Month: April 2005

I had a great visit with Esta. Don’t let anyone tell you seminarians don’t have fun. I have a bunch of photos of the first invitational Ultimate Frisbee Revival, featuring competition between Union PSCE, Louisville, Princeton, and Columbia (as well as Pittsburgh—thanks, Esta for the reminder).

Now I’m on the road again, back home—and, as Lisa is working in New York next week, the dogs are staying here with her parents.

I’m on the road a lot right now. I have a couple of classes a week that I teach for an SAT prep company, and they’re cutting a bit of a hole in my vacation. So now I’m heading back for a couple of days to take care of this week’s classes. After that, I’m not sure—but I might take advantage of the free doggie day care to do some other visiting. We’ll see…

…call me, and I’ll drive there. And it will rain.

Seriously, except for Tuesday, it’s rained every single driving day I’ve had. As the kids say, what up with that?

Today I’m heading to Richmond to hang with Esta and those wild seminary kids. I haven’t seen my sister in her new home digs, so this should be fun. Looking forward to crazy partying tonight.

In the meantime, enjoy these other photos from the road.

As a Virginian by accident of birth, rather than lineage (as my parents’ families were from the surrounding states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania), and as one raised in the “cradle of the Revolution” in the vicinity of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, I have conflicting impulses about historical sites in Virginia. The former impulse says that I should seek out those sites to understand the state in which I was born. The latter impulse says that I should shun the sites and their accompanying flood of hucksterism, sweaty tourists, and admission fees that have inexplicably kept pace with movie ticket prices.

So it is perhaps understandable that—until yesterday—I had never visited the Natural Bridge. Never mind that it was surveyed by George Washington and once owned by Thomas Jefferson, my initial-sake and revered father of The University. Just the fact that I saw billboards for it was enough to put me off. But, yesterday, as I drove down Interstate 81 through the Shenandoah Valley, halfway to my parents’ house, and talking to myself to keep alert, I realized three things:

1. The site of the Natural Bridge was less than five miles off I-81, and the road it was on ran alongside the interstate—so I would lose no distance and little time getting to and from the site.
2. I was driving by myself down that road and had a little flexibility in my schedule, and who knows when that might happen again.
3. I had to use the restroom.

So I pulled off and drove up the road. I was amused to see that the first sign of the Bridge (apart from billboards) was a paddock of deer, grazing in the Natural Bridge Zoo—next to a sign for the Natural Bridge Wax Museum, and just prior to the Natural Bridge Antique Shop and Tool Museum. After a short drive, I pulled up to the imposing neo-plantation Natural Bridge Admissions and Gift Shop building, and stepped outside—and realized that it had been a while since I had experienced 80° weather.

I went inside, past the gift shop, and paid my $10 and went through the door and down the stairs—all 136 of them—to the gatehouse at the bottom of the hill, where the man took my ticket and pointed me around to the right. I stepped through and there, as they say, it was. It’s a massive stone vault or arch that has been carved through by the rather innocuous stream running through the base, and—even with rows of benches permanently installed for the special “Drama of Creation” nightly shows and the sound system mounted on the far side at the top—it’s pretty darned spectacular. My pictures, I’m afraid, do it no justice at all.

Approaching the bridge and looking up, you feel something of the awe inspired by gazing up inside a large cathedral, only this arch was massive and carved over the millennia by water, not craftsmen. The echo under it is pretty spectacular, though I didn’t really test it out too thoroughly.

At any rate, I spent a few minutes walking around and taking pictures—and noting the 19th century names carved in the rock beside the walkway. (Apparently even graffiti was done with an eye to quality then—note the serifs!) Then I began the long climb back up and to the car, avoiding the blandishments of the giftshop (though I was tempted by the custom-label wines from Barboursville, my favorite Virginia winery—and another Thomas Jefferson connection). As I drove back out to the interstate, I realized that I was driving across the top of the bridge—and that the maintainers of the site had built high wooden barriers across the top to keep pedestrians and drivers from getting a free peek.

I highly recommend the bridge as a leg stretcher, provided you can keep a sense of humor about the hucksterism. One does get some of the sense of awe that Jefferson must have felt on discovering the scale of nature’s operations in Virginia, and even gift shops can’t detract from that.

1. It is possible to drive five hours, teach a class, answer email, pack, sleep, grade papers, have a job interview, drive a long distance, teach another class, drive to New Jersey, sleep, and drive to North Carolina in the span of two and a half days.
2. …. That’s it, really.
3. Except to note that there’s not a lot between Providence, RI and New Haven, CT when you’re driving along I-95 between the two points at 10 PM. (Or, one suspects, at other times.)
4. And that you aren’t allowed to take pictures from the top deck of the George Washington Bridge.
5. And that even slow music can keep you awake if you play it really loud.
6. And that the Natural Bridge is worth a look if you’ve never been.
7. And that April in Virginia and North Carolina sometimes means 80° days. (I knew that, but had forgotten it.)
8. And that a memory-card-enabled printer and a USB flash memory keychain drive make an acceptable, if dog-slow, workaround to get your photos if you left your camera’s cable at home.
9. And that lists are fun.
10. And that I have no idea what has been happening for the last two days and I should really go to bed.

Lisa and I decided that I should take advantage of some quiet time here in Arlington to go on the road. Naturally, as soon as we made the decision my scheduled filled up with other activities. The end result: I drove Lisa and the dogs down to her parents yesterday; drove back today; drove out to Westborough for some errands tonight; am doing some interviews tomorrow, then driving down to Mattapoisett for other work tomorrow evening; driving from there back to my inlaws in New Jersey, arriving about 1:30 a.m.; then driving from there to my folks. Followed, hopefully, by several days of doing nothing.