Asheville, city of 80,000 people in a metropolitan area of about 400,000 people, Buncombe County seat, home to a campus of the University of North Carolina, this is a bustling city, always high on the most livable lists, filled with hip young people and at the forefront of fads. 
Cycling is de rigeur, but not just as Lycra hobby or sport, but as a way of life.
It is a tourist attraction, and a town that also attracts young people who want to have children and raise families in a wholesome urban environment.
This is the heart of the community supported agriculture movement in North Carolina, home to brew pubs and street fairs and agricultural coops and farmer's markets.
Want a lute? Or a lute lesson? Just look around on the street you never know. It may be a ukulele or a banjo for all I know but it looked like a lute is all I can say in my defense.
Asheville is clean and prosperous and until not too long ago wasn't too expensive to live in. I did see apartments in the Kress building downtown going for $500,000 or $1800 a month lease-to-own, but perhaps there are bargains to be had if you look.
To live in Asheville means braving winters with night time freezing temperatures though summers are sunny and green and delightful. Asheville is the sort of urban renewal program that is pushed by proponents of moving away from suburban sprawl. Shops on the ground floor and apartments above is normal around here. People use sidewalks to walk. Imagine that.
Or sit.
There is always something to catch the eye as you stroll in downtown Asheville.
Hip scooters, a pretty Vespa. 
Learn this message in Asheville, it's everywhere:
Organic isn't enough anymore. Now the mantra is to consume locally sourced everything. restaurants list their local ingredients and the sources of their foods. Supermarkets tout their local sources of supply. It's back to the earth with a vengeance. Soy is out- it travels too far to become your food. Local is in. eating meat is okay now, as long as it is local and humanely raised.
Big box stores and chains don't stand a chance here where locals shop locally and expect to find locals staffing local stores. Like all fads it is driven to exasperation in Asheville, to the great benefit of those of us who appreciate this way of life. One hopes it will catch on all over the place.
Any store that parks a working Road King on the shop floor has my vote.
Layne and I agreed we need this relating to chickens.
She was going to buy me this t-shirt but when I said "Nice" and shrugged my shoulders she begged off and said I had too many shirts as it is. That was close...
Summertime is lovely.
These kinds of store names are very common around here. Everybody (except me) has to believe in something apparently.
Tops is a fabulous old fashioned shoe store with clerks who know their business and all the brands of shoe you know and some you don't. I buy all my shoes here and they are quality products. 
Street life in Asheville. 
One big disadvantage of north Carolina is the helmet law. Naturally this is a southern state so there are no pretensions to universal health care but they do require the noggin to be covered at all times. Even when puttering on a little Ruckus. 
Hip people riding expensive bicycles wear helmets too though happily for adults this is not mandated. 
Get this: tags are not required for 50cc bikes. Weird but true. Wear a helmet not a license plate.
Some thoughtful people are predicting a rather imminent end to our industrialized way of life so the notion that eating local is the best way to go may, in their minds, become he only way to eat as the cost of oil gets higher and higher. In Asheville they are getting ready far quicker than the rest of us. 
At Mast the outdoor store they speak of themselves as outfitters, as though they help people to prepare their polar expeditions. To me,it's just a toy store, a camping shop with knick knacks and rugged looking clothing for the urban trekker. The women in the company had fun.
There it is, a town with frigid winters, warm summers, tons of outdoor activities close by, dog friendly as far as I could tell thanks to the many sidewalk tables, and lots of third spaces for citizens to hang out in. Vegetarians, Buddhists and cyclists preferred. 
We left town to take Highway 19 to Burnsville and the family mountain retreat at Celo.
21st century progress is being felt here with a four lane highway under construction. Commuters out here want easy drives, not organic cycling shorts. Progress with an old fashioned capital P. Peak Oil be damned.
Cycling is de rigeur, but not just as Lycra hobby or sport, but as a way of life.
It is a tourist attraction, and a town that also attracts young people who want to have children and raise families in a wholesome urban environment.This is the heart of the community supported agriculture movement in North Carolina, home to brew pubs and street fairs and agricultural coops and farmer's markets.
Want a lute? Or a lute lesson? Just look around on the street you never know. It may be a ukulele or a banjo for all I know but it looked like a lute is all I can say in my defense.Asheville is clean and prosperous and until not too long ago wasn't too expensive to live in. I did see apartments in the Kress building downtown going for $500,000 or $1800 a month lease-to-own, but perhaps there are bargains to be had if you look.
To live in Asheville means braving winters with night time freezing temperatures though summers are sunny and green and delightful. Asheville is the sort of urban renewal program that is pushed by proponents of moving away from suburban sprawl. Shops on the ground floor and apartments above is normal around here. People use sidewalks to walk. Imagine that.
Or sit.
There is always something to catch the eye as you stroll in downtown Asheville.
Hip scooters, a pretty Vespa. 
Learn this message in Asheville, it's everywhere:
Organic isn't enough anymore. Now the mantra is to consume locally sourced everything. restaurants list their local ingredients and the sources of their foods. Supermarkets tout their local sources of supply. It's back to the earth with a vengeance. Soy is out- it travels too far to become your food. Local is in. eating meat is okay now, as long as it is local and humanely raised.
Big box stores and chains don't stand a chance here where locals shop locally and expect to find locals staffing local stores. Like all fads it is driven to exasperation in Asheville, to the great benefit of those of us who appreciate this way of life. One hopes it will catch on all over the place.
Any store that parks a working Road King on the shop floor has my vote.
Layne and I agreed we need this relating to chickens.
