Random Road Trip Day 2 (14 Sep 2014)

We had a lot of fun on day 1 of our adventure.

At the beginning of day 2, we owed the dice 2 hours to the east.  We started on our way East and decided to stop at the Circle G Safari Park.  Mary and I haven't laughed this much in a long time.

Source: Circle G Website - Circle G Ranch is a 105 acre, 3 mile drive - thru exotic animal park with many adventures to choose from. Drive your own vehicle through the park or rent a jeep.  All the animals will come right up to your car for an up close, personal experience. Our animals are extremely friendly and gentle. Feeding zebra, emus, deer, etc. is not something you can do at your regular zoo. We have over 500 exotic animals that includes 40 different species that coexist and roam freely together. Here, we encourage that you engage and touch our animals rather than stand behind fences and watch. At the Circle G Ranch, you are the one on exhibit.. not the animals. The petting zoo is usually our nursery for all lambs, goats and camel and pot bellied pig babies. It's always a huge hit with everyone.  Our pride and joy is our Camel Safari. We are the only one in the country of it's kind and caught the attention of The Travel Channel for coverage as a "unique experience and travel destination". Our Camel Safari is a trail ride, that is a guided tour through our animal park. So while riding a camel you are viewing all the animals in our park, in a natural setting. It is truly a wild safari. Your guide will educate you on all the animals in the park and answer any questions you may have on a particular species. So, you do not have to go all the way to Africa to have this experience. It is a once of a lifetime adventure in your very own backyard. We have so much to offer local families at an affordable price and we guarantee an adventure you and yours will never forget. It's important in our time to educate and conserve while offering an inexpensive option for families and friends.  If you have had a camel ride at the Knoxville Zoo or attended the Dixie Stampede Christmas show, those are our animals. So, we like to think all of our animals here at the Circle G Ranch are superstars.

The animals at the safari park literally attacked us.  

Do you have food for me?

After leaving the safari park, we continued on our journey East and stopped at a rest stop.  Mary rolled the dice.

South

3 hours South

3 hours South took us to Chimney Rock, North Carolina.

Source: Wikipedia - Chimney Rock State Park is a North Carolina state park in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina in the United States. The 5,942-acre (24.05 km2) park is located 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Asheville, North Carolina, and is owned by the state of North Carolina.

It offers hiking trails for all skill levels, spectacular views, the Devil's Head balancing rock and a 404-foot (123 m) waterfall, Hickory Nut Falls. Its most notable feature is a 315-foot (96 m) rock formation, a granite monolith, Chimney Rock, accessible by elevator and providing views of the park and surrounding countryside. Areas within the park as well as surrounding the park were featured prominently in the 1984 film A Breed Apart and most of the final scenes of the 1992 adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans.

Mary below Chimney Rock

Jack below Chimney Rock

The tunnel to the 26 story elevator

Our Car is way down there

Jack and Mary on Chimney Rock

Chimney Rock from the Opera Box

Jack at Walnut Falls

Mary at Walnut Falls

Walnut Falls

Time to roll the dice again.

6 hours South

And the verdict is 6 hours South.  We finished 2.5 hours of the six today.  We need to do another 3.5 hours tomorrow.  Today we made it as far as Columbia, SC.

Welcome to South Carolina

At the end of day two,we covered three states and 310 miles.

Day 2 - 310 Miles and 3 States

Tomorrow - Day 3 (15 Sep 2014)

Random Road Trip Day 1 (13 Sep 2014)

In celebration our 25th Wedding Anniversary, Mary and I are taking a totally random road trip.  You are probably asking yourself what exactly is a totally random road trip.  We are rolling dice to see where we will go.  Really.

Actually, we draw a direction tile, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW.  Then we roll a six sided die to see how many hours we will drive in that direction.  The only other rule is that we will not double back on the same road we have already traveled.

Dice Roll Number One

4 Hours North

So Mary got the honors for the first dice roll.  The result was 4 hours North.

We decided to stick with two lane roads as much as possible.

Our first stop was the James Polk House in Columbia, TN.

