Robbinsville, NC and those other capitals

The same friend from work who told me about the Tail of the Dragon also told us this interesting fact. Robbinsville, North Carolina is closer to six other state capitals than it is to Raleigh. We did a haphazard examination of that at work, and it appeared to be true. But we wondered if it was as the crow flies or driving distance. I just quickly rounded up those figures and Robbinsville is in fact closer to six other state capitals than Raleigh...as the shortest line between two places, but one capital falls out in driving distance. Due to the odd path one must take to cross the Appalachian Mountains, Charleston becomes just a tad further than Raleigh.

Pretty cool though! I wonder if there are other regions in the country that could possibly have such a fact be true. Maybe a city in western Massachusetts could be closer to three, maybe four , than it is to Boston, but SIX?! Really shows how long North Carolina really is.

Capital City	As the Crow Flies (mi)	Road Travel (mi)
Atlanta, GA	113	153
Nashville, TN	177	236
Columbia, SC	182	245
Frankfort, KY	207	272
Charleston, WV	241	382
Montgomery, AL	249	310
Raleigh	293	342

NJ Transit in GA (or actually AL)

This post follows up on a previous post regarding the NJ Transit buses spotted twice driving along I-85.

A fellow student here in Georgia made an unsolicited comment about how he saw an NJ Transit bus driving around Atlanta recently. Likely I-85. He mentioned how he figured they were getting built somewhere west of Georgia and then driving to New Jersey.

So I sat down and worked out where they were coming from, and then driving down I-85 on their way to New Jersey. Looks like NJ Transit ordered their new buses from North American Bus Industries, Inc. which is located in Anniston, Alabama, along I-20. These buses likely drive west on I-20 to I-285 around Atlanta, before heading northeast along I-85 through SC, NC, and VA.

The news releases from both NABI are NJ Transit were tracked down.

Human Powered Transport FAIL

Tail of the Dragon

Recently found out about this famous North Carolina attraction: the Tail of the Dragon which is located on the NC/TN border northwest of Robbinsville, NC. My coworkers told me about it over lunch last week. It's claim to fame: 318 curves in 11 miles!

The Google Maps snapshot below shows the section of the US 129 named the Tail of the Dragon. It's a right of passage of sorts for motorcyclists and sports cars. I'd vomit. I once had to go through 26 miles of a curvy road nearby to Cairns, Australia, and I clutched my stomach from about 5 minutes into it.

Thanks Ironhead

(booo...video doesn't exist anymore, can't find another online)

Loofahs are clearly superior if you're going to use a body wash instead of a bar soap. They lather up better and allow you to less of the soap, meaning you save money having one. A washcloth can't even compare.

Growing up, the first time I heard about body wash, or loofahs, was in a commercial for Zest body wash. In it, a football player named Ironhead tells us to use the product, and does a great job convincing us men that we are wimpy puny humans compared to him unless we use Zest. The line that drove it home for me, and that I still love and repeat to this day is, "But Ironhead, what's with this thingy?"

I also see his name spelled "Ironhead" and "Iron Head", but I don't know which one the man signed his checks with.

Photographing Miles Across the USA

I almost had to drive across country for graduate school. I am an east coast resident and got accepted to a west coast graduate program, but ultimately decided to stay near the Atlantic.

I had the idea though, that if I went there, and had to make the drive across country, I would take a photograph every mile from my steering wheel. Could be a bit dangerous, but maybe I could somehow set up a system that didn't involve holding the camera. With all those photos, I thought it'd be good to turn them into a movie slideshow that one could watch and see the country fly by.

Before I posted this I ran a Google search to see if it'd been done. My idea couldn't be original, could it? Sure enough, Matt Frondorf has done it, but not exactly what I had intended. His videos look out the side window, not the windshield. So although you can see America pass by, I had envisioned the camera pointed forwards, so you'd feel like you were actually driving.