Tag Archives: Tennessee Aquarium

To Clean or Not to Clean

Posted by dkrashb on

This week is a short week for me-I am taking Friday off because friends are coming for a visit for a long weekend.  This weekend is the Head of the Hootch regatta–apparently one of the biggest regattas around for rowers.

I’m getting email newsletters from Outdoor Chattanooga, the Tennessee Aquarium, two farmer’s markets, and a hiking organization and all of them are hyping the Head of the Hootch as a an event to see.  Given that we can practically see it from our living room, I think it will be hard for us to miss.  But, back to our visitors, one is a rower and will be racing on Saturday.

It’s a funny thing about taking a day off.  It means that every other day suddenly becomes both compressed and extended.  In preparation for taking off 1 day, I work more efficiently and with more intensity and I still end up working more than one day’s worth of extra hours in the four days that lead up to it.  Is that really how vacation days are supposed to work?

In any case, I’m looking forward to acting as tour guides for our friends when they come.  I have a vague itinerary in my head ranging from going up to Point Park to enjoy the view of the fall leaves and downtown Chattanooga to taking them on a River Gorge tour at the Tennessee Aquarium.  They have told us about two restaurants they want to go to, neither of which we’ve been to before, which is even more exciting.

We actually chose to move to Chattanooga because of this couple–they had come down before for the Head of the Hootch and really enjoyed the city.  When we told them we were thinking about moving to Tennessee, they were the ones who advised us to check out Chattanooga.  So, we will take turns playing tour guides.

I’m more or less ready for their visit, which is good. They are staying in a hotel, which is probably for the best given that our guest bed now consists of a queen sized air mattress placed on our living room floor.  If I were competing in a rowing race, I would want better sleeping conditions, too.

But, since I assume they will come to our apartment at some point in time, I do feel like I should clean up the place before they get here.  I haven’t really thought about when I am going to do this.  I’ve had a few vague thoughts that maybe it would be a good time to try a housekeeper, but upon reflection, I realized that I cannot have a housekeeper when I’m working from home.  Given that there are only two distinct rooms in our place (besides the bathroom) and my office is in the largest of the two, the noise of the housekeeper cleaning would disrupt work.

I miss having a housekeeper.  We had a great one at our house in Columbus.  Having her come every week was the perfect antidote to my natural tendency towards messiness.  I don’t know why, but I would rather throw my clothes on the floor at night than to take the time to put them in the laundry.  I’d rather put dirty dishes in the sink than to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher.  Someone once told me that this was just a form of prioritization.  Apparently, having a neat house is low on my priority list.

But having a housekeeper who came once a week forced the issue.  Since the housekeeper can’t clean if the floor is covered in dirty clothes, I was forced to pick up at least once a week, which is not enough time to accumulate an enormous mess.  And, the house gets cleaned regularly in addition to being neater.  I love having a clean house; I just don’t want to be the one who has to clean it.

But now, in our apartment, it seems ridiculous that I still don’t want to spend my time cleaning it.  I am happy to have a reason to have to clean it now–we still have piles of excess stuff lining the wall of the entry hallway that we haven’t figured out what to do with yet.  The whole place could really use a good scrub.

Unfortunately, I get an instant message from my friend telling me that she and her fiancé will not be coming after all.  As it turns out, two of her team mates have health issues that preclude them participating in the race.  Since the boat requires four rowers, my friend won’t be racing after all.

I’m bummed–I was really looking forward to having friends come to see us.  Pat and I discuss the change of events that night and decide to take advantage of my planned day off since I’ve already cleared my calendar and I need to use up my vacation days or lose them.  We decide we will go hang gliding on Friday with the thought that it will be less busy on a week day and we will get more flights in that way.

The next day, I call the flight park and schedule time on the training hills both Friday and Saturday.  That settled, I decide I will not worry about cleaning up the apartment and will focus on keeping up with work instead.  That gives me pretty much unlimited time to work, besides sleeping, eating, and working out.  I’m secretly relieved that I can continue to ignore the state of the apartment for a while longer yet.