Mary at Polk House

The James K. Polk Ancestral Home, also known as James K. Polk House, is U.S. President James K. Polk's only surviving home other than the White House. It is located at 301 West 7th St., Columbia, Tennessee.

Sisters House at the Polk Compound

Mary Being Touristy

James K. Polk

James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th President of the United States (1845–1849). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and Governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). Polk was the surprise (dark horse) candidate for president in 1844, defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to invade and annex Texas. Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System.

Polk was the last strong pre–Civil War president, and he is the earliest of whom there are surviving photographs taken during a term in office. He is noted for his foreign policy successes. He threatened war with Britain over the issue of which nation owned the Oregon Country, then backed away and split the ownership of the region with Britain. When Mexico rejected American annexation of Texas, Polk led the nation to a sweeping victory in the Mexican-American War, which gave the United States most of its present Southwest. He secured passage of the Walker tariff of 1846, which had low rates that pleased his native South, and he established a treasury system that lasted until 1913.

Polk oversaw the opening of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Smithsonian Institution, the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first postage stamps in the United States. He promised to serve only one term and did not run for reelection. He died of cholera three months after his term ended.

Scholars have ranked him favorably on the list of greatest presidents for his ability to set an agenda and achieve all of it. Polk has been called the "least known consequential president" of the United States

Marble Table Given to President Polk by an African Country

Jack Churning Butter

Mary Admiring the Spices

The Garden at the James Polk House

We enjoyed the tour of the house and property by Leigh and John.  After we departed the James Polk house we continued our trip North. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch.

Next we headed to the Factory Shopping Center in Franklin, TN.  The main purpose of the stop was to see "Rusty Mechanism",  but the Shopping Center was very cool.  Lots of artists and cool little shops.

Rusty Mechanism

After our visit with Rusty, it was time to roll the dice again.  This time it was Jack's turn.

The verdict was 5 hours east.

East

5 hours

We decide to jump on I-40 and made it as far as Knoxville, TN before we decided to stop for the night.  We could have gone further, but we both wanted to watch the Alabama - Southern Mississippi Game.  We will drive the remaining 2 hours East tomorrow morning.

After checking in at the hotel, Mary and I decided to grab some food at a local restaurant. The entire restaurant was decked out in University of Tennessee decorations.  Mary and I joked about her wearing an Alabama shirt.  When we got back to our hotel with our food, we discovered that her sandwich was missing the chicken.  A coincidence?  I think not.

Relaxing and Watching Football - Roll Tide

At the end of the day, we covered 285 miles.

Day One Map - 285 Miles

Next Day 2

OK Go - The Writing's on the Wall

I am totally digging the OK Go Video.  Their videos are always creative and this one is no exception. I am amazed that this video was filmed in a single take.  This video is all about perspective; the illusions are real, so to speak, and that's what makes this jaw-dropping.

Perspective images such as something called the Necker cube, a flat line drawing that looks three-dimensional but isn't, make my eyes pop.

There are a lot of illusions that really mess with your brain.  My favorite is the upside down bike riding.  Who thinks of this stuff.  And like all things in this original music video, it makes me question perception and think about how your perspective can dictate understanding. Which of course is what the song is about.  Enjoy!

Which OK GO video is your favorite?

Green LED Christmas Lights

Every year I do a nice Christmas display in my front yard. A few year ago I switched from the mini-incandescent lights to the LED lights.  I like them. They look nice. The are energy efficient.  They last a long time.  But they have presented me with a dilemma.  My light display uses red, white, blue and green lights.  If you go to the various retail stores including but not limited to Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Lowes you can buy LED Christmas Lights.  They have red.  They have White.  They have Blue.  They do not have Green.  What the heck?  Why do they not sell green Christmas lights?  You can buy multi-color strings that include green lights, but they do not sell all green strings.  And yes, I have asked the sales people and customer service folks at all of the stores.  I get the same reaction from all of them. I ask, "Do you have all green LED Christmas lights?"  They say, "Yes, follow me please." And then we walk to the LED Christmas light section and low and behold, they do not have "all green" strings.  They store employees look perplexed and say things like, "I was so sure that we sold "all green" LED lights."


