And the travel goes on, Wytheville (4/14/2023)

Things are increasingly winding down. They are going so fast, that the post for my last trip was written while watching television and drinking either coffee in my motel room or a beer at a brewery in Wytheville. I guess the final touches to this post will come in a brewery at my next stop, Fredericksburg. I am really starting to wonder why I did this to myself; I knew I was retiring, and I should have kept it easy the last year.

Oh well, I wanted to go out with a big bang. But man, retirement is going to feel good and deserved. Less than two months to go.

It is all bitter sweet, Wytheville, the town of last week’s visit, didn’t feel like usual. It felt like I had already distanced myself from the town I actually like a lot. I tried to visit some of the old haunts for that pop-psychology word “closure.” However, it just seemed that the restaurant choice for the first night did not seem as good as I remembered.

The Log Cabin was busy for a Monday evening; however, the meal I got was tasteless and the salad seemed to have been thrown together with little attention. I had a south of the border pork roast which tasted anything but south of the border, it had raw onions in it, which were distracting. For vegetable I ordered a stuffed squash, which turned out to be a limp half zucchini with some stuff in it. The only redeeming part were the French fries. But the desert and coffee were good.

Lunch on both days were at my favorite Chinese restaurant (Peking), day one was great, but my second day meal choice was somewhat disappointing. I usually switch between the Chinese restaurant and the Mexican place down the street. However, that place was closed, shut down forever. On further investigation it seems that one of the owners had died and that was it!

The beer at my favorite brewery (Seven Sisters) was still great, but the place was still empty, and the food truck would not be open both days I was there. So, off to the pizza joint (Moon Dog Brick Oven) the first day. That place is always good, no complaint there. My friends at the place I teach had told me about another Mexican restaurant in town which according to them was great, so I tried it the second evening. It is located in the Walmart shopping center and I wanted to look there anyway to see if folks were camping out in the parking lot with their campers. We have bought a small camper and are wondering if that would be an option for us, free camping at Walmart. Well, the restaurant (El Patio) was mediocre in my eyes. Oh well.

So, all together, maybe a bittersweet visit, maybe a good way to close out my 14 years of visiting Wytheville. Somewhat of a letdown. Not at all like my visit to Fairfax. But then maybe it’s good to be done with this part of my life very soon.  The best thing came at the end, on the way back I had a nice walk on the New River Trail.  I even found a good rock that I might be able to use for a root over rock planting for my bonsais.  

Seven Sisters Brewery.  Quiet at usual when I go there, but I had a chance to finidh my Fairfax blog while sipping some tasty brews, and then walking down the street for a nice pizza.

The Wallmart parking lot had a few campers already there.  I was scouting it out to see if it may work for us during our travels.

Just a picture on the New River Trail.  I love the shape of this tree.  Who knows?  A future bonsai design?

The redbuds were in full bloom on the New River Trail.  

Stormwater, soil, and bonsai, part 1 of 2 (9/19/2022)

The past week I was traveling again to train the folks in the state of Virginia. This time my travels were to Wytheville (look in the labels section), a town I have done some extensive writing about in my blog, and I might do some more in the future. However, that is not the subject I would like to tackle today as you can probably surmise from the title of this article. Now at the beginning of writing this article, I expect that I will break it into at least two parts, so this will be part 1.

What do you do after class?  You stop at your favorite microbrewery in town.  As I mentioned in a previous post Wytheville has two, and during my previous visit this was my favorite, and it remains in the top spot!

Most of you know that I teach subjects related to stormwater management and erosion and sediment control. One important item that factors in this, of course, is soil. For one, during construction soil is laid bare and becomes very erodible. Streams and creeks downstream from a construction site receive a lot of sediment from that site. On top of this, once construction is complete, we need to grow plants, a lawn or whatever. Here again, soil plays the star role. As I tell my students, a crappy soil gives you shitty results, while a good soil will give you great plant establishment. In other words, “you are what you eat” also applies to the vegetation we are trying to establish.

