Henry Stern in Asheville settled last week on a house he had bought and I went down to see it after he had finished moving in. I left Alexandria on Sunday of Labor Day weekend about 8 in the morning in steady but light rain and fog and temperatures in the low 80s and very light traffic. After I crossed the mountains into the northern part of the Valley the rain stopped and it got partly cloudy; by the time I got half way through the Valley after Roanoke it was partly sunny and getting warm to uncomfortably warm.

Probably because it was a Sunday on a holiday weekend there was very little truck traffic which usually clogs this route. But there were several speed traps which I hadn't experienced before; I was guessing the traps had been set because it was a holiday weekend and the police wanted to have dramatic examples to scare everyone into driving slowly. But I realized later that there was something else going on.

I kept seeing MANY MANY large expensive toy trucks and cars and SUVs all plastered with Hokie pennants and flags and three dimensional decals all over the sides of the vehicles. The traffic volume kept building up as I got further south; in fact it built up so much that something happened that I never saw before on I-81 - the traffic came to a dead stop twice. From 75 mph to zero. And it wasn't the police peed traps; it was so many people getting onto the highway to head to VIT.

I then began hearing on the college radio station about The Big Game and realized what was going on. But how can you have a Big Game on September 1 when the semester has been running for one week? Don't the athletes ever go to school? Then more and more stations were carrying the pre-game activities; there actually seems to be a Hokie network. Finally as I passed through the university at Christiansburg/Blacksburg the traffic dropped down again to almost nothing and the police disappeared until Tennessee. The last section over the mountains from Tennessee was also empty but I had to keep shifting down to climb the mountains. I found out later from Henry that his 4 cylinder Camry can take the grades without having to shift down so I guess my Civic engine is juts too weak for easy non-thinking mountain driving.

Henry's house is near the university and about 3 4 or 5 blocks from where his apartment had been; it's on a corner of one small residential street with another smaller residential street. There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a very big foyer, a living room with a very large dining L, a kitchen, an office and a sun porch . There's a gas fireplace and the two car garage is downstairs. [To see other rooms of the house click 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 ]

Each of the rooms except the bathrooms has large ceiling fans; at home I use Vornado floor fans to move the air conditioning and heat around and thought they were pretty good. But after experiencing the ceiling fans I'm going to look into having one installed in my living room. The house is centrally air conditioned and there's a separate HVAC unit for the sun room. While I was in Asheville the temperature was lower than it was in DC by 6 or 7 degrees but it still was in the middle to high 80s; the air conditioning was needed less that I would have had used at home and I was still comfortable with the air conditioning in conjunction with the ceiling fans. The house was already set up for satellite television but Henry decided to use cable television.

His house is within walking distance of 2 major super markets, a bank, drugstore, post office, church and several restaurants and about a 5 minutes drive from the university. It's about an 8 - 10 minute drive to the middle of the city which now is mostly restaurants, bars, book stores, tourist facilities. Henry thinks that drive is down a congested street but its all relative; he probably remembers when the street was quiet 5 years ago and I see a street that's like many commercial streets in this area.

After I had seen the house we went downtown to eat but because a festival was ending, the crowds were filling up the restaurants, meaning you had to wait for a table. So we drove the 8 or 9 minutes back to Henry's neighborhood and ate at an Italian restaurant Marco's Pizzeria 828-285-0709 640 Merrimon Ave # 101 Asheville, NC across the street where I had a chicken parmigian sandwich.

After we got back to the house Stephen came by to say hello. He was telling me about his mountain bicycle trip across the Alps. I thought he had begun in Bregenz where he had been staying with family friends. But I learned that they had actually driven to the Walsertal enclave in Germany and then began the bicycle ride through the German Alps, Austrian Alps and Italian Alps and ended at the Garda See in Südtirol. I meant to ask him the mileage but forget to; it must be in the 200 mile range.

He noted that one difference in the Austrians and Germans he was riding with and the riders and riding that he's used to here is that the Americans tend to get their pleasure in mountain biking from the challenge of the ride and the connection to nature; the impression he was getting from the Europeans was that they relished the competitive aspects much more, whether competing against each other or competing against their own internal goals.

Just as many other Americans not used to German culture, he was surprised at people being so direct and frank in their opinions and in taking you at your own word. He mentioned that, behaving like a polite American, he would be offered the last piece of cake, would act like a polite American and say no, expecting to have the cake re-offered and then seeing it eaten by someone else, since he had said no and they believed him. He said he lost several desserts that way. It'll make a good anecdote for the German culture classes.

On Monday morning [Labor Day] Paul MacDonald from the university's French department came over for breakfast and to welcome Henry to the new house. Henry had made a special breakfast using the Sekt and Orangensaft that you get at formal German daylight occasions.

Paul, who knows some but not too much German, had just gotten back from a trip to Germany with three people who knew little or no German. It was interesting to hear his perspective as a foreign tourist.

