My Summer Vacation, or The Cesspool of Sin

Dear Reader,

Greetings from south of the Mason Dixon Line! Fit Lesbian and I have spent a week in southern Appalachia to attend a family reunion in Brevard, North Carolina. And we drove.  Boston to Brevard is about 17 hours so we threw the road bikes in the car, downloaded Atlas Shrugged, and set out for adventure.

Discoveries from My Summer Vacation

1) The audio book version of Atlas Shrugged is 62 hours long. By the time we get back to Boston, I will still have no idea who John Galt is.  

2) Roanoke, Virginia is adorable, chock full of cute restaurants, bikes, and artsy old signage. We still weren’t holding hands in the street or anything, but we were almost lulled into a sense of security by these left-leaning indicators. 

(Cute!)

3) Asheville, North Carolina has over 50 microbreweries, has yet to outlaw public nudity, and smells faintly of incense. While rallying support for an Anti Gay Marriage amendment,  Republican Senator James Forrester called Asheville a “Cesspool of Sin.” The local NPR station thought this was catchy, so they put it on T-shirts and gave them away during pledge drives.

 (I bought one.)

4) I only know one line from the song “Take My Breath Away”.

5) DON’T TAKE THE SCENIC ROUTE. The Blue Ridge Parkway has been dubbed the “most beautiful” road in North America and looks like this:

 (not scenic)

Bonus: it has two lanes so you have plenty of time to take in the view from behind the only other car on the road which will inevitably be driving 20mph. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs through the Appalachian Mountains, and is also where professional cyclists train because of the insane elevation gains, so we thought we would try it. We got up at 6:00am to beat the southern heat, and set out for a nice long 2 hour bike ride. We rode 8 miles in 45 minute and ended with Fit Lesbian yelling, “I can’t do this!” She received no protests from me. We turned around and rode downhill all the way back to the car.

6) Pisgah National Forest: Since the last venture was so successful, we thought we would try another mountain which had this awesome sign to greet us:

(Bad Ass)

We climbed 2200 feet at which point I literally cried "Uncle!" It's a good thing I did too. Unbeknownst to me, Fit Lesbian had vowed to never again be the weak link. We may have ended up in Tennessee.

7) Fried chicken is the ideal recovery food.

(Fit Lesbian also enjoys eating dessert

while watching The Biggest Loser)

Sincerely,

Fat Lesbian