So, we just got back last night. I haven’t touched a keyboard in a week and my hands feel sooooo good now. Today (Sunday) I’ll be spending unpacking and cleaning the house, carrying over to Monday (which I took off), where I plan to reorganize my life for the next few months, as well as head over to Lowe’s to get some House Fixin Stuff (wallpaper remover, etc).

So, how was Gatlinburg? Interesting. It was a haze of hiking, more hiking, strange people, tacky attractions (passed, not visited), relaxation and TV. Some bits:

* We walked no less than four miles every day. It was about a mile and a half from the borrowed timeshare to downtown Gatlinburg (”a 10 miunte walk”… not quite, but totally not bad at all. Refreshing, even) where we were assailed with the sights, sounds and smells of the town.

* There are no fewer than like seven FUDGE STORES within a four-block area. Lots of tacky stores (”candles shaped like clowns from 1920! Your face etched in lasers on a crystal! martial arts weapons!” etc) and a few cool ones (the tea/coffee places were really cool, as well as the deep, authentic crafts houses where the artists work and live from).

* My last trip to Gatlinburg was 10 years ago on a pass-through during Spring Break with my roommate. Before that was probably 10 years previous. Sometime in that time period the place got an injection of Atlantic City. Not the seedy stuff, just the “tacky tourist” stuff. There is a singularity of Mini Golf, Go Carts, Fudge, Outlet Stores and Steak Buffets that no other place on this planet could ever hope to match.

* We were interested in seeing some attractions, mainly to get the Real Feel of the place, but everything was surprisingly expensive. The Aquarium (apparently the most popular aquarium on the East Coast, but I think it’s because it’s open late and there’s nothing better to do) was like $18 per person. Dinner shows were all around the $30-40 per person mark. I totally was into seeing The Miracle just for the kicks, but when I found out it was like $40 per person… Naw. So we skipped almost everything (including the Alabama Grill - That is, a grill/buffet where they play full concert videos of the band ALABAMA while you eat. I think it’s some sort of extreme endurance thing). And yet, we still did a lot.

* The first day we decide to really bust out and hike was the day that I realized that my ACG hiking boots, which I’ve worn in the US and Japan for almost (or over) 10 years, died. The sole on the right foot just tore up, and if you know shoes you know that super glue is just a bandaid. Luckily, with an ECCO shop in Pigeon Forge, I was able to buy a rocking pair of European hiking boots (I’m a size 44 in Euroland), and they served me well. Here’s to 10 more good years of hiking. Hiking boot shopping is really hard for me. I hate Timberlands and most hiking boots, because while they’re solid as heck, the ankle is stiff as heck and is hard to bind to my ankle without tons of pressure. Sure, wearing them every day for like 2 years eventually wears them in, but I want something softer at the ankle so that I can wear them NOW, not in 2 years of blisters and chafing. Anyway, ECCO had some solid shoes.

* On that front, I tried out a ton of MERRELL shoes, including Merrell hiking boots, as my paid of MERRELL MOCS are the most comfortable shoes out there (they saved my butt at GenCon last year). They have some good walking shoes, but the MOCS are their most solid wear, I think. Durable (I went hiking in mine for a day with no problem), reliable,
soft, and not too tight. If I had a million dollars I’d buy all my friends the Merrell Jungle Moc, and keep the disease going.

* We went to town every day, a hike of about 4-5 miles at least. We went on some 5-mile hikes about three times. There’s so much beautiful nature in Western NC/Eastern Tennessee. It’s just grand imagining how this place naturally developed over eons, and the hiking’s awesome to boot: Not too extreme, and there’s always something new and cool to see.

* TV. We don’t have cable at home, so a little bit of the fun of staying somewhere else is watching the occassional interesting Discover/History/TLC/Comedy Central show. Daily Show is pretty much a given. We were highly entertained (as in, couldin’t peel our eyes from) by The Dog Whisperer on National Geographic (I love how the dogs are so easy to pull out of bad habits, yet humans, because of their reasoning mechanism and rationalization, are much harder to train- Like the owners of the dogs, who say “Oh, I see now!” when they obviously haven’t drilled in the new info yet). The other I watched a lot was Miami Ink on TLC, which was really interesting and exciting (because of all the people and all their problems and different tattoos) without being all competitive and destructive and stupid.

* I brought about 25 books, I only finished about 6. I didn’t even touch the Japanese stuff there, but that just convinced me I need to build a desk and Japanese study-work area at home to get into that more. Later I’m off to IKEA or Target to find some of that crappy throw-away table/desk stuff to use. We also hit a famous used book store, where I got about 4 books and 6 William Ackerman CDs (I had always planned on collecting them all- The price was right to get started).

* After reading Greg Egan’s Axiomatic, a collection of short SF stories, I’m totally a fan now. The stories, while short (almost too short/abrupt at times), were really well thought out. They took one element or Shock and really dug out the possibilities. I got a few more of his works at the used bookstore, and plan on reading his stuff for a while. Thanks to Dan Reid for that rec. I’m hooked.

* Orie and I like food. It may be the Japanese thing of “Every place has its own special cuisine”, but when we go places we seek out local restaurants (sure we eat at chains and stuff too, but at least a few meals we hit up local joints) and eat local foods. Charleston, Tampa, San Francisco, etc all have great local places. Gatlinburg is like a festering chain-store wound. However, we were able to get to a few local joints. Tennessee foods appear to be STEAK and PANCAKES (as that’s about all we could find). We found the pancakes to be incredible, though. The steaks were “ok”. We also managed to find some Tennessee Barbeque (that is, “pulled pork cooked with marinade”), being big NC barbeque fans now. Turns out that TN BBQ is very much like NC, but it has a tomato component to it as well. That is to say, unlike northern “BBQ sauce” (pure tomato/ketchup base, with seasoning), it rather tastes like a tomato/ketchup base has been thoroughly mixed with NC-style vinegar-base/marinade. The best of both worlds. It’s a very complementary taste, and we hope to find (or make) some more in the future.
* I lost a belt size with all that hiking. But I didn’t lose any actual weight. Weird. Goal: Get my ass moving. Planning a thorough Yoga, DDR and aerobics plan for the next few months. We’ll see if I stick to it.

* After doing all that hiking, we decided to dig around to find local parks and walking trails in NC. It’s gonna be much hotter than the mountains, but we were both bitten by the nature bug. We’ll probably go hiking once a week or so, on the weekends, starting with 6-8 milers and going from there.

That’s about it. We got back, the cats were very happy to see us, the package from Amazon arrived, and I’m getting back into the swing of things. Probably going to spend a day putting stuff on eBay that I’ve been meaning to get rid of for a while. Looking forward to getting back to work… somewhat (I have to do more to prevent stress and shutting out), and really looking forward to meet up with friends; going eating, gaming, walking, whatever.