I suppose if we had a place to put everything, I would be less overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning.  But having to figure out what to do with a bunch of stuff that I’ve already tried to figure out what to do with at least a half a dozen times before makes the whole notion seem like way too much effort.

For a moment, I wonder if I could call that TV show that comes and puts your stuff in 3 piles:  keep, donate/sell, trash.  It feels like we’ve gotten rid of so much stuff in the process of downsizing that there wouldn’t be much left to deal with.  What we really need is someone to organize what’s left.  But, there’s no point in getting organized when we have temporary living accommodations, so I decide to look the other way instead.

When I turn away from the mess and look out the windows, I see the moon rising over our apartment.  I turn my attention to capturing the moon, which seems far more interesting than cleaning the apartment.

Knowing and Unknowing

Posted by dkrashb on

The funny thing about any hobby for me is that once I start, I have a hard time stopping.  The reverse is equally true.  As a result, I practice my hobby in “fits and starts” as some of my relatives would say.  This leads to slow progress–I practice a lot and start to get better and then I stop for a long time and have to start over when my interest cycles back around again.  So, while I’ve been “seriously” interested in photography for a good 8 years now, I have the skill of someone whose spent 6 months doing it regularly.  It’s a little frustrating–I’m a quick learner in many aspects of life, but not when it comes to physical activity.  For some reason, photography is more like a sport to my brain than an intellectual exercise.

But today, I am on a roll.  After spending the day shooting at the Tennessee Aquarium workshop, I’ve suddenly remembered a bunch of stuff I’d forgotten and now I’m excited to try to shoot some of the things I haven’t gotten around to shooting yet.  I’ve already shot over 700 pictures today, but I manage to talk Pat into going out with me to shoot the fall colors in Coolidge park at sunset from Walnut St bridge.  I’m hoping to get some really interesting shots of Market St bridge with the sun going down in the background.

Pat agrees to go with me, but only if we go eat something first.  We decide to give the sushi place a try–it’s right at Coolidge Park, so it would make the most sense to take my gear with us, eat, and then go shoot.  However, Pat doesn’t want to carry my gear into the restaurant.  We end up walking there to eat without my gear, which I guess would be OK given that it’s not a long walk and we can always use more exercise, but the reality is that we’re running out of time as the sun sets earlier every day and I’m worried we’re going to miss the light.

We manage to enjoy our dinner in spite of my anxiety about the light.  The sushi is decent.  They don’t seem to have real crab meat in most of the rolls that have crab, but we avoid the fake crab and what we have instead is tasty.  I also take the waiter’s recommendation on a glass of unfiltered saki and it’s quite tasty, too.  Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I can eat slowly and I pop most of a bowl of edamame into my mouth in a matter of minutes.  Pat laughs–he says I get a rhythm going when I eat edamame that looks like a machine.

After finishing up, we walk back to the apartment as quickly as I can drag Pat back on his still-healing pulled hamstring.  I keep looking at the sky and hoping we aren’t going to miss the sunset.  We get my stuff and head back over literally to where we just came from.  There is a band playing in the far corner of the park, apparently there is a big halloween celebration there tonight with a live band, trick-or-treats for kids, and some stands set up that we are too far away to see clearly.  It’s a nice idea to have a big public party in the park, especially with the weather as amazing as it is.  I cannot get over the fact that I’m comfortable running around in a T-shirt most days and we’ve had nothing but sunshine for all but a couple of days in the past month.  In fact, we haven’t turned on the heat yet at home and the temperature hasn’t gotten below 68 yet.  We often have to open the windows during the day because the passive-solar effect of the windows heats up our place too much.

In any case, here we are in Coolidge park with our backs to the party in one corner, and trying to capture the brilliant trees in the fading light in the other corner.  Unfortunately, the sunset is not very dramatic tonight.  With no clouds in the sky, there’s not a whole lot going on there.  And the angle of the sun is bad for shooting into it–I have to look away and try to compose at the same time.  I manage to shoot the Walnut St Bridge from a variety of angles at least 100 times.  I wonder how many pictures of this bridge I will end up with by the time we next move?

