Spring Break 2021 was upon us and after some iterations of plans, some of which included a 16 hour drive to Florida with my parents, we decided that a family trip south did not make sense with the sports and mandatory quarantine that would follow. In the end, this turned out to be a daddy-daughter trip, in which we hit the road and drove about 660 miles south to Asheville, North Carolina.
A mere 4 years ago, seemingly another lifetime at this point, Julia and I had done a similar thing but in that case we took a flight to Chicago and spent time together there taking in the sights. It was a great trip, memorable as well as great for us to spend the time together. This was going to sort of be the same, but not exactly.
My old college friends, and former roommates, Terren & Cheryl moved to Asheville 4 years ago and I hadn’t seen them in a long, long time. Before the move, but after the divorce, we sort of went our separate ways. So, in reality, it had been 9 or 10 years since we had spent any time in a social setting. I’ll be honest in saying I did not know what to expect.
Julia and their oldest daughter, Livy, have remained good friends as they were born several months apart and have always been close. So, it was a trip for them to spend some time together as much as it was a trip for Julia and I to bond.
On a side note, of whatever importance, on that Chicago trip 4 years ago I stopped drinking and have not started again. While I doubt I will ever say I quit entirely, I see no need to go back.
We started the drive right after school ended on Thursday, hitting the road at about 12:30 and clicking off each and every 1 of the 660 miles between Warren, NJ and Asheville, NC. Oh how I wish that Julia were at least 16 so she could drive some of this. It’s a long, long trip.
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Maryland
West Virginia
Virginia
Tennessee – I had no idea!
North Carolina
Funny enough, the last time I had done a trip like this was with Terren & his brother Orion after we graduated from Rutgers and went on a cross country trip. We started in NJ and drive straight through to Baton Rouge, in all 24+ hours on the road. At least this wasn’t quite that far.
The trip was mostly ok save for some traffic on 81. And in the last hour it rained proverbial cats & dogs in quantities that I have never really driven in before. It was downright preposterous how much it was raining.
In the end we got to our destination right around 11:00 pm. We made decent time. The AirBnB was a pretty nice little place. The owner met us outside and showed us around quickly, and we unloaded the car shortly after that.
Being on the road for that long is a drain. We hit the sack soon after.
Friday
Friday morning I wake up feeling somewhat hungover. Why that is, I can only imagine comes from not drinking enough water on the 4000 mile journey the day before. I fix up a pot of coffee and set up my work station for the morning. Doing what I do, I can literally work from anywhere, including a port-a-john. In Iowa.
I work from the AirBnb and Julia schools from the AirBnb. Obviously we were just connecting the dots on the week, waiting for the break to begin in earnest. At 11:00 I have my last call of the week and after that we venture out into Asheville to burn some time before we head over to Terren & Cheryl’s.
One of my goals in 2021 is to get a bowl of ramen outside of the house, or local to the house. One of my travel staples is ramen. We don’t have a great spot close to us (yeah I’m too lazy to go into NYC to get the good stuff) so it’s 1 of the things I key on when I travel. This was my first opportunity to hit that goal.
We went to Itto Ramen where we both got a basic bowl. The meat wasn’t soft & properly juicy like it’s supposed to be. The broth is probably the most important thing. But a properly soft-boiled egg and gooey meat bring it all home. The noodles are truly an afterthought in this concoction. The egg in this one wasn’t done right. Broth was fine but 1 out of 3 isn’t good enough.
Julia enjoyed the lunch stop despite not looking exceptionally happy here.
After lunch we walked into town a bit more and checked out Pennycup Coffee, which has a few locations in the area. Solid stuff, and it would not be the first time I would stop at 1 of the locations.
We got the text from Terren at some point that Livy was done with her school work, so we went over to their house. It had been a really long time and I really didn’t know what to expect. Terren and I had traded texts for the few weeks leading up to this so it wasn’t totally blind. But I had not seen him in what felt like forever. He seemed genuinely happy to see us which was very cool. We have a lot of history here which I will go into more in subsequent blog posts on the week.
I made short work of this stop, however. Julia was there to hang out with Livy and I was on my way to Bent Creek Experimental Forest to ride with a former NJ guy, Dave. I had never met Dave but we have common friends and I know him from the message board. The rains the day before meant that we were going to ride the gravel roads today. Not what I came for but better than nothing.
We mostly did gravel roads but towards the end of the ride he decided that it had dried off enough to try some trails. In the end they were fine, which speaks to a few things but it’s not flat and the water does not pool when it rains.
The whole area was once owned by DuPont, or something like that. One of the parks is called DuPont State Park I believe. And this dam is some relic of what they once built.
Towards the end of the ride we found Smokey the Bear and did a photo op, then rounded out the ride shortly after.
The Strava link can be found here. Almost 20 miles in 2 hours which sounds like a lot. I was appropriately tired.
After the ride & a shower I found myself back at Terren & Cheryl’s for dinner. We really never formalized the trip down here other than Julia would be staying there and I would be in Asheville riding my bike. Beyond that, I didn’t know what sort of reception I was going to get. I know that sounds weird but like I said earlier, we had fallen out of touch. We had gone our own ways, they moved to Asheville, and there was a sort of void there.
Long story short it was like none of that ever happened. We picked up right where we left off and it was really great. It’s nice in a way, and does speak to the thought that the friendships you build when you are young really do form a foundation that can last forever. I know sometimes that doesn’t work out this way. But in this case, it did. It was like 9 years hadn’t passed at all.
Dinner was Homegrown North, which is definitely southern comfort food-ish. I was told their specialty is the fried chicken so I went for it, and it was good. We had dinner, I got to know the kids, and we had some great conversation. Really good night. Really happy this worked out.
As the night got late, I headed back to the room which was maybe a mile away and Julia stayed over with Livy.
Traveling Normandy 