through the residential streets, we met this awesome guy and his tiny dog, Chocolate:

 He lived in a camper on the street, and it inspired us that Asheville is one of the few places you can get away with that. Sadly, Odell was informing us and his neighbor friends who would wander by: "You'll never guess what somebody wrote on my house. 'Get out of my hood'. What is this? This town ain't what it used to be with these rich folks movin' in. My hood? This ain't no kinda hood! Not unless you're wearing one..." His dog ran around leash-less and adorable, like he owned the place. He was placed in Odell's coat only when his adoration of Yoshi became increasingly physical, to which Odell would say, "Chocolate, you horny mother****er! It's all that long blonde hair!!" It was good times. The only bit that got a tad unnerving was when Odell said, "Listen Claire. My half sister and her husband used to drink, and when they were real drunk they got physical. One time, he pushed her in their trailer and she hit her head. She had called me earlier to come by but when I got there she was dead, Claire. And the cops detained me for a little while and questioned me, and I told them they get drunk and they fight, and he pushed her! He pushed her and she died." His eyes welled up a bit. This story came out of no where, as our long conversation was almost entirely light hearted and humorous. "Did they ever figure out that he was the one who did it?" I asked him. "Oh yeah, they got it straight soon enough." We believe he was a good man and was telling the truth, but it was a strange and unexpected story about a past we certainly didn't know much about. Nevertheless, we are big Odell fans. He gave us his number to hang out the following day, and we really should have used it.

That night we felt comfortable sleeping in our van in the neighborhood, the first time ever not legally sleeping in a Walmart parking lot. Asheville is just too relaxed to worry much over sleeping in your van. It went well! KG didn't have even one panic attack about the po-po in the middle of the night.

The next day we ate and walked and ate and walked. Asheville was a good place for that.

It was another rainy day, so we ended up spending most of our time at a cafe and then a fancy tea house. From there, we had plans for our second couch surfing experience. KG was convinced he wouldn't like it, based on the first one. We figured it was worth at least one more try. Boy, was he ever glad we did. We were staying with a man we fondly refer to as "Farmer Tom"... he was Kevin's dream man. Handsome, strong, kind and owned a self sufficient farm! Supplies his own water from a spring, had friends help him build an amazingly beautiful home, grows his own food, makes his own walnut wine, cooks well, generous, engaging... it was a nice place. Yoshi LOVED running around exploring the 11 acres. Every time he would get out of sight for a second and we'd call for him, Farmer Tom would give a wave of his hand and say "she's fine" (no matter how many times we told him he's a he.) However... mid conversation Farmer Tom sees Yoshi sniffing around down the hill and goes "HEY!! NO! GET! You better get her away from the bee area, that fence is electric to keep out the bears and if she touches it it'll knock her on her ass." We all started yelling, but soon enough "AROOOOOO!" says Yoshi. He runs back up the hill and lays down at our feet, finished exploring this farm forever. "Good thing I haven't charged it up in a few weeks, after I charged it once I accidentally touched it and I thought I was going to die. Lost my vision a bit and my heart was thumping out of my chest for at least ten minutes." Says the tall and muscular man. Poor little dog!

We talked into the night and he made us delicious french toast and omelettes with fresh farm veggies in the morning. 

 Speaking of the poor dog, as he is adorably resting in his bed in the house Kevin says: "Oh no, Claire! Looks like he has a gray sore on his leg!" Farmer Tom: "No.... that right there is a tick." Really? You sure? Oh yes. Farmer Tom swiftly pulls it off on the porch, and it is bigger than you can tell in this picture:

Then we squashed the little bugger.

We had pulled some tics off Yoshi already in the trip, but none that had gotten hold yet. It was the start of a nightmare. These things are EVERYWHERE in the south this season. We check him constantly. Tic borne diseases are KG's new obsession. Not in a good way.

From the farm we went to get a drink in the double decker bus cafe (mine they announced on loudspeaker from the bottom floor since we were sitting on the top: "Claire, your "kick in the butt" is ready!" Then sheepisly apologized when I came down to get it. I don't mind, it's the name of the drink!)

We Wandered More! --->

This was a street festival that the police kicked us out of... "No Dogs, sorry".

Yoshi is very popular.

We met up with Farmer Tom in the evening to take him out to dinner and drinks as a thank you for his hospitality. Then we slept on another quiet residential street and left the following day. The journey continues in: Charlotte.