After Pat gets too annoyed by the band doing a bad job playing sappy cover tunes, I manage to talk him into going up top on the Walnut St Bridge so I can try to shoot the sun setting behind Market.  But, I have more troubles with the angle of the sun.  I am generally disappointed with what I see in my LCD.  I hope that the shots will look better on a big screen when I get home knowing full well they won’t.

As Pat gets itchy to get going, I wrap up and we head out after the sun drops below the mountain in the distance.  I’m not sure if I’m getting senile or if I just haven’t been paying attention my whole life, but I completely missed the best light!  After stressing about getting to the park before sunset, I packed up and went home about 20 minutes too early.  As I sit at my desk processing disappointing shots, I look out the window, see the glow cast over the scenery below and say out loud, “Crap!”

Intent on not missing the best light all together, I set up my tripod and camera once more and fire off some shots from our balcony.  Once again, I am reminded that I do not make good progress learning a new skill when I de-prioritize it and then pick it up with a vengeance again.  It’s not only that I forget a large portion of what I learned, but I also seem to fail to realize that I’ve forgotten it.  I behave as if I know what I’m doing instead of looking things up that I really need to look up.  Not knowing what you don’t know is almost always the most difficult place to be when you’re trying to accomplish something.  I seem to be stuck in this place of not knowing.

Big Sea, Bright Skies, and Biting Turtles

Posted by dkrashb on

It’s Christmas all over again for me today.  I have been playing with my new toys, a really great tripod and wireless shutter control, for a couple of weeks here and there, but today, I get to take them with me to a workshop.  And not just any workshop, we’re going to shoot at the Tennessee Aquarium and along the water front.  And, we don’t just get to shoot at the aquarium; we get to shoot before they open!  I’m so excited, I wake up long before my alarm and can’t get back to sleep.

As I finish pulling everything together and get ready to walk out the door, Pat tells me he will drive me over to the aquarium.  It seems a little silly to me, but it is early and I will be carrying a lot of stuff, so I accept his offer of a ride.  It takes longer to clear the windows on the van, which have fogged up over night although it didn’t get cold enough for a frost, then it does to drive across the Market St Bridge, but it’s nice not to have to haul my gear over.

The aquarium is quiet.  There are only a couple of grounds crew members sweeping up outside–in an hour, the place will be swarming with kids.  I walk to the members entrance and find no one.  I am a few minutes earlier than the stated time to arrive, but I’m also a few minutes later than they said someone would be at the door.  Before I have time to worry about whether I’m in the wrong place, a woman appears and comes over to let me in.  As it turns out, she’s guiding each attendee to the top of the escalator and pointing us in the right direction before returning to the door.

I find the classroom with no trouble and we sit and talk and drink coffee while we wait for the remaining attendees.  A girl who works for the aquarium (or perhaps volunteers?) comes in to clean the turtle cages.  While our instructor gives us a run down of where we’ll be going in the aquarium, the girl stands up and says, “Um, I have a situation here,” as calm as can be.  She is holding up a small box turtle who has hold of a chunk of her finger.  No one reacts for what must be nearly 30 seconds, thinking she knows what she’s doing, I suppose.  Then, a woman next to the girl asks if she needs help.  The girl nods and the woman and a man across from me spring into action trying to get the turtle to let go of the girl’s finger.  I suggest trying to get the turtle to bite on a stick instead, but this causes the turtle to try to pull its head back in its shell, still holding onto the girl’s finger.  It looks like he’s going to rip a chunk of her finger off the way her skin is pulling.  At this point, the guy helping suggests putting the turtle back in the cage.  When the girl sets the turtle down, he lets go.  But, she is in pain and with all that adrenaline rushing through her body, starts to cry, adding to her embarassment.  The woman takes her to the sink and runs cold water on the girl’s injury when one of the instructor’s returns with an aquarium employee.  We learn that the best way to get a turtle to release is to dunk it under water.  After we all settle down again, the aquarium employee says, “Well, I guess I don’t have to warn you about reaching into the turtle cages!”

