Pandemic Wandering, Day 3

Saturday, in Nashville

The real reason I made this trip was to go to Lane's Motor Museum. I won't rehash the saga of my last trip to Nashville to see it; anyone who knows me has already heard it twice, even if they don't remember it. Today, though, I got there.

I also got to the Parthenon, the only other Major Sight Worth Seeing in Nashville (in my estimation). It did not disappoint.

pardon their landscaping dust

In 1896, Tennessee had its centennial as a state. A year later (money being scarce, it took a while to get enough together) they put on a celebration, a sort of World's Fair, and as part of that, they built a replica of the Parthenon as it would have looked before the ravages of war and time had their effect. It was meant to be temporary, and was built out of cardboard and glue. When the time came to tear it down (as they did with all the other buildings of the Centennial Celebration), the city of Nashville refused to let that happen. The building had wormed its way into the civic heart. So instead of tearing it down, they rebuilt it, this time out of concrete cleverly formulated to mimic the golden colour of the original. It's used as an art museum.

As a building, it's a glory. It doesn't have the dramatic setting of the original, up on its hill, but it has all the majesty. It is an excellent demonstration of what was so great about ancient Greek architecture. As an art museum, it's less impressive. There's a modest collection, mostly of landscapes donated by some rich guy a century ago, and it hosts other small travelling exhibits; small, because there's only one room on the one floor to exhibit in. The exhibition on show today was a particularly good example of how horribly bad modern art can be when an art-school graduate gets a bit of a name in toney art circles.

There is, though, a second floor, and when you ascend the stairs to it, you are astounded. It's a single large high-ceilinged room, a re-creation of the Temple of Athena as it would have been 2500 years ago in Athens, right down to the gaudy gigantic gilded statue of Athena. It is magnificent.

The statue of Nike in Athena's hand is 6'4" tall

That took up a much bigger chunk of my morning than I had anticipated.

Then came the Lane Motor Museum, the thing that drew me back to Nashville in the first place. I go to a lot of car museums. I love looking at the stylings of cars and how they've changed over the decades. The earliest cars were unadorned machines, but it didn't take long for appearances to become important in selling those machines, and by 1920, automotive design had developed into a Thing. Back then, many cars were sold as chassis and motor, and the purchaser hired a coachwork company to put a body on it. Manufacturers noticed, and soon they were offering bodies that, they hoped, would attract buyers to their cars. By the end of the Great Depression and the start of World War II, coachbuilders were either out of business or subsumed into manufacturing companies. (Think "Body by Fisher.") Very few have survived independently to the current era.

No, not a Thunderbird;
an Audi

And styling tastes vary greatly from company to company, and from country to country. That's why this particular museum was such a draw for me: it specialises in exhibiting European cars. (Others I've seen like that are the Tampa Automobile Museum and the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California.) Besides getting to see the different paths that foreign designers took, I also enjoy seeing the convergences between their tastes and American stylists' tastes. Right now, for example, you can look at any new car lot and see how American automotive designs have taken cues from designers in Germany and Japan, Italy and England; before, designers in those places took cues from Detroit.

And, of course, some of those foreign designs look just a little wacky to me.

1951 Hoffman (Germany)

1958 Tatra (Czechoslovakia)

1950 Lloyd (Germany)
vinyl skin over plywood

1991 Nissan (Japan)

As do some of the American designs I've seen.

1950 Martin Stationette (USA)

Those are fun to look at, but it's really for the exemplars of beauty that I go to car museums, the marriage of elegance and technological innovation. Foreign car stylists solve those marital problems in different ways from their American counterparts, and I like seeing how they do it.

And here, once again, is a link to the photo album for this trip. I apologise for the quality of the 150 or so car pictures I took today, but the building housing the collection has lots of windows and so lots of glare. You can take some comfort in knowing that I've deleted the worst of them.

Tomorrow, I head off to start counting counties, in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky; and I may even get to Ohio, but I doubt it.

