* * * * *
Scufflaws
Long day today (and no links for this entry—I'm too tired to even consider
links right now; do your own XXXX searching).
After leaving the hotel, we drove around the state a bit, including
Lincolnton, where Smirk is thinking of moving to soon. After that (and a very
cool antique store with the Obligatory Velveteen picture of Our True Lord and
Savior Elvis Aaron Presley and old tin advertising signs) we headed out to
Brevard.
Yup, the town I grew up in.
It hasn't changed a bit, yet everything is different. The old drug store on
the corner of Main and Broad St. where I used to buy my Uncle Scrooge comics
is now an upscale toy store (not the Porche type toy store, but a train set
and teddy bear toy store—back in 1988 when I last visited it, it had split
into a two stores, one being a Hallmark store). Yet the townhome we lived in
was still called “Shepards Square” and was still the same redwood color
(although the actual townhome that I called “home” now had an access walkway
across the lawn).
We then drove out to Connestee Falls. At first we couldn't find it since the
area had built up in the past few decades. We stopped at a realty office
specializing in Connestee Falls realestate (not only is it named for a
spectacular waterfall, but a housing development in the same area) but found
it closed. I then walked to a nearby house and asked the very friendly
resident were the falls were. He pointed out that they were still about two
miles further down the road.
Two miles later we found the falls. What had once been a series of octagonal
shaped buildings holding the sales offices and restaurant is now long gone
(only one lone octagonal building is still there and it was the home to some
other local business) with the paths leading to Connestee Falls long gone
into disrepair.
The only portion still “open” was the upper observational deck, with the semi
natural stairs that lead to the base of the main falls closed off with a no
trespressing warning sign. We found the rements of a path that lead around
the gate and being the scufflaws that we were, made a very careful descent
down to the base of the main falls.
Connestee Falls is rare among falls in that two falls, nearly opposite each
other, meet and run off into a perpendicular stream. The path we followed
down looked like it hadn't been maintained since my last visit to the falls
in the summer of 1988, and we only made it to the base of the main falls (and
were about twenty feet away from the lower observational deck that was
otherwise behind unreachable forest.
The weather in Brevard was drizzly, but that made it all the more vibrant
around Connestee Falls, the rain bringing out deep greens and browns of the
forest. Very beautiful and very tranquil setting, making me wish I had a
house overlooking the falls.
After an indeterminate amount of time, we relunctantly made our way back up
the trail to our vehicle and made our way back to the data center to finish
setting up our equipment.
By the time we got back from Brevard (and dinner) it was after 10:00 pm when
we headed directly into the data center. We mounted the servers, reran the
power cables and were about to make the actual network cables when we found
one of our servers DOA. By then it was after 2:30 am (okay, I'm backdating
this entry a bit) when we figured we'd call it a day.
We cleaned up, and left one server backing up another one since we need to
reinstall the operating system. We have a full day ahead of us tomorrow and
it's expected we might not make it back on Monday.
It's now almost 4:30am and I'm getting ready to crash.
Email author at
[email protected]