Doris and Sigrid disagree with Henry and me, when we say that a respectable looking foreign tourist in Germany, even if he has little or no German language ability, is usually treated especially helpfully and friendly by the Germans, if he makes a little effort with one or two words of German. Treated more nicely than foreigners in many other European countries who don't know the local language. Paul's and his friends' experiences in Germany were the same that Henry and I have observed over and over.

My main reason for the trip was to see Henry's house but there is a very tiny chance I might go to Asheville after I retire; so I also was looking around at the city this time from a real estate view. So the previous afternoon and that morning Henry drove me around several neighborhoods in north Asheville and in the area about 5 or 6 miles north of the city.

Henry is keeping an eye on a couple's house while they are in Europe and we had to drive up for him to feed a cat. We drove up a dirt road for perhaps 2 miles, climbing maybe a thousand feet. The house is very very attractive and situated on the side of a mountain - still in the city limits; from its porch you get a spectacular view of the mountain plateau Asheville is on and of the panorama of the mountains surrounding it. If, however, I can get three or four houses to choose, I think I still want the duplex penthouse on Park Avenue and the villa in Grunewald in Berlin and the apartment in Paris. Nature is certainly nice but you can always watch it on television.

In the late morning Henry and I drove out to a Sofa Connection sofa store since he had all the furniture he needs except a couch. He found one he thought he wanted and took the measurements to double check at his house. On the way back we went over to Henry's former apartment to pick up some things he had left there and met Thomas who was painting Henry's former apartment as well as another one in the building. He took a lunch break and the three of us went to lunch at the Atlanta Bread Company, one of the several restaurants within walking distance of Henry's house. Thomas had just gotten back from a multi-week wilderness training program for troubled and perhaps-about-to-become criminal [wealthy] youth whose parents had sent them to the course. He's waiting to see if the school will offer to hire him full time and to think about whether he wants to accept, if they do.

After lunch we went back to the sofa store where Henry placed the order for the sofa and love seat which are supposed to be delivered this weekend. That evening we briefly saw Thomas and his friend Laura who was helping him with the painting.

On Tuesday Henry went to work and I made an appointment with a real estate agency for the afternoon and took a day's outing to Hot Springs and Marshal .

Hot Springs is about 25 miles away from Asheville driving over rising and falling roads that required a lot of gear shifting. But I think I wound up at no higher an elevation than Asheville is at and maybe even at a slightly lower one.

Hot Springs is on the same river as Asheville is, French Broad River - not named after Suzette as Henry claimed - and is very small, about 4 blocks by 6 blocks and the main industry seems to be white water rafting - several raft shops and even a rafters' saloon.

There are really only two other major industries that I could see: a Jesuit retreat house and a spa. Compared to Berkeley Springs in West Virginia that I've visited many times - and even used the baths one time - this spa was far smaller. Berkeley Springs isn't like Baden-Baden or Marienbad but it does have an impressive bath house and colonnade and landscaped grounds. The NC Hot Springs spa made an extremely bad impression at first sight: primitive and slatternly and rancid and rank and dirty. I did speak to the woman operating the counter to get information since I had gone this far; and when I did look at a few of the baths, they were actually up to date and clean. 

All the baths are outdoors and they claim they are open every day of the year, even in the winter, as long as snow and ice don't close the mountain roads. I'm not sure how you get out of the baths and into your clothes when you're outdoors and its 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I didn't need a bathing suit to use it but since I had a 2:30 appointment with a real estate agent I decided against doing it this time. But I did get a T-shirt as a souvenir for Stephen since they were on end of the season sale.

During World war I the town had been used as a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers. I had read a book about it a few years ago, The German Invasion of Western North Carolina and it was amazing to learn how the Germans had protected themselves against boredom by building a kind of mitteleuropäisch fairy-tale city throughout the area. Unfortunately it was allowed to crumble after the war and later was demolished.[ If you click the images to the right and to the left they'll  expand and you can read the details.]

For lunch I went to the Smokey Mountain Diner. I had intended to sit at a counter and have a sandwich but although called a "diner" there was no counter and because of the seating arrangement the only practical place for me to sit was in a booth at the cash register. There were some eat-ins. But mostly it was carry out and I got to hear all the conversations because of where I was sitting. [Lunch was mediocre barbeque sandwich a little better than the one at the Chinese restaurant across from my office.]

One man came in in bib overalls but very neat and well groomed; he was probably in his mid 30s but began making joking compliments to a group of ladies in their 70s in one of the booths. He was very outgoing and loud but pleasant. His voice had a nice timbre and his accent was attractive although I could understand only about half of what he said. Several other men came in and ordered and they also had pleasant sounding accents. Except for the waitress I heard no woman speaking; maybe it's a local custom that women aren't loud spoken or don't speak out in public but more likely it was just chance that I heard only men speaking. The accent wasn't Virginia Gentleman English or Shenandoah Valley English but a not unpleasant old-fashioned country sound. For a small town there was a terrible parking problem and congestion with cars parked both parallel and perpendicular to the diner; this difficult parking and congestion was also in the next town I went to, Marshal, about 10 miles away.