We head out to the aquarium to start shooting.  We begin in the tropical setting where the Macaws are not yet on display, to my disappointment.  There is a tank with rays for petting, but I decide I’m more interested in shooting the flowers in this area.  I go back to the lobby area at the top of the escalators to do a lens change–it’s too humid in the tropical garden area.  Then I return and practice some macro shots of flowers.

Next, I move into the butterfly garden, which is even more humid, and do my best to get a shot of the butterflies.  I really want one of the butterflies that look mostly brown on the outside of their wings and then brilliant, metallic blue on the inside of their wings.  I, like everyone else, want a shot of them with open wings.  They are not cooperating.  I find one alighted and wait and wait and wait.  The instructor comes in and explains to me that they only open their wings when they need energy and are parked in the sun.  The butterfly I’ve been waiting on is in the shade, so I look for another one to wait on.  I manage to snap a few other butterflies in the process, but I never do get a shot of blue wings–we only have an hour before the aquarium opens and I want to make sure I get to the penguins before the kids come in.

When I head down to the penguins, I pull out my tripod.  I crank up the ISO setting, open up my aperture, and set up the tripod so I get some stability, but can still swing the lens around to follow swimming penguins.  This turns out to be an impossible task.  Fortunately, the instructor comes along and does something surprising:  he stops down my aperture setting, turns down the ISO setting, and turns on my flash.  I have never had much success with my flash and have pretty much avoided using it as much as possible instead of learning what I can do with it.  Flash has been one of those things on my list of skills to worry about later.  Today, I learn how much a flash, even the built-in variety, can help, even when shooting through glass.  By choosing the proper angle to the glass, I’m able to get some halfway decent shots of swimming penguins.  Although they do all have red-eye.  Something to correct later.

I have a harder time shooting the penguins on land.  There is about 4 inches of glass between the top of the water and the bottom of the water spray splattered all over the glass.  That 4 inches remains clear because the water sloshes back and forth as the penguins swim around, rinsing the glass.  So, the trick to shooting the penguins on land is to shoot through those four inches when the water is sloshing the opposite direction.  I have a hard time getting my timing of when the penguins are doing something interesting and when the water is sloshing the right direction down.  Or perhaps the penguins are just toying with me.  In any case, I can’t say I got a great shot of the penguins, but at least it was an improvement on what I was able to do on my own.  Plus, I now have come face-to-face with my flash-phobia, the first step in getting better.

We spend some time in the classroom going through some shots of the instructors and talking about the choices they made given the circumstances to create the images they share.  One trick that I’ve never heard before was that, if your sky is going to be white, make it go all the way across the top of the picture.  I often end up with white skies.  I will have to pay more attention to that the next time my sky is going to be overexposed.  Alternatively, I could learn how to layer together two different exposures so I don’t have white skies, but I already feel like I spend more time than I’d like processing photos.

We return to the aquarium to watch a bird show where they bring out an Eastern Screech Owl and a Eurasian Eagle Owl.  I love owls.  My camera picks this moment to stop working.  I take it to the instructor to see if he can tell what’s going on.  In the end, I have to reboot.  Turning the camera on and off solves whatever hiccup happened.  But, now I am at a bad angle to the owls and they are in shadow.  For having someone holding a bird posing to take a picture, you’d think I’d be able to get a really good shot.

Next we head to the seahorses where we, once again, practice using flash in front of glass.  It’s tricky to get my lens to focus on the seahorses.  I’m using my 100mm macro lens and I have to focus it manually to get it close and then let it refocus automatically since I can’t see well enough without my reading glasses to tell if I’m in focus or not and the seahorses move enough that the focus changes rapidly.  I spend so much time trying to get decent shots of the seahorses that I run out of time to shoot any jellies.

After another classroom session and lunch, we go outside.  Unfortunately, it’s now early afternoon and the light is about as bad as it gets.  I put my polarizer on my lens in the hope of getting rid of some of the glare, but the sharp shadows make it challenging to get good shots.  I end up walking around with one of my the other attendees and as we talk, I learn that not only does he also work for the same company I do, but he works with the same guy that sat next to me on the way to Germany.  While I suppose the fact that they all came from an acquired company based in Atlanta combined with the fact that Atlanta is close enough that a lot of people come from there to Chattanooga on the weekend for a get away makes it more probable that this guy and I would end up in the same workshop, but still.  What are the odds?