She was going to buy me this t-shirt but when I said "Nice" and shrugged my shoulders she begged off and said I had too many shirts as it is. That was close...
Summertime is lovely.
These kinds of store names are very common around here. Everybody (except me) has to believe in something apparently.
Tops is a fabulous old fashioned shoe store with clerks who know their business and all the brands of shoe you know and some you don't. I buy all my shoes here and they are quality products. 
Street life in Asheville. 
One big disadvantage of north Carolina is the helmet law. Naturally this is a southern state so there are no pretensions to universal health care but they do require the noggin to be covered at all times. Even when puttering on a little Ruckus. 
Hip people riding expensive bicycles wear helmets too though happily for adults this is not mandated. 
Get this: tags are not required for 50cc bikes. Weird but true. Wear a helmet not a license plate.
Some thoughtful people are predicting a rather imminent end to our industrialized way of life so the notion that eating local is the best way to go may, in their minds, become he only way to eat as the cost of oil gets higher and higher. In Asheville they are getting ready far quicker than the rest of us. 
At Mast the outdoor store they speak of themselves as outfitters, as though they help people to prepare their polar expeditions. To me,it's just a toy store, a camping shop with knick knacks and rugged looking clothing for the urban trekker. The women in the company had fun.
There it is, a town with frigid winters, warm summers, tons of outdoor activities close by, dog friendly as far as I could tell thanks to the many sidewalk tables, and lots of third spaces for citizens to hang out in. Vegetarians, Buddhists and cyclists preferred. 
We left town to take Highway 19 to Burnsville and the family mountain retreat at Celo.
21st century progress is being felt here with a four lane highway under construction. Commuters out here want easy drives, not organic cycling shorts. Progress with an old fashioned capital P. Peak Oil be damned.
Highway 17 up the coast from Savannah to Charleston and Morehead North Carolina is a delightful scenic route passing through small brick towns, leafy woods and gazillions of people offering honey, boiled peanuts and delicious sauces and spices and pickled vegetables. I highly recommend it.We plan to pay another visit on our way home later this week. In this instance we rejoined the freeway, I-95 to I-26 bound for Columbia, the capital of South Carolina and thence up the mountains to Asheville. First we had to find lunch and Layne's iPhone worked it's magic. She asked it for recommendations fo southern cooking in Columbia and back the answer came Mr Friendly's New Southern Café (803 254 7828, no reservations, lunch and dinner daily, closed Sunday). It was seven miles across town from the Interstate but Mr iPhone directed us unerringly. Scooters it seems are now officially everywhere.
Of course the blessed iPhone could only get us to the block where we promptly found parking, but we had to walk and ask for directions to this hidden gem, literally a back street hole in the wall, in what appears to be Columbia's hip student district. 
Of the formal and informal type.
Josh thinks I am goofy with my camera. There is no doubt he is goofy with a piece of bacon. But as Buffalo Bill never tires of pointing out everything goes better with bacon.
Josh had the Hobo breakfast with runny eggs- a potent plate of biscuits and gravy with that dreaded bacon on the side. 
This is one of the few, ever ugly billboards grandfathered and allowed to blight the Lower Keys. What the add means I have no idea. What are those two round things? And when I compared Progressive to Geico I found Geico massively more expensive. These aren't lies on the scale of BP but corporate lying comes in all forms. doesn't it? 
Ah yes, tucked away where zombies in cars can hardly manage to hit it, is my Bonneville. 
A fine end to a splendid breakfast, a ride in the sun.
The place was packed but the noise level was more of a hum than a yelling contest. People were soberly enjoying the beers and it was an entirely civilized place to sit at a rough hewn wooden table and drink as a social activity not as who can get drunkest contest. Also unlike Key West.
While I was downloading these pictures four year old Aidan peered over my shoulder ("Look- don't touch!" was my frantic admonition. I am not good with children) "That's my Daddy!" he shouted gleefully Indeed there is Jacob enjoying beer and an evening away from the family, which is a treat because he is a good family man. Jacob's only ambition has been to raise a family in Asheville, his home town and he is doing so successfully so what you are looking at here is a happy man. Look long and hard, they aren't easy to come by.
The myth of the Jack of the Woods or Green Mis hard to pin down as it grew out of an oral tradition in the England of the Dark Ages and seems to refer to a woodland deity depicted as you see above. It is some sort of pagan myth of rebirth and renewal and that sort of thing. But the good news is it is also used in England as a name for pubs, herewith adapted in Asheville, which prides itself on being a hub of the grow local eat local movement trying to sweep the more hip parts of America. So we listened to local music, a jam session in the far corner of the pub, while drinking local beer.
Eventually we got up, but Jacob wasn't finished so we set off in search of dessert. Along the way Bib accosted us. I had seen him earlier talking to woman on the sidewalk so i asked him how he did it, talked to babes like that. He looked nonplussed and launched into his joke telling which culminated in a request for money for food "I don't drink!" he assured us earnestly. Fool, I wanted to tell him, the beer at the pub is delicious. My wife found a five dollar bill for him. Just like Key West where the panhandlers unfortunately aren't so creative. 
Here's a fad we should bring to Key West, a nice quiet place to sit and eat and drink chocolate, beer and wine.
The French Broad chocolate Lounge is one of Jacob's favorite places. "The pot de creme" he kept moaning in delirium as we stood at the back of a long line of chocoholics waiting our turn. The tiny truffles in myriad flavors are made on the premises and cost $2 a piece. A cup of thick hot chocolate to drink costs $3.25.
I have, now. An experience not to be missed. Where's my beer?