Marshal is the county seat with library and an imposing courthouse and much more lively than Hot Springs. After, with some difficulty, parking I went to the ___________ Coffee house which is run by a northern couple. The place isn't conducive to sitting and reading because it is an awkwardly laid out space with glaring fluorescent lighting; outside there were several high tables and chairs but since it was almost 90 degrees, I stayed inside. There's a lot of business from lawyers, and officials and cops from the court house across the street. One cop came in and when he joked with the waitress and placed his order he had very little accent; but when a second cop came in and they began talking the accent level zoomed up.

I got back to Asheville in time for the 2:30 appointment with the real estate agent Peter McHugh [who had a northern accent, wore cowboy boots and whom Henry knew from church]. I didn't want to mislead him and use up his time and told him I wouldn't be retiring for at least 2 years but wanted to get an idea of what was available, especially in condominiums or freeholds that had associations to take care of maintenance. He showed me three condominium houses. The freeholds [they call them something like zero-properties] are in other parts of Asheville so we looked only at the condominiums. They all were basically variants of attached houses, where you were able to live on one level, although one of them had a second level; all were very, even too, big - one was twice the size of Henry's house and 4½ times the size of my apartment. Two of them had spectacular mountain views, and all were much cheaper than parallel units in the Washington area. But they still were pretty expensive.

On the negative side, one was all electric and the other two had gas only for heat and hot water , not gas air conditioning or gas cooking. But something more negative I noticed was that two of the three had dehumidifiers running. Maybe the owners had turned the air-conditioning down to save money and were using the dehumidifiers as a cheap back up but considering my need for good air conditioning, I found the use of dehumidifiers unsettling. The Timbers, Belvedere and Dover Street were the three I looked at.

After I went back to the house and checked my e-mail, Henry got home from work and took me to deliver a message. A former co-worker of mine was coming with his wife to Asheville that week to look at buying a house. They were arriving Wednesday afternoon and I was leaving Wednesday morning, so I wanted to leave them a note. Henry had shown me the house and neighborhood, Norwood Park, their real estate agent was taking them too and when we were driving around Asheville I saw places that appeared to be larger, nicer and cheaper than what they were seeing and in which they might be interested.

They were staying at a bed and breakfast and when I went up to it I could hear no air conditioning hum but the website says they have it]; the sign on the door said to go to the next house. I went there, rang the bell waited; rang the bell waited; and after 10 minutes, gave up. Back at Henry's  house I called the b&b and was told, yes they were open. So later, after supper, I went again and waited rang waited rang waited and no one answered. I left the letter in the mail box, called them again from Henry's house [I should have brought my cell phone and called them from their porch] and was told "Yes we are here and Yes we are open; our bell must be broken." I suspect the couple never got my message.

Stephen and his friend Jessica, whom he had met during the biology research project in Arizona, came over for supper and stayed for a few hours. They were talking about their biology classes and plans for possible volunteer research in Surinam in the future.

Wednesday morning I was starting back for the 9 hour drive to Alexandria; the only thing I hadn't been able to do was to look over Extended Stay of America, an "executive suite" long term motel where I was considering staying 2 or 3 weeks next summer to see if the difference in summer heat is worthwhile enough to consider moving. But I'd run out of time.

Out of the windows I could see fog and the radio forecast predicted fog until mid or late morning. The entrance and exit to Asheville via Tennessee is very steep and you're often slown down by fog. But it turned out well: Asheville kept the fog but after driving 10 miles I was out of it and had clear, but increasingly hot, weather up to the low 90s, for the trip. Even the overlook at the Tennessee border was particularly clear and I was able to cut out my car and the construction vehicles parked below me.. [click the picture to see full size].

I decided not to do any sightseeing and only to stop to stretch or get gas and drive straight through. The highway was generally light traffic but now there were at times trucks passing trucks and blocking the highway for a while. I made one stop in Fort Chiswell where the shopping outlets are but just got gas and a Moon Pie at the Flying J Travel Center. Then at Mrs. Rowe's Restaurant in Staunton [Exit 222] which is a non-chain big tourist place I've been to several times before. I just used their bathroom and was considering buying one of their MANY frozen food items for supper at home but was afraid the heat might be too much and the food might spoil before I got home.

The drive was long but easy until about 20 miles before I got home. There was a car crash on I-66 two or three miles outside the beltway that added almost half an hour on to the trip. 

The total distance was 1,157 miles at 36½ mpg, lower than usual, with gas ranging in price from $1.37 in Alexandria to $1.22 in the Valley to $1.32 in Asheville.

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