We work our way around from the Hunter Museum and Walnut St bridge to the Bluffview Art District and the sculpture garden.  Then, we head back in the direction of the aquarium.  We end up walking down the waterfall steps that go down the side of the aquarium.  I’ve never walked down them before.  They go under the street where there are interesting reflections and a cool view of the large fountain that shoots into the river.  He shows me a gate that allows us to go through and walk out to the waterfront–I never knew you could get through there.  We work our way back around to the aquarium until we return to the final part of the workshop.

After we wrap up, I return to the tropical display to shoot the Macaws.  They are out now, each performing their own tricks.  One likes to groom on the other non-stop.  The other periodically breaks away from the grooming to go hang on the end of the stand by his beak.  He watches me shoot him as he performs this trick and I’m pretty sure he’s used to star treatment.

Leaving the aquarium, I decide to walk back instead of having Pat pick me up.  Although I’m tired from lugging my gear around all day, I want to shoot our side of the river from the bridge.  I don’t spend a lot of time doing this–I take only hand-held shots–but I do get a few nice views of our building and the falls colors on the hill behind it.

Returning home, I can’t wait to see what my pictures look like on the computer.

Aquarium Revisited

Posted by dkrashb on

After spending most of my day out on my bike, I return to the apartment and decide I am in desperate need of some restorative yoga.  Since I still have not bothered to find a yoga class, I get out my collection of yoga props and start practicing alone.  The lack of music reminds me that I still haven’t set up streaming to our receiver from iTunes–I’m pretty sure that’s not what I’m supposed to be thinking about during yoga.

I decide to do a couple of slow flows to warm up a bit.  This helps remind me to think about my breath instead of the infinite number of other things I tend to think about.  Then, I start into the long poses required for restoration.  Of course, I have no clock visible, so I have no idea if I stay in the poses long enough to get the full effect given that, in restorative, poses are often held for 10 minutes or more and it’s pretty darn hard to both breath and relax into your pose and mentally track time all at once.  So, I just hold them until it feels like my joints have space in them that they didn’t have before.

After about an hour of yoga poses, I feel far more relaxed and any tightness I had from riding is gone.  I decide that I cannot stay home another evening, doing nothing but sitting around on the couch.  I remember my aquarium membership and my desire to try to shoot in the aquarium and decide this evening is a good time to give it a try.

I jump into the shower and immediately, the memory of the man I met during the bike tour today asking me if I’m retired jumps to mind.  I like to tell myself that I fully accept the fact that I’m aging.  Yet, it’s moments like this that I have to face the fact that vanity has no concept of acceptance.  I may be OK with aging as a general fact of life, but I am not OK with other people thinking I look like I’m aging.

This spurns a sudden interest in appearance.  Instead of doing my usual routine of throwing on some sunscreen, scrunching my hair, and pulling on my most comfortable walking shoes, I suddenly decide to blow my hair out straight, put on some make-up, and locate a cute pair of flats.

After determining that I look as good as I can without professional assistance, I decide to take my camera with one lens so I don’t have to carry my backpack and tripod.  I decide to experiment with my fixed length 100mm lens.  I put the necessary cards and cash into my back pocket, grab my house key, and head out, choosing the fastest route since I am wearing less comfortable shoes than usual.

As I enter the bridge, two men are walking towards me.  One of them, who is probably close to 60, looks at me and says, “Ma’am, you’re looking f-i-i-i-i-ne today!”  Now how did he know I really needed to hear that?  I laugh and say thanks as I continue on my way without slowing down.  I laugh because not only does the timing strike me as funny given my vanity crisis, but also because what was sexual harassment in my 20’s is now rare and welcomed attention in my 40’s.

As I cross the bridge, I look across the water and see people that appear to be standing on the water.  There is a low-lying pier that blends with the surface of the water due to the reflecting light.  I turn around and look back at our building and see the back drop of the hills and the foreground of the park and decide I should stop and shoot for a moment before going to the aquarium.  When I turn on my camera, it gives me the message that no one who has just walked 1/2 a mile in less-than-comfortable shoes wants to see:  “No CF Card!”  I groan, turn off my camera and head back towards home.