The current paradigm in stormwater is that we want to infiltrate as much of the stormwater that is being generated on a site as possible. We call this runoff reduction, or also low impact development or LID. The philosophy behind this is that all the roads, roofs, parking lots, sidewalks and alike, create more runoff than a virgin site, because they do not allow water to infiltrate. This has lowered the already declining groundwater table and is drying up of springs and the hydrology of streams and rivers. Of course, this was also partially caused by all the pumping of groundwater that our increased population pressure is doing. As a result, streams are becoming flashier and more polluted. Over the years, I have written about this; just look under the “Labels” column and click on stormwater. Now, runoff reduction and LID would help recharge the groundwater. In addition, it would allow some of the pollutants or contaminants to enter the soil and be broken down and cleaned up.

Well, this past week in Wytheville, I taught two soils courses, it got me thinking, and inspired to write this post. I work daily with soil as a bonsai enthusiast, I have realized that bad soil choices are probably why probably so many of the trees of the beginners die. I plan to reserve that for part two for my discussion.

I taught three continuing education courses in Wytheville. My Soils Concepts class is a full day course that goes from 8:30 to around 3:30/3:45 with an hour lunch. The next day I taught a Soil Amendment class from 8:30 to 12 and a Photography for Inspectors class from 1 to 3:45. Now, if you are going to ask me if I am a photographer, the answer would be no. However, I do have some formal training in photography and worked as a photographer for a bit. Some 45/46 years ago I did some work as a wedding photographer and a semi-professional photographer in the Army. But that is water under the bridge.

How about my soils background? How can I sell that? Well, I have an Agricultural Engineering degree, with some emphasis on soil science. I did an internship on soil fertility, and then in Yemen we did a soil survey and a soil hydrology study. During my MS study I studied a lot about soil/plant water relationships, while during my Ph.D. studies, I renewed my studies in Soil Morphology and Soil Identification. So, while my degree does not tell me that I am a soil scientist, I can fake it with the best. It is nice to be multifarious, especially when you are teaching. Although my mother always accused me to be a master of nothing (see also <here>)!

In my soils class I give my students some of the basics of soil, from an agronomic perspective, after which I go into how to handle soil on a construction site and how that soil handling impacts the soil. The afternoon is spent on talking about soil hydrology and on how engineers look at soils. Engineers have a very different way of looking at them versus the folks that grow plants and food on them. I tell my students engineers see soil as something to:

• Build on
• Build with
• Build in
• Support our buildings

While agronomists have words such as Alfasols, Histosols, Inceptisols, and Vertisols, just to name a few the engineers use the Unified Soil Classification System. Engineers may describe a soil as an organic silts and organic silty clays of low plasticity.

While this post is not an area to rehash what I tell my folks in class, I really try to push the idea that soil is one of our most important resources when it comes to plant establishment and infiltration of stormwater after construction (or what we call land disturbance). Often what happens is the compaction of soil, which does not allow for the penetration of roots and the infiltration of water. The topsoil is often removed and not replaced, making it even more difficult for plant to become established, and bare soil means erosion and less infiltration. Taking care of the soil is one of the most important things you can do as someone who is into construction, or as a homeowner. This is even becoming more and more important in these times of climate change.

Well folks, this is usually the length of my posts. In the next post I will try to elaborate and bring this around to growing bonsai. See you soon!

Another thing that my regular readers should know is, that a trip the Wytheville is always accompanied by a walk on the New River Trail.  The fall flowers were already in full display.

Motels 9. Wytheville and beer (5/11/2022)

This week’s stop was Wytheville, Virginia. I have written a lot about my visits to this town <here>, <here>, <here>, and <here>. But my favorite post is here; however, be warned that one is R-rated. Folks scheduling my travel with me always joke that Wytheville is one of my favorite places. Now, I had not been in Wytheville for probably two and a half year, and the visit would be a good illustration what happened to or changed with a more rural conservative town in the age of COVID. Not much. Actually, looking at Google maps prior to leaving, I rejoiced and told my wife “Hey they now have a second microbrewery in Wytheville (more about that later).

Trying to book a decent motel in town was somewhat frustrating. My two favorite places no longer offer state rates, which would mean that I would have to supplement my stay out of my own pocket. Since I was staying three nights that would mean something close to at least another $35 to $45 for the stay. This is ridiculous, so I was required to find a new favorite motel. The Hampton Inn by Hilton was nice enough to still charge the state rate. Rooms were clean and actually it was less than 2 minutes removed from the place I was teaching. As you have probably noticed, I do not play favorites when it comes to motels, I try to spread my stays out between chains. This is based on a number of factors, including location (in town and the proximity to the place I am teaching), past experience in the town, and the chain that I accumulate loyalty points with. However, the stay in this motel was new and I liked it. The Hampton Inn was clean, well maintained, staff was friendly; so, what was not to like? I will come here again when returning to Wytheville.