2020 Pandemic Wandering, Day 2

Friday, June 12, Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee

The actual trace, in 2008

So I drove the entire length of the Natchez Trace Parkway. You may not know this -- I only figured it out the first time I was on the Parkway -- but the Natchez Trace Parkway and the Natchez Trace are two very different things. The Natchez Trace is the web of buffalo migratory paths and the footpaths Native Americans developed, first to follow the buffalo, and then in their trading with other tribes through what is now Mississippi; it was later improved as a Post Road in the early 19th Century, but the development of the steam-powered river boat put an end to that use.

The Parkway is just a well-maintained country road that roughly parallels the Trace, built originally as a back-to-work project of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. There are few major towns along it -- only Jackson and Tupelo, Mississippi and Florence, Alabama -- and commercial traffic is prohibited. In the first 100 miles I drove out of Natchez, I saw another car about every nine miles. Things picked up after that, as I approached Jackson. The road is two lanes the entire length of 444 miles, and the speed limit is 50 almost the whole way. (In places it drops to 40.) It's a pleasant drive, with almost no challenge to it, and very little drama.


Putting two and two together, when planning the drive I figured nine hours, plus stops. Google Maps confirmed that estimate, giving me a time of eight and a half hours. I must've made a lot more stops than I thought, as it took me from 7:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night to make the drive. At the outset, I did make a number of stops: there are a lot of signs along the route that say things like "Historical Site, 1/2 mile," but I quickly realized they were all of the "Something used to be here" variety, so I bypassed them when I figured that out. (There are also a lot of places where you can hike portions of the actual Trace; those are of the "Come

Come Experience Misery

Experience Pre-Industrial Misery" sort, and I chose to pass on the offer.) I made a stop for a meagre lunch at Kosciusko, Mississippi (a lousy convenience-store fish sandwich) where I met another couple from San Antonio (but they live waaaay out in Ultra-Loopland, so it's not like we would ever get together). They were cruising the Parkway on a tricycle, so we had that to talk about, plus the wife is from France, so there was that.

Jackson Falls

I may have been able to make the drive on a single tank of gas, but decided that it would be cutting it uncomfortably close, so I did get off and drive 3 miles down another highway (and back) for gas in Alabama. And once I got to Tennessee there were a couple of waterfalls to check out: the first was a short walk for not much to see; the second, Jackson Falls, was a pretty steep climb down and an equally steep climb back up, but at least the falls were worth the effort. Plus I met a transplanted New Orleanian, a nice guy who invited me to join him and another Orleanian living in Nashville for dinner Saturday night. (I didn't go. I'm writing this blog instead.)

Meanwhile, I've learned two new things. Well, okay, one new thing, plus I've had one thing I already knew confirmed.

The new thing is that the hair on the top of my head has thinned to the point where I now get sunburned driving with the top down. I wear a visor (and lots of suntan lotion) when I travel, and it's never been a problem before. Now, it is, so I will have to start a search for a hat or cap that doesn't get sucked off when the car is in motion. That could be a problem, with the shape of my head. (Maybe I could get a bill cap and cut out the back part of the crown...?)

The thing I've had confirmed is that I prefer being cheap. The hotels I chose in Natchez and Nashville are the type that certain friends who've travelled with me in the past would have preferred. Not the Four Seasons by any stretch, but nicer than I usually go for; 3-star places. Since rates are low just now, what with the corona virus keeping people home, I decided to go with things my friends would prefer. It ain't me, though. I paid $87 plus tax for a room in Natchez; I could have gotten one that would have been good enough for me for less than $60. I miss the thirty bucks. This room in Nashville is about the same cost, but on top of that, there's a parking charge of $20/night that really gripes my ass. (I thought I specified "free parking" when I searched for the room on Expedia or whatever site I booked through. I may be wrong. In any case, I won't make that mistake again.) I could have gotten a perfectly decent room with free parking at a La Quinta -- several in town -- and saved more than $80.

