Days 53, 54 & 55 - Busy Doing Nothing

Author - Grant
Based In – Asheville, North Carolina

Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157611810724169/

The longest we have stayed in one place so far on this trip has been our three night stopover in Buffalo for Thanksgiving - so this prospect to be under a single roof for a whole six nights absolutely could not be wasted. As such, on the agenda was catching up on all our laundry, see everything that Asheville has to offer, visit the local Smokey Mountain National Park for hiking, see the Biltmore House (ex-home of the Vanderbilts and the most visited mansion in North America), ski/snowboard in Wolf Ridge and climb Black Mountain. As I type this, we have less than 12 hours to go before being evicted from our cottage (of which the next 9 will involve sleeping) and, from the “to do” list, we have crossed off laundry and nothing else. It has been, in summary, bliss.

Despite having declared how peaceful these last few days have been, somehow it has all been a bit, well, exhausting. It’s a cliché to say that doing nothing is tiring but I am assuming that the person that made up that particular cliché was Kate’s ex-boyfriend. For some reason, the second I sit down and open a book, Kate appears and finds something quite legitimate that I should be doing other than relaxing. Jobs vary from whipping up some food (apparently I am in charge of getting her cereal because I am a “chef”) to cleaning up the garbage which, each morning, is strewn across the back lawn. We like to blame this latter phenomenon on something exotic like bears or wolves but the reality is that it is probably our insatiably hungry puppy that has learnt where we hide the potato peelings.

Talking of our garbage, I feel like I’ve fully taken advantage of this kitchen so here’s a rundown of the grub I’ve served up in the last few days. I took a smoked ham and made a soup of potato, corn, cheese and…well…smoked ham. The soup was supposed to be a starter but, as is a recurring problem of mine, the portion was enough to bathe in. So the main course was saved for lunch the following day. The problem was, it was far too big for lunch and hence dinner had to be cancelled. Anyone spotting a recurring theme here? I was attempting to do a healthy stuffed pepper but, because I cooked waaaay too much rice and veg stuffing, I packed it in with my elbow resulting in peppers that weighed about 15lbs a piece. And, of course, I had a bunch of London broil to use up which I sautéed with tomatoes and curry which was then used to support the aforementioned 15lb pepper. Betty Crocker helped us make a dozen gooey oatmeal and chocolate cookies. We meant to eat a couple and take the rest across to our temporary landlords but, after eating eight of them it was too embarrassing to walk across with such a pitiful amount so they have gone stale and will be fed to the local pack of dogs tomorrow morning. The final meal was served tonight and was a request meal. I like to annoy Kate by taking what she asks for and tweaking it enough to keep me interested. As such, her request for grilled chicken, mash and peas turned into roast Cornish hen, Colcannon Mash, three types of veg and jus. She moaned all the way up until the plate was put in front of her and then she did her “happy hoover” impression which is her version of two thumbs up.

It took us three days of cottage hibernation (Kate has been sleeping 15 hours a day on average) before finally venturing into the centre of Asheville but it was well worth the wait. It has the feel of a European ski report, barely any building is over one storey, there is a climbing wall and, unusually, there is a distinct lack of any food chains which is refreshing. Adding to the charm of the place is the constant reminder that the town is filled with old stoners (“hippies” is the preferred term but if they aren’t going to respect my wish to be addressed as “pie challenged” then sod them). It seems law here that males have beards and longer hair than their spouses. Furthermore, shops are adorned with signs like “Shoot for the moon, if you miss you’ll still be amongst the stars”…even our cottage has a tambourine on the wall that is scribed with “Take the risk to blossom”. Adding to the kookiness when we visited town for lunch was a hyperactive, jigging moron with a fiddle and, later in the day, a man dressed as a gingerbread man dancing around a moving bus…however, I’m hoping that someone spiked my grits. Nice place though – well worth a visit. My advise, however, is that you don’t stay in Bull Creek Cottage because, by comparison, everything else sucks.

The last blog contained some sexually explicit material about Molly for which I make no apologies but I am sad to say that her relationship with Miles had come off the boil somewhat since then. Basically Miles has gotten sick of being the bitch of the couple and now only comes over to our house for attention from humans rather than Molly’s relentless and inappropriate dry humping. This has, however, provided us with endless entertainment over the last few days and I will miss it hugely when we are forced to leave here tomorrow morning. We’ll also miss the fire pit which we have both taken turns in engulfing in enough fire to cook up a paella for the entire Basque region. Only this afternoon, Kate, fuelled with half a bottle of sparkling wine, built a fire that partly explains the frightening depletion of the rainforests and will continue to radiate heat for our children’s children. It’s been a fun competition though. Which I won.

So we leave for Chapel Hill tomorrow where we will spend three nights over New Year. I was tasked with arranging the New Year venue and my research uncovered that a North Carolina senator had once said “Why build a zoo when we can just put a fence around Chapel Hill?” They had me at "zoo".