I even tried buying multi-color strings and separated the lights into homogeneous colors, but that is crazy hard and takes a long time.  And they often mix in colors like yellow which I have no use for. So as a result, I'm stuck buying them online which is normally less expensive, but apparently not for "all green" LED Christmas lights.  Sigh.....  If anyone has a better solution, please let me know.

I Do Know Jack

We all have our little crosses to bear in life.  Mine are fairly mild in the grand scheme of things, but they still get under my skin.  One of my minor pet peeves is my name.  I love my name.  It's part of me.  But I cringe when folks misuse my name in some sort of way.  You see, my name is Jack.  And I dislike it when people say, "You don't know Jack."

Jack is a perfectly good name.  Lots of famous people have been named Jack including Jack Benny (Comedian), Jack Nicholson (Actor) and Jack Black (Actor).  And then we have a group of people who think the name Jack is so cool that they go by it even though it isn't their real name like Jack Kennedy (President).  And we can't forget the long list of fictional characters like Jack Frost and Captain Jack Sparrow.  I wasn't named after any of these people though.  I was named after my dad of whom I was very proud. His name was also Jack.

The first time I really ever thought much about my name occurred when I went off to school on my first day of kindergarten.  I had been anticipating kindergarten for a long time.  Well, as long of a time as it is possible for any five year old to anticipate anyways.  My mother took me to school, kissed me on the top of my head and faded back to the door of the school and probably expected me to run after her.  I didn't though.  I fortified myself and marched right up to the teacher's desk with all of the confidence that I could muster.  The teacher said, "Good morning young man.  What is your name?"  Aha, at least the teacher was asking me a question that I was sure I could answer.  I proudly stated, "My name is Jack."  What a piece of cake.  I hope that I get a few more softball questions like that.  I might be the valedictorian.  I wasn't prepared for her reaction though.  The teach looked over her glasses at me and said, "Tsk, Tsk, Tsk, No, That will not do young man.  That will not do at all.  Jack is a nickname and we do not use nicknames in this classroom. Your real name is John and in this classroom, you shall be called John." What? I might as well tear up my valedictory speech now.  I'm so stupid that I don't even know my own name. And by this point, I was really starting to second guess everything.  I was wracking my brain to try and remember what my real name was. I didn't remember anyone ever calling me John.  My family always called me Jackie.  My friends always called me Jackie.  I was pretty sure that was just a form of Jack though.

So, I sat there for the rest of the day in a funk while wearing my "John" name tag and wondered about what other lies my family had told me.  If they really were my family. When my mother came to pick me up after school, I ran over and hugged her.  She got a confused look on her face when she looked at my name tag. She asked, "Why are you wearing a name tag that says John?"  I told her that my real name is John.  As if she didn't know.  She blinked once or twice and then said, "Who told you that?"  My teacher of course! "Your name is not John.  It is Jack. I named you myself. That is the name that is on your birth certificate." And then she marched into the classroom and punched the teacher right in the eye.  Well, not really.  As a child I always hoped that she would  would punch my teacher in the eye, but she never did. She did straighten out the confusion over my name though.  My teacher stated that she honestly didn't know that people could have the name Jack as their given name.  That was back in the 1960s.  She would probably have a heart attack if she was alive today and had children in her classroom with names like Jeevika, Navaryous, Xenon, and Hailo.  But in those days, having a child named Jack was apparently pretty exotic.

So, I made it through a few years of school without too much trouble.  In school my name was Jack.  At home though they called me something else.  As I said earlier, I was named after my father Jack H. Mast, Sr. Yes, that makes me Jack H. Mast, Jr.  Of course you can't have two people named Jack in the same house. All kinds of chaos would have resulted from that arrangement.  You don't want multiple people to come running every time you call out a name.  I suppose that they could have called me Junior.  That is a good rednecky sounding moniker.  My family didn't do that though.  Instead of Junior, they called me Jackie. When I was really young, it didn't bother me in the least, because I didn't know any better.  As I got a little older I found out that boys named Jackie can have a hard time.  As a result, I made sure that all of my family members called me Jack in front of my school friends.  That arrangement seemed to work for the most part. Jackie at home and Jack in school.  But then one day in the sixth grade, those two worlds collided.  One of my female classmates called the house to ask about a homework assignment. My mother answered the phone and was apparently surprised to have a girl calling the house looking for me.  So she called out in her very loudest mother voice and without covering the mouth piece on the phone, "Jackie! There's a phone call for you!  And it's a girl!"

