Touring the (amazing and kitschy) sights

Most of the trip to Ohio featured pretty cruddy weather, so I had to cancel my planned bike rides. But that left more time for tourist attractions.

I expect this photo to get me mad street cred in the right crowd. This was in Columbus, Ohio, where one family from the Star Trek Group lives, and they were amazed that they had never seen it before.

This Giant Atomic Mouse lives in Cordele, Georgia, on the property of a pest management company. Who will prevail? Only time (and the inevitable comic book adventure) will tell.

Pigs and pancakes. As my friend M said, they are so happy because you are eating pancakes instead of them.

Muffler man turned out to be not that exciting. He was about the size of me, and I´m not that big.

But the final attraction did not disappoint... an actual centaur skeleton! Housed in a tasteful wooden display cabinet, like those used by Victorian gentleman collectors, it is displayed in the center of the University of Tennessee University library. 

Adventures while waiting

I have now been waiting six weeks for the next document that I need for my visa application, which is coming from the US State Department. According to their website, I'll need to wait at least another five. That's okay, though, because all this waiting is good practice for when I have to start dealing with the Spanish bureaucracy.

To fill my time during the wait, I decided to take a longish road trip. I'll be gone for about a month, but I won't be coveting that much territory. Long drives make my back hurt, so I'll do short drives, paired with long visits.

If I have planned this right, I'll greet every current member of the Star Trek group in person, visit with my undergrad physics mentor, and do a lot of bike rides. Oh, and take some photos of roadside attractions. After all, I have to fill the blog with something.

Yesterday's highlight was a decommissioned Titan nuclear missile. It was pouring rain, so I didn't even get out of the car to take the photo. I drove quite close to read the informational plaque and learned that the government has only *loaned* this missile to the local Rotary club. But there was no explanation of why the Rotary Club thought this was a good idea. Still, the existence of the missile meant I drove through Cordele, Georgia and bought a coffee, so I guess it worked to attract at least one tourist.

Today I did a traffic bike ride in Franklin Delano Roosevelt State Park, near were he vacationed in Warm Springs, GA. The 8C/46F weather was apparently too cold for Southerners because the entire path was deserted. I also spent the evening with my good friend T and his family. In-person visits are about to become much harder for me, so I'm really glad I can do them now.

Visitors

I hear that if you move to a trendy vacation spot, all your friends and family will visit you. I think they mean places like Aspen and Hawaii, but it turns out to be true for Gainesville too. As a result of recent visits, I can now tell you the hot spots all tourists must visit. The three best:

•  A sinkhole. For real - you can see lots of geology and nature at the Devil´s Millhopper state park. but I like just telling people that they are going to a sinkhole. 
• Repurpose Project, my favorite thrift store. It´s like a giant garage sale and sells everything - broken bicycles, dinner plates for 25c,  and half used rolls of wrapping paper. Anything that they think someone will use, so that it won´t end up in a landfill.
• Satchel´s pizza, known for it´s artistic flair and homemade sodas. They have bunting made with hair curlers and no wall is left un-mosaiced. 

It was cold when my parents visited for Christmas but still warmer than the rest of the country, so we didn´t complain. 

The cold was so unusual that everyone wrapped their poor little tropical plants in blankets. 

My friends L and CA visited from DC on their way to a financial workshop. They enjoyed the sinkhole, but were more impressed by the alligator we saw on the University of Florida campus. 

I expect to be here for a few more months as I work through all the paperwork needed for the visa application. So act soon if you, too, want the Gainesville tour! VIP tours include the world´s biggest bat house and a1924 manually-operated elevator.

Photo Op

I have already had tons of fun experiences by just showing up to events and then telling everyone I meet that I´m new and want to make friends. A few weeks ago, someone I had met once emailed me and asked if he could take my picture. Larry is a talented amateur photographer who specializes in portraits and was intrigued by my vintage wardrobe. 

I´m no model, as evidenced by my inability to pout, but it turned out to be an absolute blast. His friend was there to help me dress, and she also suggested poses and made faces at me to inspire me to new facial expressions. If you come visit me you will think I have a huge ego because of all the photos of me now hanging on my wall. But aren´t they fun?

Making smoking glamorous again. (Just kidding, that is a rolled up piece of paper because we couldn´t find anyone to bum a cigarette off of.)

Someone got me an empty decorative box!

Yes, I pay a huge amount of money to ship authentic reproduction 1940s jeans from the UK. 

We all have our foibles.

I do not believe your pseudoscientific claims are supported by the data.

All photo credits: Larry Hyler

Cycling

Transporting a holiday wreath I scored at a volunteer gig

Gainesville is turning out to be a pretty good place to ride a bike. When I packed up my life in my car, I brought two hobbies with me - sewing and bicycling. Sewing is my creative activity, and bicycling is both exercise and transportation. I am able to bike a lot here. The city has made a major effort to have lots of bicycle lanes, and any city with a university has students on bikes and mopeds. Don't get me wrong, this is not Amsterdam. But I can pedal almost anywhere in about thirty minutes and can usually find a not very busy road to get me there. I've even found a bicycling group that takes a weekly ride. They are a perfect fit, because all the other members are 25 years older than me so they actually go a speed that I can keep up with.

A surprise lake along the one excellent recreational path.

Many things are changing in my life (and will be changing even more when I switch countries), so it´s nice that there are some things that still feel the same.

Another Fête!

My friend E had the brilliant idea that I should host one last holiday party in DC, and she would make this possible by offering her cleaned and decorated house as the location. I loved this, especially because the pandemic has prevented my annual party for the last two years. I invited a dozen and a half of my friends, flew up to DC, grocery shopped and cooked for two days, and then everyone fêted.

Well, almost everyone fêted. Because COVID did what it does best, and my friend E got sick. So we all ended up at her beautiful house, hosted by her husband and daughter, while sick E and her son stayed at a hotel so we could use her house. E has earned her angel wings, and someday I will have to throw another party just for her to make it up to her.

Everyone looking their best. The couple who wore their wedding outfits won the best dressed category, in my opinion.

Looking fancy and vintage.

Discussing fancy things. The one child in attendance was excited about dressing up and eating fancy food but was dismayed that talking about fancy things turned out to be talking about regular boring adult things in fancy clothes.

Step One: Meeting People

I have three goals in my life right now: clean out the condo I´m living in, apply for my Spanish visa, and make friends. The first two deserve a separate post, so I´ll save them for another time. I am not naturally talented at making friends, unlike my nephew and my best friend. But I am a keen observer of social patterns and a project manager to the Nth degree. So I´m pretty good at making friends by following rules (that are research-based!). 

I figure that the first step to making friends is meeting people. My rules for this part are: (1) go to 2-3 group per week, (2) stay to talk to people afterwards, (3) accept as many invitations as I can, and (4) issue my own invitations. It has been challenging to find groups, as Gainesville is 1/20th the size of DC. But in my two weeks here, I have managed to start a weekly volunteer gig, attend several group meetings, and get invited to (and attend) two dinners at people´s houses. In DC I could find groups by searching Meetup.com and the Internet for my interests. Here it is working much better to just tell people I am looking to make friends, ask what activities they know about, and then get added to personal email lists. 

I know it will take time to actually make friends, because that comes from sharing experiences and knowing people well enough to reveal feelings and thoughts beyond the superficial. But simultaneously I know that the only way to make this happen is to show up and keep trying. I´m also working hard to maintain my connections to older friends in DC and other places, so that I don´t feel too alone during this transition. So far, I have met lots of interesting and welcoming people.  I am amazed at how nice people can be and also at how much energy I can spend on socialization when I am not using it for work purposes. Retirement has many benefits.