Checking my company phone for some recent emails before hitting the road.

Driving to the western part of the state has not changed much. Interstate 81 is still insanely crazy. It is one of the major connectors between the East Coast and the South. I noticed that in fall and spring the hotels in Wytheville always had a great number of vehicles with Canadian license plates parked in front of it. I guess that why they are called the snowbirds. However, the truck traffic is insane as well. Thank goodness the roads around Roanoke have been widened and more is coming. This should help a little with this bottleneck.

There is Public Radio almost all the way on the trip to Wytheville. You may need to do some searching, but you can find them. Searching by itself can be interesting. You hit the obligatory religious stations with either fiery services or pious/ glorifying music. On the AM, I found a station that read obituaries which was somewhat interesting for at least 5 minutes. You can also find sports talk (not really interesting to me), a Spanish station, and your regular right-wing talk/hate stations. I wrote about this previously as well <here>, but since the leaked documents from the Supreme Court, listening to these stations was somewhat amusing/infuriating. The craziest thing I heard was Glen Beck proclaiming that liberal men were pro-abortion because that made it easy for them to pick up women for casual sex. If abortion would become illegal, women would no longer be willing to sleep around. According to this jerk, this is the only reason men could be pro-abortion. I’ll leave it there, but as you might understand from a previous post or two, I do not agree.

Thunderstorms abound on this trip, so no walks or bike rides on the New River Trail as I was able on previous years (just look for Draper in the keywords). Oh well, so I spent more time exploring and comparing the two microbreweries in town. Now I don’t consider myself an alcoholic; however, I do like my beers and wine. In previous posts I have compared wineries in the state, and I have reviewed the occasional microbrewery. I also review the motels I stay in, as I have done above.

The first evening I visited “the Seven Sisters Brewery”. This is a large place on Maine Street and my first impression was that it was deserted. I was there alone for a while and finally two or three folks came in. Actually, the beer was good, the DIPA was my favorite, followed by the bock and the lager. This is surprising for me; I am usually not a bock or a lager drinker. The atmosphere was good, and I met the brew master, who seems very knowledgeable about brewing. On my return two days later folks who frequent the brewery were surprised that he appeared sober when I met him; probably a good sign for a brew master that he samples his beer. This brewery is new to me and was not there when I visited two and a half years ago. I did go back my third evening and there was a larger crowd; plus the beer was still very tasty.

My beer flight at the Seven Sisters

The “Seven Dogs Brew Pub” was on my agenda for thee second day. These guys have 20 beers on their menu and these beers were all brewed on premises. Truthfully, I think they overextended themselves. While not bad, some of their beers were plain mediocre at best. I often see that with restaurants as well. When the menus are large, the food is average, because they cannot concentrate on doing their best. This place has a full kitchen, and the food is ok. I visited the place two and a half years ago, and I think they have gone down a bit.

The entrance to the Seven Dogs.  Absolutely not bad, but right now not my favorite in town.

I asked what the relationship was between the two sevens in the names, and there is none. Thank goodness, the Seven Sisters has a food truck, and you can get food there as well. To me the Seven Sisters was my hands down favorite of the two. I think I will go back there on my next visit and avoid the Seven Dogs. Although, the Seven Dogs operate the pizza joint down the street, which is pretty darn good and what beer doesn’t taste good with pizza?

Oh my god, traveling can be fun (R-rated) (10/19/2017)

As many of you know, I travel frequently to give workshops throughout the state.  In the past year I provided 54 of them.  As you can see, it keeps me hopping.  Some of them are near my office in Richmond, others near my home, but a lot of them require me to travel. 

Of course, during my travels I stay in hotels and motels.  One of my fears is bringing home bed bugs, and knock on wood, I have not yet encountered any yet.  Getting to a new place I do a bed bug check, and then settle in.

My beautiful room in Wytheville, a great room with a view, great bed, and some interesting play by play.