Oh good lord.  What has she done?  I hoped beyond hope that Beth, the girl who had called, had either not heard what my mother had said or at least wouldn't make a big deal out of it. With much trepidation, I went off the school the next day.  I casually walked onto the playground where we grouped up prior to school. I didn't make eye contact with anyone.  I just tried to maintain a low profile.  For a few minutes, this strategy seemed to be working. OK. I'm OK. Nothing bad is going to happen.  It's all good.  Phewww.  I dodged the bullet.  And just then, it happened.  I heard Beth's voice screaming from across the playground,.  "Jackie! There's a phone call for you!  And it's a girl."  Oh why didn't I just stick with the name John when I had the chance?

Over the years I've come to grips with all of the variations of my name.  Jack, Jackie, and even occasional Jacques.   I am even amused when people will say to my face, "You don't know Jack!"  Hmmm.  How can that be possible? And having lived pretty far away from my hometown in Pennsylvania, I am almost always called Jack now because that is how I introduce myself.  But every once in a while when I travel back to the homeland, I am caught off guard when one of my family members, old friends or old neighbors gives me a hug, shakes my hand and calls me Jackie.  And somehow that name that used to send shivers up my spine no longer does.  Now it just feels like coming home.  So when people say to me that I don't know Jack, I politely tell them that I disagree.  Not only do I know Jack, but I also know his inner child Jackie.  Cheers!

Watch TV Online

Have you considered ditching your cable or satellite TV provider and just watched TV online?  This sounds good in theory, but can you actually find the programming that you want online?

Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

We are getting ever closer to the point where the internet is the sole entertainment and information provider. Like most people, I am always looking for a way to save a few bucks.  Kicking my cable bill to the curb would be sweet.  But I like to watch a few TV shows.  I decided to see if I could still get my programming without cable.  Here is the list of online tv content providers I was able to come up with.  If you have any good options that I am missing, please leave me a comment.

Here is the list of free online television providers that I found.

Hulu TV
Hulu is free, but has a limited number of television episodes.  Hulu is a teaser for Hulu Plus which has an expanded episode list for $7.99 per month.  You can use the one free week trial prior to committing to the Hulu plus price.

Youtube Television
Youtube is Free.  So you thought that Youtube was just for dancing cat videos didn't you?  Not anymore. Now you can view a variety of television shows like Family Guy, Falling Skies and How I Met your Mother. The best thing about Youtube is the fact that you can access it on any platform.  They have been around for a long time and know who to deliver streaming video.

ITV Player
Some limited episodes for free.  Other episodes available for rent.

Cinemanow Brought to you by the nice people at Best Buy.  Some shows for free.  Others for rent.

Broadcasters with online content

• ABC
• NBC
• CBS
• Fox

History of the Feather Duster

Disclaimer: This is not about the history of all Feather Dusters.  This is the history of a particular feather duster.  If you are looking for the history of all feather dusters, you should go to this link.

Let's see. The year was 1986. That was the year that Chernobyl blew up.  We found out about the Iran Contra affair. "Out of Africa" won the Oscar for best picture.  And oh yeah, that was the year that I went to Army basic training.

I showed up at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri on a Greyhound Bus with a bunch of other young guys. None of us knew what we were getting into, but we were all trying to act brave and act like there was nothing the Army could do to us.  The first couple of days were pretty easy.  Short haircuts.  Bags of uniforms and Army guy stuff.  Learning how to march in a straight line.  All pretty easy.  My buddies and I were starting to think that all of the horror stories we had heard about Army basic training were just a bunch of hooey. Of course we hadn't even reported to our training unit yet.  We were just at the reception station.  But what did we know?