I suck it up and get the card and then return to the aquarium, stopping briefly on the bridge for a few shots, but the light reflecting on the pier is not the same.  Oh well, another shot missed!  I enter the aquarium members reception and get my free ticket.  I head towards the penguins.

The glass in front of the penguins is smeared and there is a wall of children pressed against it, standing on the benches in front.  The penguins are racing back and forth, leaping fully out of the water as they fly by.  I make an attempt to capture this, but I have several issues.  First, 100mm is too close for the situation.   Second, even at f/2.8 (as wide as this lens will go), there is not enough light for fast enough shutter speeds to freeze the penguins in motion.  Third, reflections and smudges on the glass confuse the autofocus and make getting any kind of clear focus next to impossible, even when I try to shoot the penguins standing still.  Since I am coming back here for a photography workshop in a couple weeks and I don’t have a lot of time before the aquarium closes, I decide to move on to the jellyfish.

Turns out shooting jellyfish with the macro lens is fun, but also challenging.  Even though they don’t move fast, they move enough that a slow shutter speed causes blur.  And with a wide-open aperture and close focusing, the depth of field is so shallow that I can only get a small area of the jelly in focus.  I play with this a bit and end up with a couple of shots that are interesting, although not quite what I was hoping for.

I move on to look for the alligators, hoping to get some good shots over the top of the glass.  Unfortunately, the alligators are hiding this evening.  Not one appears for a shot.  I shoot some turtles that appear to be cuddling on a log and a couple of birds, but then move on again.

Next, I go up to the atrium on the top floor of the river building.  I find a place to sit and watch for birds.  There is a feeder near my seat, so I figure it’s a good spot.  Eventually, a yellowish bird I don’t recognize comes and perches where I can see it.  I get a couple shots, but even after looking at the signs listing what birds are in the atrium, I cannot identify it.  I make a note to look it up later (I feel quite foolish when I realize it’s a female Scarlet Tanager–something I should be able to recognize).

On my way out of the building, I take a few quick “drive-by” shots of a sea turtle.  I overhear a father and daughter talking about the fact that this turtle is supposed to be in the other building, but he is in timeout for hurting a shark.  He is a huge turtle and there are a lot of small sharks in the other building, so I can see how that would be a problem.

I decide to see if I can find the Macaws before I have to leave.  I’ve forgotten which exhibit they’re part of and it turns out that they’re on a floor in the other building that I skipped today.  Since it’s almost “kick out” time and my heels are now blistered from my cute flats, I decide to call it a shoot and find dinner.

Instead of heading home to fix myself something, I decide to find a bar I can eat at.  This is a habit I developed when traveling alone on business.  I like to be around people vs eating alone in my room, but it feels weird to sit at a table by myself in the middle of a restaurant.  Eating at the bar usually guarantees that you’ll at least have a TV to watch and often results in interesting conversations with complete strangers you’ll never see again.

Tonight, I end up sitting next to Clyde.  He is also alone and we end up talking.  He’s in his 50‘s, unsuccessful at finding a suitable partner in life, and tells me a lot about the differences between women from Wisconsin (where he’s originally from) and women in Chattanooga (which he has called home for more than 20 years).

In the meantime, a couple sits down on his right and the woman next to him keeps talking to him when he’s not talking to me.  Eventually, she leans in, looks back and forth between me and him, and asks, “Are you all married?”  Clyde laughs and says, “No.”  She looks at me and says, “Are you on a date?”  I laugh and say, “No.”  Her face becomes slightly puzzled, “Are you just friends then?”  I smile again and say, “Nope.”  She looks really puzzled and then says, “You all don’t know each other; you just met?”  I nod and say, “Yes.”  She pauses for a moment, looks at Clyde and says, “She just sat down next to you?”  He affirms.  She glances at me, then back to Clyde and says, “She’s real purty!”

