I Get Around

I spent a busy weekend. I played tourist, seeing many things on less than optimal sleep. However, I now know how to get all those places you'll want to go when you come to visit, and if they're worth visiting in the first place.

Friday night, I had my weekly cheesesteak at Tubby's and determined that the onion rings, like the fries, are nothing special and that, even as small as I consider the cheesesteaks, two are too much for me any more. I don't need the extra calories anyway, so next week I'll get just one and a Dr. Pepper and be done with it.

Also that night, my cell phone rang just an hour after I went to bed. I didn't recognize the number, so I figured it was a misdial and ignored it. Half an hour later, now having trouble falling back asleep, thanks to a party (the third one this week) going on on the front porch of the house kittycorner across the street, I heard a double gong. As I have no windchimes and no doorbell, I was ready to grouse at the neighbors. A minute later, the gongs again. I got up and peeked out the front window. Naturally, I didn't hear them again.

I finally cottoned on to the idea that it might have been my cell. phone. It was indeed: two text messages from the same number, but without a signature. I called the number and asked if someone there had called. It turns out it was my neighbor across the street (a fellow employee in another department). She wanted me to phone the police and register a noise complaint because the neighbors were keeping her awake, and she needed to go to work in the morning. As I, too, was disturbed (although I had not set my alarm and did not need to report to work), I obliged. The noise eventually stopped, and I, further eventually, fell asleep.

I "slept in" Saturday morning. (I won't tell you at what obscenely early hour I awoke, but it was 50 minutes after my usual rising time.) I played some computer games, fixed my weekly breakfast burrito, and headed out to my weekend of adventure. I drove to the Chattanooga Nature Center, which is coupled with Reflection Riding Arboretum. (I agree; it sounds more like a horse place.)

The nature center offers displays of local wildlife, a poorly stocked gift shop, a canoe rental facility, and a "perch" for which you will pay $35.00 per night for the privilege of sleeping on a hard, wooden floor of a screen porch and a cubicle with what passes for toilet facilities. I could stay home and open my windows, lie on a fairly comfortable bed, use indoor plumbing, and save 35 bucks. Oh, wait; I already do that!

The arboretum is called a "riding" because they expect you to sit in your car and drive on a 3.5 mile gravel path. At this time of year, you wouldn't have missed anything. It probably is more attractive in the spring (with flowers abloom) or in the autumn (with colorful leaves). Still, I got some exercise by walking the road and reading the minuscule signs that identified precious few of the plants. I also encountered five joggers but just two cars. I considered it primitive, but I am used to carefully planned and designed botanical gardens, rather than a more natural presentation, as this was. Plus, I am so domesticated that this was about as much "nature" as I could handle, so I wasn't disappointed to leave.

To continue my adventure, I drove northeast of Chattanooga to the town of Hixson. I intended to eat lunch at Funky Monkey Pizza, which I eventually determined was inside the Northgate Mall. Or not. The brand-new phone book listed it. Even the mall's directory listed it. It, however, did not exist. Now, having discarded the map for Plan B before I even left home (since there is a more local branch of Lupi's, the backup pizza experiment), I resorted to Plan C, a franchise in the mall called Shane's Rib Shack: a decent BBQ chicken sandwich, and the fries went surprisingly well with the BBQ sauce. (Note to self: the "always have a plan b" advice from that college professor comes in useful far more frequently than I ever anticipated.)

The mall itself was a disappointment. It was surprisingly uncrowded for a holiday weekend, although there was the requisite dominant ratio of teenage girls to the rest of humanity. For those of you who know about malls (I, myself, was raised in Cherry Hill, NJ, home of the first shopping mall east of the Mississippi River and second indoor shopping mall ever -- the first is the Mall of America [which, incidentally, my father visited as a college student, while it was under construction] -- so I know malls, as much as I loathe them), it wasn't much. It was a bit smaller than the Mesilla Valley Mall in Las Cruces, NM, so you should have low expectations, but at least it was bigger than the Manalapan Mall in Middle-of-nowhere, NJ, which was nothing more than a rectangle and which you could see the entirety of from the entrance.

I had dessert at Nana's Frozen Custard in Hixson and was utterly delighted by the Freeze Tag and tempted by many other choices. Thankfully, Hixson is enough of a drive to deter me from visiting Nana's repeatedly and regaining all that weight I lost in the past year. Still, if you were to ask, I wouldn't say no to driving you there...

Sunday began in much the same way as Saturday, but there was no party across the street, and I slept in for an hour and ten minutes. I started my first lap around the track, and the heavens opened. I made it to my office (where I was going to go after my laps anyway) and researched my day's plans. That done, and rain over for the moment, I returned to the track and finished my exercise -- just in time for more rain to fall. I decided to press on with my Weekend of Adventure because, after all, Ruby Falls is underground and would be utterly unaffected by the rain.

To save you asking (although the web page does explain it and has some wonderful pictures), there indeed is an underground waterfall (154 feet high). It was named for the discoverer's wife, Ruby. The water is red only when the red lights are shone (shined?) on it. The entrance to the cavern, once you exit the speedy elevator, is Leo's (the discoverer's) Passage. I did not remark aloud that, after so many people using it for so many years, Leo must be plum worn out. The entrance and gift shop stocked, according to the guide, with "quality, local souvenirs" (shot glasses from all 50 states are local to Chattanooga?) are in an Irish replica castle made with limestone excavated from the tunnel. The top of the castle is an observation deck, which gave me a bit of acrophobia to climb because of minimal railings, which wouldn't help me if I slipped because they were as wet from the rain as the stairs. I'm not normally phobic, but after spending half of the cavern tour stooped over to keep from bashing my head on the limestone, since people were a lot shorter back when they carved this place -- although the tour group after us, comprised entirely of a Japanese tour group, seemed to have no problem -- I was a bit jittery.

TO BE CONTINUED....