Atlanta Aquarium

Well it's week two of my vacation and I'm starting to talk to the Penguins.


They are the only ones left who haven't heard all my stories.

Atlanta is less than 4 hours away. The aquarium that just opened this week is the largest in the country. If you would like to see more pictures let me know and I'll send you my Easy-Share file. It is definitely a place to stop and spend a few hours at on your way to the mall.

Snow Alert

Western North Carolina is bracing for the worst snow storm ever. We may get an inch of the deadly stuff. It's only an inch; but its the worst inch ever! They are already announcing school closings and emergency plans. We expect FEMA to roll in tomorrow and President Bush to visit our ravaged region on Friday. I am including a pictture of our house and snow covered cars. If you look close you may see one of those deadly flakes. It only takes one to cause a deadly accident. Well before the snow gets too deep and they close the parkway I'm going to take one more motorcycle ride. Kaaabboooom!

Greenville South Carolina

We went to the BMW plant in Greenville South Carolina. That is where they make the BMW Roadster. They had a small museum
of the history of BMW. They left the part about their aircraft engines for the Nazi's.
The Bmw on
the right has the highest crash test rating of any passenger vehicle. That makes it a good pick for "Dents McGee". The little red car is BMW's transitional car. They slowly worked their way from motorcycles , aircraft and marine engines to cars. It would probably fit Aunt Annie like a glove. It also came with a camper for people who don't have friends or are not claustrophobic. Greenville had a nice downtown. I think Marianne would like it because they have a street named Coffee. It even has a green light to tell when to get a refil.


We later went to Bob Jones University. They have this huge museum of Religious Art. They wouldn't let me take any pictures (aren't you lucky). The young Hitler Youth guide wanted to lock my camera up. Well after I assured him Iwould keep it in my holster he let us in. I had a feeling though, that a team of Gestapo agents were following us from gallery to gallery. The art seemed like it would have been more at home in the Vatican instead of some fundamentalist small southern private school. We did not see one copy of a "Footprints" painting. Maybe I will donate one from the local swap meet. It was really an impressive collection. I thought they should have spend some of that $$$ on make up for the co-eds. It was long black dresses, straight hair, black suits and ties and crew cuts. It was kind of like going down to the local high school and finding the "King Tut Collection". The best part was the ride home where I found "Top Tier" Shell gas for $ 1.99/gal.

Too many stores

Well I have decided that there are just too many stores here in Asheville. I bought a starter set for my palm pilot about a week before it arrived at Staples in Hendersonville. Then after I got my palm pilot I downloaded 3 anesthesia references books to someone elses e-mail address. But that's another post entirely. So, this palm starter kit came with a gimicky pen/stylus combo, a case and 4 screen protectors. The screen protectors I couldn't get on without putting a big fingerprint on it, the case didn't have a snap or a removable belt clip and that stupid pen/stylus was just too geeky so I decided to return it all.


We set off to return it to the store in Asheville, but then Carol says we can return it to the store close to home, the Office Max. I said we didn't buy it there. So then Carol says maybe that's an Office Depot there, I'm not sure. So I say we have to go to Asheville to the mall with the Best Buy where we got it. Carol says there is a Best Buy in the new mall next to Office Depot. Then I think I don't remember getting it at Best Buy. By now we are driving around in circles so Carol says why don't we look at the BAG it came in. The bag says Staples. Yep, I bought it it at a different store in a different town then I remembered.

Now this would just be a usual day for us except for one thing. We spent an hour on Map-Quest that morning trying to coordinate this exchange with a trip to the Asheville Super Wal-Mart and a trip to Sam's Club. Now more planning went into this trip than the "Raid on Entebbe". Now we can go home and check for a Staples in Ashville on line and do the Map-Quest thing again. I decide to scrap the super gas saver plan that's going to pot and we are off in the other direction: 12 miles to Hendersonville, to the Staples we bought the dumb thing in and then go to that Super Wal-Mart ( which the locals refer to as the ALAMO) and then run back up to Asheville to return the shirt at Sam's Club. If we knew we were going to wind up in Hendersonville we would have skipped breakfast and went to the Denny's there.