On the third day, we lined up in front of our barracks and waited for the cattle truck to come and pick us up to take us to our training unit.  For those of you who have never experienced a cattle truck, it is an eighteen wheel trailer with rudimentary benches and metal monkey bars welded into the inside so that you had something to hang on to.  The truck that showed up for us was rated for about 50 people.  We instead stuffed in about 100 people along with two large duffle bags each.  The drill sergeant who rode along with us was very nice.  He told us that he was happy to meet us.  He told us all about the nice building that we would be living in.  He really made us feel comfortable even though there were one hundred young men stuffed into a space designed for fifty. We noticed though that as our trip continued, the very nice drill sergeant became more and more gruff and more and more agitated.

By the time we pulled up in front of our training unit, that very nice drill sergeant was now a very angry sounding drill sergeant.  And the worst part was that apparently he had a bunch of drill sergeant buddies and they seemed even more angry than he was.  One of my fellow recruits tripped while climbing down out of the cattle truck and by this point we were so scared that each and every one of us walked right across his back in an effort to comply with the drill sergeants demands.  He wasn't hurt mind you because the large duffle bag strapped across his back provided lots of cushion.

We all ran to the front of the barracks and got in line whilst the very angry drill sergeant and his very angry drill sergeant buddies proceeded to tell us how very displeased they were by our performance.  And to drive the point home we got the opportunity to do some mandatory physical fitness training exercises.  For those of you who have never participated in army calisthenics in the middle of summer in Missouri, think hot yoga but not as relaxing.

So after the mandatory physical fitness training, we then had a shake down inspection.  This is where you dump everything out of your duffle bags onto the ground and then pick up one item at a time so that a) the drill sergeant knows that you have those things that you are supposed to have and b) so that the drill sergeant knows that you don't have any things that you are not supposed to have.  There was an entire list of contraband items.  Some of the contraband items were common sense things including knives, guns, drugs, alcohol, etc.  So after putting all of the required things in our bags, the drill sergeants then came around and inspected all of the remaining items to decide if the recruits would be allowed to keep them or not.  Personal letters and family photos were allowed.  Adult magazines were not allowed.

I'm sure that the drill sergeants had done the shake down inspections a hundred times and probably thought that they had seen everything.  There was one item though that seem to have them perplexed.  It was a feather duster.  Yes, I had to get to the feather duster eventually.

One of my 18 year old army recruit buddies brought a feather duster with him to basic training.  When we asked him about it afterwards, he stated that he only wanted to make sure that he passed the barracks inspections, and he was sure that the feather duster was exactly the tool that would help him accomplish this task. But on that day in the middle of the summer in the middle of Missouri, everything came to a stop because of the feather duster.  Those drill sergeants who could crawl through the mud with a knife between their teeth and take out a enemy sentry in the middle of the night were perplexed by the private with a feather duster.  What kind of 18 year old young man even owns a feather duster?

The drill sergeants were convinced that no good could come from the feather duster.  So they made the private take the feather duster to the First Sergeant's office and had him ask the First Sergeant if it was OK for him to keep the feather duster.  The First Sergeant said, "No" and that he didn't believe that any red blooded young man had any legitimate need of a feather duster.  And then he had the young soldier do some more mandatory physical fitness training for being dumb enough to take a feather duster with him to basic training.

Most soldiers in basic training end up with some sort of nickname from their drill sergeants.  Sometimes it is the place where they are from like "Montana" or "Cincinnati."  Sometimes the nickname denotes a physical characteristic like "Tubby" or "Bean Pole".  And sometimes the nickname that you get on the first day and keep for the rest of your time at basic training is "Feather Duster."

So, this is a cautionary tale for any young men and women who are heading off to do their initial training in one of the armed services.  Do not take any special cleaning equipment with you.  No lemon pledge.  No dyson vacuum cleaners.  And last, but certainly not least, no feather dusters.  I promise you that you do not want to take a feather duster with you to basic training.