No mass shooting in Fredericksburg (4/17/2023)

“No mass shooting today!” Those were the first words I dared to say to my wife when I called her this past Tuesday night from my hotel room in Fredericksburg. We just had another one the day before, now in Louisville. I had driven to Fredericksburg the day before, and that Monday evening I eventually had to turn the TV off. I had enough of it! It was so depressing; I did not even go out for dinner. I bought a tray of cheeses, nuts, and cranberries to snack on, a kombucha, and a four pack of beer (oatmeal raisin cookies porter) at Wegmans. So, when I got to my room at around 5:30, I had the kombucha and by 7 pm I had my cheese tray and a beer. Life was too depressing to go out and somehow enjoy myself in a restaurant.

I had set out with grand ideas of where I was going for dinner, but good plans are there to be squashed by a nut with an assault rifle and I just did not feel like celebrating my last visit to that town. Instead, I wrote the draft for the report on my Wytheville visit.

I actually enjoyed the cheese. It somewhat reminded me of my hitchhiking days though the northwestern part of France. I did that the year I decided to drop out of high school and somehow snuck into college. Crazy to think about it. This high school dropout somehow weaseled his way into college and eventually ended up earning a Ph.D. But I still think fondly about my trip to Dieppe, France, and the surrounding countryside. Yup, the long-term memory is the last thing to go, or so they say!

Back to Fredericksburg. I had two classes there with only 15 people in each. It is nice to be able to go more one-on-one. Moreover, I am finding that I have been going more off on tangents, embellishments lately. Oh, I am not lying at all, but I like to tell stories and maybe reminiscing is a better word. I have become more nostalgic these past weeks. It makes me wonder, is it old age, or is it my way of saying goodbye? Oh my, that is what I have been doing in this goodbye series as well, haven’t I? My blog posts have mellowed.

To continue, the next days, breakfast was at Panera’s and at the hotel (Hilton), and lunch was at a Taste on Spice (Indian) and again at Panera’s. The hotel breakfast is way too expensive for what you get, and I will not do it again. For the rest no complaint.

The one dinner I had was at a local brewery (6 Bears and a Goat) and it was not bad. Service was terribly slow. When I visit a place, I prefer a table or a booth instead of eating at the bar. I had to wait 15 minutes to get service, then another 15 to 20 minutes to get two samplers and another 10 to get my beer. However, then I ordered food, and it was there in 5 minutes. No time to finally enjoy my beer, or multiple. I decided to order dessert (ice cream); that took another 25 minutes, which got me worried it had melted under the heating lamp in the kitchen. However, I could at least have a coffee stout as a second beer for dessert. The menu told me it came in 5 and 12 once servings, but they waitress told me that the menu was wrong and forced me to order a 12 once stout. Considering the wait time for the ice cream, this was not a bad idea. Suffice it to say, while I usually tip 20 to 22%, this time I tipped only 18%. While the beer and food were decent, the service was off, the place was probably way understaffed.

As I mentioned above, the classes I teach are becoming different. Folks wish me happy retirement. Some applaud, I get handshakes, and even hugs. Folks tell me that they are going to miss me, that I am the best teacher they ever had. I take it all in stride, with a grain of salt. It is all very nice to hear; but soon I’ll be forgotten. However, I will not forget my time with this program, my teaching and hopefully some of the good I have been doing for the environment.

I have been fascinated by Walmart parking lots lately.  Now I own a camper and we plan to go across the country once we retire, stopping over in a Walmart parking lot is an option.  Even here in this somewhat upscale shopping area it seems that Walmart allows people to camp out.  This is great since there are nice restaurants nearby, the Panera, Starbucks, and restrooms for early mornings.

Hotels 7 and 8, Boy what a shower. (4/21/2022)

Traveling doesn’t stop. Ever since I wrote about my last visit to Lynchburg, I have been in Fredericksburg and the Blacksburg area. My observations are interesting; while the places are great, the hotels are marginal. But let me go into more details.

I stayed at two different chains in these two places. I stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn in Fredericksburg and a Holiday Inn in the Blacksburg area. Both rooms were clean, the beds were good, and things were fairly good. It surprised me initially that there was no room tidying any longer during the day in any of the hotels when you stay more than one night. In the old days, you came back from a long day and the trash can was emptied, the bed was made, and you had new pods for the coffee maker. Now, I am no slob, and I can use my towel two days in a row, so I am fine. However, a clean waste basket would be nice. Another thing I noticed, and this was at both hotels, the restaurants were closed on Monday night. This was not a huge thing since both places were located in an area that has a lot of restaurants nearby.

Breakfast at the Hilton was a bit below par, so much so that I skipped it the next day and went to Panera. It was just too expensive for what you got. With the current economy it saves the hotels money on staff and hopefully keeps the prices low. Thank goodness indications are that unemployment numbers are low and there seems to be a dearth of hospitality workers.

At the Hilton Garden Inn.  This time I had a better view from the 5th floor.  I actually got to watch fireworks one evening.

I had a similar experience at the Holiday Inn. Not that I ever eat there at night, but the restaurant was closed on Monday night, and the for-pay breakfast was expensive and self-service. The scariest part was getting in the shower. The floor around the down drain was soft, so soft that standing in the area made me fear that I would sink through the floor to the room below. Actually, my room was above the pool, and that would have been a riot, a nude, soapy dude falling through the ceiling in the deep end. What an entry!