The first night is usually somewhat rough.  It is a new bed, new pillows, a lot of light in the room, noisy air conditioning, you name it.  But often the second night is better: I am exhausted from a day of teaching, and somewhat used to the new room.

But sometimes it just does not work (see last week'spost on nothing being perfect).  This week I am staying in Wytheville at this absolutely wonderful hotel.  Things should be perfect.  Last night was my second night.  So I was looking forward to a great night of sleep.  But, there was a roadster meet-up in town and the hotel was full.  I went to sleep around 11 and by 12 I was woken up by the people next door.  They were having some serious sex and wanted to share the experience with me, at least through the wall.  The lady was screaming with every thrust and whether it was real or not had at least one orgasm.

Except for some of it's rambunctious guests this is a great hotel .  Oops, I left my window open, not that I have any plans.

Slightly amused and slightly annoyed did I turn around after their 10 minute love making session.  But then the people it the room on the other side entered their room.  There were at least two or three couples and they continued talking and meeting till 12:45.  I did fall asleep, but woke up when the guest left.  I heard a roadster start outside and thought:"Finally real sleep."  But then the bed started rhythmically creaking and after some loud moaning there was a very loud sighing: "Oh my God."  I thought: "Oh my God, maybe now I can get some sleep!"  

Well, how wrong was I.  He must have have satisfied her first in a non-penetrating way and now it was his turn.  Their bed was against our adjoining wall and boy he was like a jackhammer.  He went 15 seconds really fast, followed by 15 seconds slow, followed by 15 seconds really fast, etc., etc.  Thank goodness he did not last very long and was done in a few minutes and they were out.

Finally, by 1:15, it was quiet enough for me to get my beauty sleep, wake up by 6:45 and get ready to teach.  I did turn up the TV a bit when I woke up that morning, just to get even.

On cyber communities (12/7/2015)

On the road again, for the last trip of the year.  It started pretty darn shitty, but finally made it to my destination as of this writing.  Wytheville is a sleepy town in "them hills" of Virginia. I have this reputation with my colleagues of being in love with this town, and for one reason or another I used to go here very often; at least until they discovered it.

When on the road I rely a lot on my (artificial) cyber communities that we all seem to have amassed around us.  I was reminded about that today during my drive over here listening to National Public Radio's Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  She was interviewing Rick Moody about his new book "Hotels of North America".  The book is written as a set of hotel reviews.

It made me think of how I live and depend on my cyber community when on the road:

• Yelp (for restaurant reviews)
• LinkedIn (for support form like-minded professionals, kind of like a support groups)
• Facebook (mostly friends)
• Google+ (my blog, more artsy community and bonsai enthusiasts)
• Google Maps (for traffic updates and restaurant recommendations)
• Weather Underground (all about weather)

Within these communities there are also special groups that I'm a member of.  For example in Facebook I'm a member of our church group, our neighborhood group, the Virginia birders group, and a bread bakers group.  In LinkedIn I'm a member of 20+ groups.  Driving over, I started realizing that I have a lot of fake or maybe artificial friends. The interesting thing is too that all these sites keep suggesting more groups that you might be interested in joining, like trying to suck you in deeper and deeper.

I'm always amused by my 88 year old father-in-law  (who reads these posts and will probably give me grief for mentioning him), because he seems so bemused by the fact that Facebook knows so (too) much about him and it keeps suggesting potential new friends to him or trying to invite him to join LinkedIn.  He is correct it is somewhat intrusive, just look at that list of communities that know my preferences etc. and keeps tabs on me.

But yes, without Yelp, I would never have found those great restaurants, or avoided those supposedly lousy ones.  I also write reviews, usually only of good experiences and only once or twice of really horrible dining experiences (I hated those professors that graded you on your mistakes and did not look at the things you did correct).  I never review a place to settle a score or to make someone look bad; I try to be a responsible partner in my community.  Some don't; this morning there was a thing on morning edition about women being taken advantage off through on-line dating, another one of those communities.

Internet communities are great things for a lot of people including me.  They put all your friends together: it allowed me to rediscover old long lost friends; it gave me support groups; it gave me traffic information; and I had some absolutely great inexpensive food.  So yes, I like my friends on my cyber groups, my real friends or virtual friends.  Moreover, traveling is lonely and it is better than getting silly in a bar.  But I realize as well, nothing is better than real life friends in real flesh that you can talk to, have a drink with and just be with.

