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Monday, June 4, 2007Leaving (Las) CharlestonYesterday Mikah and I ended our trip to Charleston, SC. I figured all my loyal readers would want to read about our time spent in the airport. The Charleston airport is kind of junky. It is very small. It only has 2 concourses, and each of those have 5 gates. So a total of 10 gates. CVG has 42,000 gates. I belive Atlanta has 1 million gates. I've not been there though. So we got to the airport and pulled our rental car into the rental car lot. Yes, the singular rental car lot. They fit every company in one lot, probably 300 cars or something. Very small. Then we went through the check in system, and made our way over to our gate, A4. It was difficult to find, because it was not labeled very well. Anyway, I went to the restaurant to grab some lunch. I got a mini-pizza and a fountain drink. Being an airport, it cost me $32.13 + a pint of my blood. I went to fill up my drink and they were all out. Every button I pressed just spit out carbonated water. I went back to inform the lady of the error. She was not pleased. You see, "I am here all by myself today. It is really hard for me to get everything done that needs to get done." Then she stared at me. ummm...what does she want me to do? Go in the back and do it myself? Tell her to forget about it...just keep my money? I decided on option 3: wait for her to do something. She angrily blew air our of her nose (sanitary!!) and went to the back. By the way - my dog does the same thing when he is upset at something. But he is a DOG! So she comes back and says, "there...you can go get your drink now." Like I am the one who caused the problem. You know...I don't think I experienced any "Southern Charm" while I was down there. Maybe I give off a vibe. I guess I figured Mikah's vibe would cancel out my bad ones. Apparently not. So I went back to my seat to eat my gross pizza and drink my gross drink. Luckily I got to hear about some guy's plans for that night as he discussed it with everyone he called. It seems Loud Phone Guy is on his way to Boston soon after his 21st birthday and he plans to "tear it up." Whatever that means. He called no less than 3 people asking them what they were doing tonight. "Dude...what's up...what are we doing tonight? What? No...come on? Dude...we've got to tear it up! You only turn 21 once! (editors note: but what about the rest of your life? It's not like you are only allowed to tear it up on your 21st birthday) Yeah dude...we are going out big. Alright...I'll call you when I get in. Peace." LPG proceeded to make this same call 2 more times. I hope he gets free weekends on his cell phone. I also hope no one on the plane beat him senseless for being an obnoxious jerk. That said...I also hope he was successful at tearing it up. Eventually we got on the plane and found our seats. Back row right by the toilet! Hurray!! After our bumpy flight home we got back to Cincy and walked through a real airport. Not some 3rd class tiny airport. Charleston didn't even have LCD monitors showing where each gate was headed. I figured that was required now. Apparently not. I also saw a cart pulling luggage headed for a plane and when the driver turned, someone's golf clubs came tumbling off the cart. Apparently nobody noticed a golf club carrier rolling around the tarmac. That golfer is not going to be pleased when he gets to his favorite golf course in the whole world to play a round and his clubs didn't make it. Also, they probably got run over by a plane. Anyway...now the trip is over and we are headed back to real life. It's good to be home. Labels: Charleston, Mikah Friday, June 1, 2007Fort SumterYesterday Mikah and I went on a sightseeing tour (still in Charleston) and took a boat ride out to Fort Sumter. For those who don't know the whole story of Fort Sumter: It's a Fort. Named after Sumter (I assume). It is where the Civil War started (kind of). For more details you can click here. We drove down to Mt. Pleasant and bought our tickets for the ride ($28). We stood in line and I thought to myself about how it didn't seem like a lot of people were there. Excellent!!! As we boarded the boat some girl took a picture of us, most likely to sell to us later. The photo was in front of a green screen though. I was hoping they would place us in front of a dragon's lair with my leg up on the dragon's headless corpse. Just in case I raised my leg up like Captain Morgan, assuming they will do all the digital work later and properly arrange everything. We got on the boat and sat in the best seat, back corner where you could see everything around and still feel the ocean air. It was really nice. Our boat was parked right next to the USS Yorktown, which is a massive Aircraft Carrier. Really quite an impressive site. Here is a picture I took of it from our boat:  As we prepared to leave I heard one of the workers say, "We have to wait...the school field trip isn't here yet." WHAT?!?!? WHAT?!?!? NOOOOOOO. I can't imagine anything worse than a school field trip to accompany us on a cramped boat to a cramped island. Sure enough, they showed up and chattered and made noise the entire trip. No respect for the history of the place. We finally took off from port and headed across the harbor. Mikah and I both saw a fin in the water, and a humped back as the fin dove under the water. I can only assume it was a shark. Maybe a dolphin. Mikah made sure to alert the 60 people on boat that maybe there was a shark. "OOOO...A SHARK! ADAM, A SHARK!!," she exclaimed. This, obviously, is not usually great news for most people. A couple people turned around in terror, probably picturing the scene from Jaws where Robert Shaw gets bitten in half. The rest of the people probably couldn't hear because of the stupid loud kids. We got to Fort Sumter and listened to Tour Guide Brent tell the history of the fort. TGB did a great job. He gave a pretty complete history and kept