Now the Sam's Club in Asheville is hidden behind a Holiday Inn. The only way we know to get to it is to go through their parking lot. They do have a sign. It's about the size of a cookie sheet and it's obscured by a tree. You can get a brief glimpse of what you think is the building through the trees from the highway. However, for some reason in Asheville The Super K-Mart is Sam's Club Blue and the Sam's Club is K-Mart brown. So we turn into Big K-Mart.

We are not easily discouraged by Asheville's lack of signs or Map-Quest's fantasy directions. That night we set out to a movie theatre in Asheville. The directions from Map Quest make it sound simple so we give ourselves 40 minutes to go 12 miles. Well the theatre isn't on the street they say. But after driving around the area where we think it should be I spot a sign; a marque the size of a crib sheet so I cut into that mall. However, the theatre isn't in that mall. It's about four malls back up on top of a mountain. You can bet there was not one more sign for the theatre besides the one on the street where the theatre wasn't supposed to be. The lack of signs in North Carolina must be part of some joke being played on all these Yankee transplants. I would get a GPS, except that the guys who put the satellite in orbit probably work for Map-Quest. There are just too many stores, too many malls and too few signs for us bumpkins from Garrett County.

More Pictures From The Parkway

I think this may have been the best weekend of the fall to take pictures. Maybe if we travel to a lower elevation next weekend there may still be some bright colors.

Babba-Gi Goes Digital

After a 2 month investigation I have purchased a Palm Pilot. I always laughed at people with their Day-Planners and post-it notes, but I now realize the hard-drive in my head is full. The main reason I need one is for work. My pocket size drug reference guide has gotten bigger every year to the point it won't fit in my pocket. When I put it in my clip-board along with my secret syringes of deadly drugs and my snacks it makes for one heavy clip board. Now I can carry a drug reference, a couple of anesthesia texts, the Bible, and all my appointments. Let's see: in January I have to go to my family doctor and the opthamologist. Besides those two things my dance card is empty. I didn't go nuts and get the PDA with Earth Link, digital camera,GPS, cell phone, plasma T.V. and juicer. It does have game capability and an MP-3 player so I can stay awake in these long boring surgeries. I always made fun of people who carried books around in the O.R.; they were rookies who didn't know how to give anesthesia. Now I'm one of them. 25 years ago when I started doing this the PDR (Physicians Drug Reference) was about 2 inches thick. Now the PDR is as fat as the Websters Dictionary @ the library and you get a hernia lifting it off the shelf. The whole PDR will only use 8.3 MB's of my 256 MB SD card.
So I am being dragged kicking and screaming into the information age. Babba will soon give up his old red-neck palm pilot (pictured above) which has served me so well for years.

Living on the Parkway

Fall is coming to North Carolina. The leaves are turning and there is a nip in the air. I actually had to use my windshield washer to get the frost off my windshield. It does warm up into the 70's by the afternoon. This weekend should find the leaves at their best colors, although this isn't suppose to be a great year for a vivid fall. Back in Oakland they already had their first taste of winter. They had about 10 inches of wet heavy snow that brought down so many trees that 1/3 of the county has no electricity. Hopefully if the weatherman is right tomorrow we will go kayaking. Now I did kayak in Maryland in November but it always required a wet suit.

We visited the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We found it after throwing the Map-Quest directions out the window. I think the people @ Map-Quest just make stuff up. This is the third time they got me completley lost. The Folk Art Center was great. They had a lot of art from from the local craftspeople. The prices for things were astronomical. There was no photography allowed in the galleries so I couldn't photograph any of the art work as I did at Notre-Dame. So we are enjoying the western North Carolina fall and glad we are not back on that mountain in western Maryland suffering through our first Nor-Easter without electricity.