Lost that New Car Smell?

This past Thursday, on the way home, the '96 Volvo passed a milestone that I felt significant enough to pull over to the side of the road and document with a photograph. Not very many cars make the quarter million mile mark, but this particular Volvo is not even the highest mileage vehicle in my driveway.

Could this be a useful segueway to introduce photos from road trips taken this past month? A quest to explain how all those miles accumulated on the odometer.

Separated by 2 letters and 300 miles.

Those would be the cities of Asheville and Nashville.

April 1st, as previously documented on this blog, entailed a trip to Asheville for the Edible Book Festival. In addition to the festival, I toured several of the downtown art galleries and got lunch at this cool little addition to the downtown restaurant scene, chai pani.

Chai pani features Indian street food at reasonable prices. While I don't have the experiential background to comment on the authenticity of the food I can say my meal was quite tasty.

The restaurant is also noted to be environmentally conscious. They use local produce and humanely raised meats from local and regional farms. The only thing not local are the spices that they get from India, roast in-house, and ground-up fresh daily.

The cold chai was delicious and laced with cardamon, a flavor I adore.

Folks from Asheville don't always wear their flowers on the lapel.

Little skully wine and champagne corks spotted in a shop window.



Music city USA

The Friday before last, I pointed the car west and drove to Nashville. The official mission was to attend a Saturday conference on the use of Botox for muscle spasticity due to neurological injury, but that didn't stop me from checking out the bright lights downtown Friday night.

Neon lit the nighttime sky on Broadway and the crowds seemed ready to go consume a few adult beverages while listening to a plethora of musical offerings.

The neon outside Jack's Bar-B-Que features winged pigs that light up sequentially as the go down a slide.

On afterthought, the photo I should have taken was of the elaborate dress incorporated into the wardrobe of the downtown Friday-night, urban, Nashville cowgirl. It was quite distinctive, featuring cowgirl boots and hats of course, then a mixture of tight jeans or short skirts and dresses. A short skirt paired with cowgirl boots just has it's own distinctive look. It indicates that the young lady is interested in some task other than roping calves.

Oh yeah, I learned a thing or two at the conference as well. Actually, it was very good and worth the trip.

Carina