Shawsville (7/24/2014)

Taught two courses at different sides of the state this week.  Kind of like a traveling salesman.   I drove to Fairfax on Tuesday evening after having an MRI of my head (boy that was a different experience).  The MRI itself was absolutely not as bad as everybody had warned me about.  But then, I am convinced that all my yoga practice helped with it.  Shavasana really helped.

Then it was down to Wytheville after a full day of teaching in Fairfax.  I left around 4 pm on Wednesday and got in around 9 that evening.  After teaching again on Thursday I stayed overnight to recuperate and took it easier going back on Friday.   By taking it easier I mean not going 8 or 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, trying to make some time, kind of in the frame of mind of "hurry up to relax."  This probably is a contradiction, and I am not sure if it works anyway; you area kind of wired after a five hour rat race on the interstate at 80 mph.  So on the way back I made sure that I consistently only exceeded the speed limit by 4 miles per hour (if that) and I actually got off the highway for a while.

So I got of the interstate in Christiansburg and actually rode highway 11 down the mountain.  Highway 11 is a nice twisty (down the) mountain road that is actually really quiet with some nice vistas.  I am sure it does not put many extra miles on the vehicle but it is away from the rat race of the interstate.  I took the picture below in Shawsville. No idea what I took a picture of, but is was a pretty farm building.  Wikipedia does not tell me much about Shawsville either; although I am sure it has a rich history, in addition to being wiped out by the Shawnee Indians in 1756.

Eventually I got back on the highway and joined the rat race back to Richmond.

One of the things I taught my students Thursday was "to think outside the box," while understanding that most of the time they will need to enforce the law and regulations.  Yes, there may still be times that they can, may and even should improvise, even though they are restrained by those darn laws and regulations.

Think outside the darn box!

Well that's what Friday felt like.  I think it felt like that for everyone; for me, kind of obeying the speed limit and getting of the main road and driving the back roads, at least for a little bit.  For other it seemed that they were all living in the left lane on Friday.  It was amazing here I was driving 70 (which was the speed limit) and I was passing people in the right lane.  I even had people moving over to the right to let me pass and then more back to the left lane.  It was so bad that I adapted the Beatles tune Yellow Submarine into "We all live in the left lane."  Guess even they were thinking outside the box, but I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do.  We learn in traffic school that most fatalities happen in the left lane (but that would be thinking inside the box).  Oh well.

Getting back to Richmond, even a transformer thought outside the box.  It seemed that it exploded underground, just outside our offices.  All traffic lights were out and our building only had emergency lights and was evacuated.  Dropped the car off and continued my road trip home.  A busy week indeed.

Wytheville (3/26/2014)

Last full day in Wytheville teaching the courses at the community center.  I feel very satisfied with this class.  A few years ago while here I went to lunch at a hole in the wall, and went to eat there again with my fellow instructor.  Two years ago when I ate there, people from the health department were eating there as well, always a good sign.

The Wythe Produce & Deli is a great small country store immediately off I-81 on Route 52.  The food is still amazing.  Both of us were not disappointed.  I had a typical southern lunch, chicken dumplings and green beans.  Don my fellow instructor had a great roast beef sandwich.  Inexpensive and absolutely above average (or really good).  Strangely it is not even on Yelp or identified on Google.  I had to take a picture of it.

Wytheville (3/25/2014)

When will this winter stop?  We had snow again on Tuesday, and I took these two pictures.  One was from my motel room.  Teaching a class in the more conservative region of Virginia, I had more people trying to start an argument with me about global warming.  It was amazing.
I am so frustrated about these types of arguments which has now become so politicized.  It seems that the right leaning people want to deny there is climate change, while the lefties are very passionate about it.  I am just wondering why people that are afraid of government spending, because we saddle our children up with debt, can not talk with people who want to prevent environmental degradation, in order not to saddle our children up with and unlivable environment.
Oh well, these two pictures were from my motel room in the morning and a more artistic picture from the car; the sun was out and it was snowing.  Very interesting scenes indeed. The building in my motel room picture is of a German dinner theater here in town.