Saturday, April 26, 2008

Curious.

One week ago today, I rented a car at the Nashville airport and drove off to explore the countryside a little. Being of a pathologically Scottish bent all my life, I had requested the cheapest skateboard in the Avis stable of cars. (I chose Avis because they opened the earliest the next morning, and returning the car as soon as they opened gave me plenty of time to get checked in and make my flight home.) Apparently they had no skateboards available, so they gave me quite an upgrade (at no extra charge, of course) and I found myself tooling around Nashville in a silver Mitsubishi Eclipse. Fun little car, if you like climbing into what feels like a hole in the ground. You barely touch the gas and it takes off like a bat out of hell.

Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows I enjoy chasing wildflowers. Being in Tennessee (a new state for me) I took the opportunity to see what grew locally, and found my way to the lovely Radnor Lake, which is not far outside Nashville. The nice lady at the visitor center desk asked me how strenuous a hike I wanted to take, and when I admitted I had only had about two hours of sleep, she suggested the lake trail, which is a little over 2 miles and circumnavigates the lake on level ground.

I got a few good pictures, which I will post a bit later.

Now to the curious part. On the way back into town, I took all surface roads because one can drive on a freeway anywhere. A wide spot in the road on the outskirts of the city boasted a used bookstore, so I stopped, in search of a book about local wildflowers so I could identify what I'd seen. Go figure. The store owner was only able to find me a nice book of ... California wildflowers. I actually bought it because it has some nice pictures in it. She asked me how I was enjoying Nashville, and I said everyone in town is very friendly, but out on the hiking trails, nobody looks at you and nobody says hello. In California, it's the opposite. People are not terribly friendly in town; but on the trail, everyone says hi, beautiful day, enjoy your hike, etc.

Tomorrow is the Big Sur Marathon, and as usual the girls and I are doing the 10.6 mile walk. I'm meeting them in 10 minutes at the expo where we pick up our bib numbers, T-shirts and bus tickets, so I'd best dash on down the hill now.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool stuff! I can't wait to see your photos.

Anonymous said...

The local paper's maven is a wildflower nut also, so I'll send a link to some of her excellent pics if I can find one.
My boy Joe lives in Tennessee, near Nashville.

Anonymous said...

I love TN. Saw some of the outer countryside when Nin went to visit her brother.

 
Template by simplebits.com
Major modifications by CrankyBeach
All original content copyright 2004-2019 CrankyBeach. All other content is given proper credit where known.