If the woman seemed more sober, I might have felt more flattered by this compliment, but I will take it.  Once again, the universe has answered my vanity’s call for affirmation–if only I could get the universe to help me out with more important things (like maybe letting go of my vanity all together)!

After I eat, I say my good-byes and head back across the bridge.  I call Pat and we talk as I walk home.  This is supposedly a security measure, but I tend to think I’m safer when I’m not on the phone just because I’m more alert and, therefore, look less vulnerable.  But, I suppose Pat could call 911 if something happens.  In any case, I make it home safe and sound and it’s only 9:30PM.  Looks like I will still be spending some time on the couch tonight!

The Last Vacation Day

Posted by dkrashb on

One thing I have learned through experience that I try to do with every vacation, but especially one involving international travel: Always fly home 2 days before returning to work. Best case, it gives me a day to unpack, do laundry, get caught up on mail, nap at will, and settle back in. Worst case, if Pat gets detained in immigration (or a storm rolls in) and we miss a connection, it gives us an extra day to get home. We have needed that day for travel three times now, but when we don’t, I always appreciate having that day at my disposal. This is doubly true when my body has gone through a time change of more than 3 hours. I don’t do time changes well. Coming back from the West Coast actually messes me up worse than coming back from Europe, but I still need a few days to get back on schedule.

We managed to get into Atlanta last night without incident. The drive from Atlanta to Chattanooga was killer. When I booked our flight, I thought, “Oh, we’ll get into Atlanta at 7:30PM, that won’t be too bad for the drive home.” I failed to add 6 hours to that–our bodies were still on Germany time. To us, it felt like we arrived at 1:30AM. Then, it took another hour by the time we got our luggage and found our car in the “economy” lot (which turned out to cost almost double what the economy lot in Columbus costs). We hadn’t made it half way home before I was nodding off in the passenger seat and Pat was soon struggling to keep his eyes open behind the wheel. We had to stop and find a place to buy some water, stand up, get some fresh air. I don’t know which exit we took (I was probably asleep), but as we drove down the main drag, it seemed every building was boarded up. Some had signs that said “open during construction.” Others look abandoned. I remembered that tornados went through the area earlier in the year before we moved from Columbus and was astounded by the remaining devastation after so many months. We pulled into a gas station that had a trailer for a building. A large building was about halfway built behind the trailer. It’s a creative solution to staying in business. My mind shifted from the misery of being overly tired to the fortune of not having gone through a tornado. Unfortunately, this didn’t keep me awake for long once we were back on the road.

When we pulled into our parking lot, Pat told me that he’d been nodding off again for the last 10 miles. I said that he should have pulled off and found a place to take a nap. He had thought about it, but decided it would be weird to pull off the road so close to home. I replied, “Better weird than dead.” He agreed, but we were already home so it was a pointless conversation. We drug our tired selves upstairs, not even bothering to take all of our luggage with us, and fell into bed.

So, here we are, we’ve made it home without incident and now it’s Sunday morning. I managed to sleep through the night and wake up at 6AM after our long drive home the night before. I have no desire to do laundry or anything else that isn’t vacation-like. However, I don’t want to end up laying on the couch all day because it will slow down my adjustment to the time change. I talk Pat into walking across the bridge for breakfast in the Bluffview Art District. On the way back, we decide to walk down to the aquarium and find out about their River Gorge Explorer tour. They have a really nice boat that they use for tours of the river gorge. We confirm the schedule at the aquarium, but don’t buy any tickets. On the way back to the apartment, I talk Pat into going on the sunset tour tonight. I purchase tickets online when we get home just in case there is a big rush and the boat fills.

We do a little unpacking and a little laundry, but we spend a couple hours relaxing, dozing off and taking a short nap before it’s time to walk back over to the aquarium. We stop in member reception because the online ticketing didn’t have a way to get our membership discount. The guy is extremely nice and apologetic in crediting back the discount. The aquarium also credited us for 3 adult tickets we had purchased when we signed up for our membership. With the $10 we save on the cruise, we’re now exactly even on the cost of the membership–it’s a really amazing deal.