So from now on, two stars is enough for me when I'm travelling alone. Hell, one is sufficient in most places, but I find those often aren't much cheaper than 2-star motels. (Of course, I end up in a lot of 1-star or no-star motels, because that's all a lot of small towns offer.) All I want is a conveniently-located clean room with free parking and internet (another tick mark against the place in Natchez).

And, again, here's a link to the picture album for this trip.

2020 Pandemic Wandering, Day One

I wrote this Thursday night, but couldn't publish it then because the Internet at the fancy-schmancy hotel I used was not acceptably secure. Sorry for the delay.
 
First, a rant:

We are in the middle of a serious pandemic, which surely everyone in the country knows. Unfortunately, people seem to not understand the most basic fact about this pandemic disease, which is that is spreads from one person to another through the air we breathe.

Travelling alone in a car, I feel pretty safe from infection. Stopping at a gas station seems safe enough, as I can generally do my business there entirely away from other people. Even when I go into a convenience store (because of course the card reader at the pump wasn’t working) the clerk is behind a plexiglas shield. OK, safe enough there. But when I went to a Subway shop for lunch, I saw 8 people in line, none of them wearing a mask. Even worse, the three “sandwich artists” behind the counter weren’t wearing masks. 

Those are the people who, more than anyone else, should wear masks. The are the primary vectors for the disease. They are potentially exposed to the virus by every single person who steps up to place an order, and they will pass that exposure along to every subsequent person they talk to. 

I went somewhere else for lunch. Subway sandwiches are pretty good, and I like knowing what I’m getting, nutritionally speaking, but they are not literally to die for.

OK, so that’s off my chest now.

DAY 1: Thursday, June 11, San Antonio to Natchez

The drive over was uneventful. Top down all the way, and for those who are homebound in this health emergency, I can report that intercity traffic along I-10 is only slightly less than in normal times. Certainly every over-the-road truck is out there, and traffic between Katy and Houston was heavy enough that I opted to take the Katy Tollway, where mine was one of three cars I saw using it before the tollway ended at Loop 610. And for those who know me, the fact that I was willing to pay the extra dollar to use the tollway along there should be proof enough that traffic in the mainlanes was heavy.

I got to my hotel in Natchez about 6pm. There was no one at the desk, so while I waited for the clerk to return I made some calculations and decided that I could grab a quick dinner and get to Windsor Ruins in time to take some sunset pictures there. I had planned to stop there in the morning — it’s just a few miles off the Natchez Trace Parkway, and about 40 miles from my hotel. 

So I drove up there. A nice drive: once I passed the city’s airport, there was almost no traffic at all and the sun was low enough in the sky to the west that it produced no glare and little heat. I got to the ruins, down a pleasant country lane, and was the only person there.

Windsor Ruins

Windsor Ruins are the remains of a huge plantation mansion built just before the Civil War. It survived that cataslysm largely unscathed, only to burn down in a fire 25 years later. All that remains is the Corinthian collonade that surrounded the house. I was expecting it to be as mystically eerie as the reconstructed collonade from the US Capitol’s porch that stands in the National Arboretum in Wasshington DC (see below), but because these ruins are somewhat unstable, they are surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence, so you cannot walk among the columns; and the fence is high enough that, for most of its circumference, it’s very hard for even a tall person to get a good picture. I could just get my lens over the top rail if I stood on tiptoe, and not always then. (There’s also a place in back where some frustrated tourist or uncaring teenager has cut the fence open.) Still, I think I got some decent pictures (including, I hope, a couple of nice shots with the car in them. Sadly, I won’t know until tomorrow, because this fancy hotel I chose to stay in (because rates are cheap right now, what with the pandemic) has an unsecured wireless internet with an unrecognised certificate, and so Firefox, my browser of choice, will not allow me to connect to it. So I will have to wait until tomorrow to upload my pictures and have a look at them, at which time I will cut and paste this narrative from my notepad to my blog.

The collonade at the Nat'l Arboretum, in DC

 








And here's a link to the pictures from this trip.

