Furniture & Ice Cream

road trip: Knoxville, TN to Hickory, NC and back

Bubba came up for the weekend. Our mission, to visit some furniture outlets in North Carolina. We’d both heard about them, and wanted to see if you could actually find good deals. He was looking for a bed; I was looking for a sofa. I think I own the most uncomfortable sofa known to man. And while it is cool looking, and was nice when new, it has pilling issues. On a black sofa this is just not very attractive. It doesn’t fit through doors unless the legs are taken off of it. It took 1 move before someone figured out just how to get the damn legs off of it without breaking the sofa. I moved 5 months ago, the legs are still off. I thought I would find some nicer ones. Thing is, I have no clue where to buy them. I know they exist.

It was an overcast day, we tried to plug an address into the Navigation system, but Hickory NC did not exist in it’s database. I plugged in the next closest city I remembered from our online research. Off we went. The ride was beautiful. The mountains were green and so pretty. We traveled along a river, I don’t know which one … something the TVA created no doubt. The rapids were beautiful. If we didn’t have such a long drive a head of us, I might have stopped. (Bubba isn’t much into the sightseeing along the way … but if I’m driving he has no say in the matter). I did find it very cool when I passed the Eastern Continental Divide. Now I’ve crossed both the eastern and the western divides. : ) Though I have to admit, I didn’t even known there was an eastern one. I had to give Bubba a quick explanation of what the continental divide was and how water looks like it’s running uphill.

Where we were going boasted “20 miles of Furniture”, so we figured we’d get off on the far side of the 20 and work our way back. Of course neither of us wrote down actual places to see. I used the SatNav directory to look up places. This pointed us in the general direction we needed to go … ok, actually it was blind luck. The Navigation system wanted us to go one way, but I couldn’t cross the street so we went in the opposite direction. We saw a billboard and that became our destination. Oh my god. That’s a lot of furniture under one roof. We both saw things we liked, got idea of prices … after all we need to make sure the prices are indeed good. Now Bubba has this thing wrong with his foot that makes a lot of walking really painful. We walked this entire store (3 floors, I don’t know how many shops), and then headed to the next place in the 20 miles. This one was smaller. We were both tired and hungry. We cut this trip shot and went to Udderly Delicious Ice Cream. A cow themed ice cream parlor. : )

After our ice cream treat we had enough nourishment in us to continue on home. See, we didn’t stop for lunch because we didn’t get hungry till about 3pm … at that point if we had lunch we wouldn’t have been able to have a nice dinner. We like Cowz. We had to go. Crazy, but that’s our logic.

The drive home was horrible. Aside from being a somewhat winding mountain road, the weather turned nasty. At one point I had to snap at Bubba to either find a radio station or put in a CD because is constant radio scanning was getting on my nerves. There was some concentrating that needed to be done here so we didn’t end up smashed into the side of the mountain.

Another bonus to the navigation system is it kinda doubles as a telephone book. While still about 30 minutes from home I had Bubba dial in Outback steakhouse, got the phone number off the navigation system and called in our order. We drove up, got our food and headed home to enjoy a nice steak & beer dinner.

One Year

odometer reading: a whole lotta miles

A year ago today I picked Mr. Q up from Global Imports Mini in Atlanta. He’s been waxed n polished twice since I’ve had him. Once by Bubba and once by a remorseful dealer. In all it’s been a good year of Motoring. Although I had issues with the dealer, or rather the brain dead Motoring Advisor, those were worked out by dealing directly with the man in charge of all the mechanical gods. Rough Idle still plagues Mr. Q, but it is down to once on a tank of gas rather than every time I get in it. I can tolerate it. No matter how much the people don’t want to believe it, the problem really does seem to come down to the BRAND of gasoline I use. When I use the specific ones they told me to use it does not happen. When I use the brands that are more convenient to get (I live right next door to a gas station), it does happen. Oh well. Gas mileage remains fairly consistent. I haven’t really noticed any slight power loss. Though, considering I was driving a 78 corvette, anything feels like a loss of power.

Mr. Q is as stock as the day I drove him off the dealer’s lot. Of the options I got on him, the only one I regret are the white wheels. They look cute, but damn are they difficult to keep clean. I have the “V” spoke wheels, which are also a bitch to clean thoroughly. I step on the brakes and they are dirty. Solution … use brakes as little as possible! We like!!

The options I love are the heated seats. I use these year round. On a long road trip the heat feels nice on a tired back. With that option came heated mirrors and windshield washers. Since I garage the car, I’ve only seen the heated mirrors work once … but they are kinda neat. Not too sure about the windshield washers. The one time I used it when it was snowing, the stuff froze on the windshield. Guess it was really cold. That explains why the car was dinging at me. The last thing, which most folks think I was crazy for getting, is the Navigation System. While the Nav Lady can be irritating, I love that I can just jump in the car without a map. Living in a new city it’s been nice to be able to say I really haven’t gotten lost yet.

One bonus option is the headlight washers. With just a little practice you can work them so they squirt the driver or passenger of a car beside you. I have enjoyed that feature once or twice. : )