it entertaining. He made jokes and everything. Also, as an added bonus, I didn't detect any overt racism (although, how hard is it to detect overt anything?). He did make one joke about how they had to build up the island with sand and stone from New Jersey..."so it may be of concern to you people that you are indeed standing on Northern soil. he he he." WOW. Come on people. The Civil War was 300 years ago. LET IT GO. I think I heard someone gasp. Ironically, the South is where all the American support comes from now a days. They should make up their mind. Anyway - after TGB gave his speech Mikah and I walked around the Fort. It's pretty neat. It's cool to see all the things that are original. That kind of stuff is always really interesting. It's really cool to see the original flag that flew there and to see some original canon shot. We also saw some pictures and quotes from Abner Doubleday, he fired the first shot in defense of the Fort. But who cares...he invented baseball! Yea for baseball!! Sadly there were no sharks on the way back to port. There were, however, loud kids. When we got back we passed the little place where people were buying pictures of themselves. YES! This is it! This is my dragon conquering picture! But it wasn't. It was just a stupid picture of us in front of For Sumter. For $20. No thanks lady. I'll just go print my own picture of us at Fort Sumter for 15 cents. I would have paid for the dragon picture though. It was a cool place. I'm glad we went. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in history. Or anyone who is on a honeymoon with someone who is interested in history. Either way. Labels: Charleston, Fort Sumter, Mikah Thursday, May 31, 2007Charleston HistoryYesterday Mikah and I drove into downtown Charleston to walk around and visit the "festival". I put that in quotes because it wasn't really a festival. It was just some week long event that takes place at 1000 different places downtown; effectively making it impossible to see any of it. (we did get to see a bad art gallery which was calling attention to global warming and the pollution I caused while driving there. I might have been more convinced if the art was better than my 6 year old cousin could do.) After we walked down Market Street, which is a place where vendors hawk their trinkets (think Traders World flea market -- but in a nice locale), we headed over to Calhoun Street (John Calhoun that is!) and embarked on a 1.5 hour walking tour with 3 other people and Dave the Tour Guide. We gave Dave $40, which apparently allowed us to listen to him as we walked around the block. Dave asked where the two groups were from. The other group was from Sommerville, a city right up the street from Charleston. We replied, "Cincinnati". He asked how cold it was up there (umm...85 and humid...it's not that far north), then called us "bad Northerners", and reflected how we started the "War of Northern Aggression". So obviously the sides were divided. The Southerners vs. The Northerners. No wonder the Civil War happened. I just met this guy and he is already being divisive! As we embarked on our tour I could feel the 4 southerners glaring at me...hating me because I voted for Lincoln. It was palpable...I COULD FEEL IT! Actually, Dave the Divider was very informative on the history of Charleston. We briefly stopped by a building that had "Earthquake Posts" in it. These were posts that ran through the entire building, horizontally, to help keep the building standing during an earthquake. Apparently because Charleston is at sea level, and built on a marsh, it is susceptible to those. Dave then informed us that before the Richter scale was invented Charleston was hit with an earthquake two points higher than the San Fran quake of '87. This would make the Charleston earthquake a 9.1 on the Ricther Scale. This is a MASSIVE earthquake. Of course there is no way to check Dave's accuracy...I think he is aware of this. I could ask him what they used to measure it way back then. Maybe later once the Ricther scale was invented, some guy went back and looked at some video from the Charleston quake and deduced it was a 9.1. Or maybe he used before and after photos of the damage. Or maybe they had a soothsayer and he predicted it would happen. I thought about challenging him on the veracity of his statement, but a look from Mikah convinced me other wise. Still...I decided to keep a close watch on him for the rest of the tour. Later Dave the Liar walked us around commenting on how much money was in Charleston. He said it was the wealthiest city in early America. I believe him. He continued to comment that the wealth was due to ingenuity and smarts (the first American college is in Charleston). I don't recall him mentioning SLAVERY as a gigantic aide in building wealth. Free labor is neat like that. Actually I think he did mention slavery at one point. I don't remember everything he said. My guess is that when he did finally did mention it, he talked about the glory days of the "Peculiar Institution" and deviously grinned. Later he did mention how "black folk" did help with the local economy, seeing how "they" outnumbered "us" 2-1. I sense a hint of racism. But Dave wouldn't be a liar AND a racist would he? Apparently yes...as the tour ended (which was an interesting tour by the way) we asked Dave where a good place to eat was. He recommended "California Dreaming" and some other place "where they serve you great lowcountry food...COOKED BY REAL BLACK FOLK" (emphasis added by me...but only because I know he would want me to). We weren't sure if these cooks were being employed against their will or not (SLAVERY!) so we decided on California Dreaming, which had no obvious racism and excellent food. Overall, it was a good day. I'm glad I met Dave the Divider/Liar/Racist. I do wonder if the rest of South Carolina feels the same way. Probably. Labels: Charleston, Mikah
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