The Adventure Resumes

Oh, this "lockdown" has been tedious. Not so much for me: my normal life before coronavirus wasn't so very different from life in lockdown. Still, plans were upset.

Several years ago I acknowledged that I had driven my little convertible into the ground, as expected, and I got rid of it with the expectation that I would find something else to replace it with; another convertible, newer and possessed of a longer

The Old One

lifespan than a 13-year-old car with close to 200,000 miles on it, but one with the legroom and trunkroom that I absolutely require for the kind of travelling I like to do; and one with something like the sexy flowing lines of the old convertible.

Well, surprise, surprise: after a search of 4 or 5 years, I accepted the fact that there simply are no newer convertibles that  have the particular combination of attributes I wanted. There are beautiful cars out there, to be sure; I'm particularly attracted to the large Mercedes convertible. But none of those pretty cars, including especially the large Mercedes, have sufficient trunk room. Once you put the top down, an adequate stowage compartment becomes a slot for a briefcase. And other pretty convertibles start out with a too-small trunk.And others have cockpits so restrictive that I can barely slide under the steering wheel.

So last year I did some reflecting, and decided that, given the limited time I have left to do the kind of travelling I want (even though I'm still only 49 again), and the limited demands I make on my road car -- averaging 40 mph on back roads, even for days at a stretch, just isn't the sort of challenge a decent vehicle, even an old one, will succumb to -- I decided that what I need is another old sexy Jag. So I bought one, in January, in California. Drove it home just in time to beat the virus to South Texas. (Possibly worse.) And so it's been pretty much sitting in my driveway, laughing at me, as I cancel one planned trip after another, waiting for some place to go.

The New One

Enough. I can "social distance" as well in a car by myself as I can in my own neighbourhood. While in past travels I have occasionally met new people, and even developed a handful of good long-distance friendships with people from across the country, and renewed some old relationships, there's I see no reason why I should feel more at risk talking briefly to a masked hotel desk clerk or a waitress in a cafe in some remote hillside community in Kentucky than I already am when fondling groceries at the local supermarket, or having coffee and chilaquiles in the local taquería. So, why sit home?

And so, my county count will resume. Come Thursday, I'm heading out. First I plan to drive the entire length of Natchez Trace Parkway (I've already driven most of it: 40 mph on a nice country road uninterrupted by cross-traffic for 8 hours), then I'm off for a wander through the backroads of Tennessee and Kentucky, visiting counties I've never been to before. (There are plenty in Kentucky, and I won't get to all of them; there are fewer in Tennessee, but I'll only get to about half of what's left.) Then, up into Ohio, where there are six counties I've never seen, all in the northwest part of that state, so I will get to all of them, and that will make Ohio the 32nd state that I finish with. I'll get to some counties in Indiana and Missouri on the way home, but again, won't finish with those. (I could, easily, if I was willing to take the time, but the Merseyside Derby is set to take place on Father's Day, and I want to be home in time to watch it with my wife. It matters, especially this year. Certainly more than a few additional counties in the midwest.)

In past years, I would post prolix accounts of my trips as I went along. (As here, for example.) That got inconvenient when I travelled with friends, as there was usually something more interesting to do than type all evening. So I just started posting links to the pictures I took that day. Then that got inconvenient, as technology issues often got in the way. So I switched to just posting links to the photo albums when I got home. Well, this time I'll be travelling alone again, so I figure to have not much else to do of an evening than post travelogues every evening, or at least most evenings, wifi permitting. That plan was threatened by the fact that both of my computers were out of action, one dead, one dying. But today my little Macbook Air was saved from the rubbish heap by the timely intercession of a not-too-inconveniently-located repair shop (and two hundred dollars), no thanks to Apple and its poorly designed website.* So I will have my little computer along, and my camera batteries are charging as I type, and maybe there will be something of interest to take a picture of, once I get to Natchez.

Stay tuned.

The County-Count Status Map (not totally up-to-date)

* for example: I forgot my Apple ID, so I clicked on the "forget?" link ... and the first thing it tells you to do is enter your Apple ID. Duh.