Looking out of my second-floor window from the Holiday Inn in Christiansburg.  In the background you can see the Huckleberry bike trail.  I did not bring my bike because the forecast was for very cold weather.  Both photos were inspired by the Hopper exhibit I visited a few years ago

Concluding things in both hotels looked a bit run down and not maintained. Yes, I am sure that Covid is partially to blame for it, including the lack of available personnel. Overall, the visits to the localities were great. It was nice to visit areas I had not been to in 2 to 3 years. Great to try old and new restaurants, see students I had not seen for 2 years and to see spring in the mountains of Virginia. Overall, things have changed a bit, but not for the worst, just different in some places. Fun to see, as long as you don’t sink through the shower floor.

Fredericksburg and the events that happened this week (6/22/2015)

It was my birthday this past Thursday (18th) and I was really looking forward to it.  This was not because I would be a year older on the calendar (maybe not wiser), but because the pope was going to publish his encyclical on climate change on the 18th; something important for the world.  I thought that is was so cool that this would take place on my birthday.  Moreover, I finished my book about the sixth extinction which in a way is very disturbing.  The Sixth Extinction has me appreciate life; the book taught me that I should be living in the moment since changes are inevitable and that they will be occurring rapidly.  Yes, everything will be changing, and most likely for the worst.   I often think of the time we used to work and live in East Africa in the late 1970s.  Back then we already realized we might be the last generation to see the rhino in the wild.

In addition to these thoughts, I had visited Fredericksburg that week to teach two classes.  I had come out the class on a high.  Again, I got a standing ovation after teaching, which made me feel embarrassed and really happy at the same time.  I teach to educate and not for applause.  I really try to teach people respect for nature and the ecology of the area we live in.  On my birthday, someone wrote the following review of me on my LinkedIn page: "Jan is a knowledgeable person and a great teacher and has a true respect for the environment!"  As you can see these are all reasons of my interest in the encyclical.

Sitting on the 5th floor in my motel room on the 16th I could see the huge thunderstorms building in the area, and I hoped to capture one of them with the Rappahannock River in front of it, as you seem I was able to capture exactly what I had hoped.  This photograph was taken downtown from a bridge over the river.  Again I had this feeling of love and appreciation of what life or nature was giving me: the simple beauty and being in the moment.  Traveling can be lonely,  but it can be full as well if you appreciate the beauty, live in the moment and try to explore.  The second one is a scene from downtown, sitting at a coffee shop after dinner.  Just fun, watching people stroll by.  One woman was discussing with her husband how many steps she had on her fitbit.  People watching is my favorite!  It's a shame that some of these places downtown close by 8, but then the University is out and most of the students probably went home for the summer.

Little did I know what was to transpire driving back from Fredericksburg the next day.

Waking up the morning of my birthday I was greeted by news of another mass killing; now in one of my favorite cities: Charleston, SC.   I am so angry about the murder in Charleston that there is no way for me to express that.  I agree with John Steward that describing it in such terms as terrible takes it away from the fact that it is something much bigger.  The hatred by groups in our society must end.  We spent trillions on fighting terrorism directed at us from the outside without dealing with it from inside our country.

It is amazing and such a shame that the pope's important message is being hijacked by the murder, and then see the wing nuts on the right trying to steer the attention of their conservative buddies (we don't want to talk gun control or examine the undercurrent of racial hatred) away from the murder back on the pope.  The right wing fringe (wing nuts) call the pope names and say he is a "wolf in popes clothing" and worse.  One hate crime is not enough and they are already motivate their fans into hating others (Catholics?) and this hatred inevitably leads to crimes.  I have written about this some other times as well (see also this post, and some of the other posts of mine with the label tolerance).

The pope's message has little to do with me, except that I - a non-catholic - was looking forward to hearing what he had to say in the encyclical. Truthfully, I am reading it right now, and the pope is not as nuts as they make him out to be.  But again, it does not take away from last week's horrible news, we need to fight racism and preach tolerance.

Fredericksburg (4//14/2015)

A strange subject today, but yes I'm on the road for work again And in Fredericksburg.   I really like downtown,  it is older and has some wonderful restaurants.  But yes, I stay on the outskirts of town in one of the chain motels.

I had not arrived yet, or my wife texts me a photograph of our back yard.  The dogwood is about in full bloom with the red bud also in full bloom behind it.  One of my favorite sights, those two trees blooming next to each other in spring.  So what dother I do?  I text her a picture of the view of my motel room.

She replies with: "That place needs some trees."  And in a way she is correct.  We are creating a human desert.   This idea came home even more tonight when I was reading my book while waiting for my food in the restaurant and later in the coffee shop.

I am reading about extinction (The sixth extinction : an unnaturally history by Elizabeth Colbert) and was just reading about what the cause or causes were for the 6 or so extinctions were.  Speculations are that at least one was caused by a meteor impact, but the others might have been caused by some organism or by an ice age.  For example, it is thought that the explosion of mosses might have brought on this ice age, by taking all the carbon dioxide out of the air (the opposite of what is happening right now).  Another extinction might have been caused by a mass generation of carbon dioxide and a massive green house effect that killed nearly everything.   Only a few adapted species survived.  The scary part is that this is what could be happening to earth again and I am not sure if my child or her children will be adapted enough to survive it.

One of the potential causes of increasing carbon dioxide levels is deforestation and urbanization.   So my wife's comments hit home, we need more trees.   Mature trees are so much more efficient in sequestering carbon dioxide than other plants.

Fredericksburg (8/20/13)

Downtown Fredericksburg is a great place to hang out and go to dinner in the evening.  It is literally one of my more favorite places to eat outdoors during summer months in my travels through the state.  This evening I ate at Kybecca, a nice somewhat alternative place.