We walk around trying to figure out where we need to be for the boat ride. The boat is still out on the previous tour. When it returns, we watch it spin in the water and then slide sideways over to the dock. When we get on the boat, there is a video playing that explains how it was built and then transported to TN from WA. Two of the boat captains actually picked it up in Florida, tested it, and then brought it up the river to Chattanooga. It’s a very cool boat that goes very fast, but I lost interest in all the details about what it could do. We have to remain seated during the fast portion of the ride. We get up to speeds over 60 MPH, but the captain stops suddenly whenever he’s approaching other river traffic or docks, etc. The wake rises above the windows when we stop, but the guide explains that the fast stops and starts actually minimize the amount of wake, preventing rocking other boats.

The guide is actually a naturalist and, apparently, a history buff. He talks us through the history of the area going back to the Native Americans and the Civil War. He also talks about the wildlife in the area and points out anything that he sees as we go down the river. When we get to a wide open area, the boat cruises slowly and we all go stand up on the deck, watching for wildlife. We pass the convergence of Suck Creek with the Tennessee River and the naturalist explains that before the river was dammed, there was a huge whirlpool at the confluence that would suck down boats, etc. Apparently, it’s still there, just in deeper water. I wasn’t clear if it was still dangerous or not, however. In any case, he solved the mystery of why someone would name a creek “Suck.”

I have brought my big lens in the hope of seeing exciting wildlife, although I’m not exactly sure how well I will be able to shoot from a moving boat. We see many, many Blue Heron. I knew they had recovered well in Ohio after the banning of DDT, but the number along the Tennessee River is amazing. The most exciting bird (to me) we see is the Belted Kingfisher. Unfortunately, we’re too far away for a good shot. We also spot a huge gathering of Turkey Vultures circling above the river. I keep my eyes peeled for masses of dead fish floating on the water, but we never do spot what’s attracted them. While Vultures are always a little creepy, having had a large die-off of fish in our pond when we lived in the country many years ago, I have tremendous gratitude to vultures–I didn’t have to clean up a single dead fish.

When we return to the dock, we are all invited to go up on the deck to watch the captain spin the boat 360 degrees using a remote control. We stand on the boat while it spins. Then, the captain steers it sideways to the dock using the same remote. It’s a little crazy that a boat can maneuver like that. As we de-board and walk up the dock, we discover the lights on the pier have interesting patterns that shift as we move. We can see these lights from our apartment, but they just look like normal lights with interesting shapes from across the river. Up close, the light shoots up a post that has metal shaped in parabolas and a metal reflector at the top. The parabolas reflect the light so that it looks like the entire post is in motion as we walk. The reflector at the top doesn’t appear lit at all looking at it from below, but from across the river, it looks like it is the source of the light.

As we return home crossing the bridge, we discuss our day and decide that it was the perfect last day of vacation.

Our First Visitor

Posted by dkrashb on

Once again, I am on the balcony when I receive a call from my sister-in-law, Megan. She is somewhere nearby but trying to follow my directions instead of her GPS got her slightly lost. She tells me the street names of the intersection she’s at and I don’t recognize them. I am startled by the realization that I have never driven in Chattanooga and, therefore, I haven’t learned the names of more than 3 streets. She and both start googling, trying to figure out where she is relative to where she wants to be. fortunately, she figures it out–she is only a block or two away. I walk down to the street corner and flag her down as she approaches our building, catching her just before she makes a wrong turn and directing her to our parking lot. Note to self: drive the next time we go somewhere so I can at least tell people how to get to my own home!

The next morning, we run through the list of place we’ve been for breakfast and the list of places we haven’t tried yet. Megan chooses the creperie near Coolidge park. The three of us walk the long way, down along the riverfront. We point out the wetland, the civil war remnants, the aquarium across the river, the pedestrian bridge, all the sights that have become so familiar to us shared with our first visitor. Now we feel like we really live here.

We reach the creperie and it is open (the last time we tried to eat there, the neon “open” sign glowed brightly, but a bolted door sent us elsewhere). The guy working there sits at one of the booths, moves slowly to get up as we enter. We take the booth he was sitting in. He slowly moves to get us menus, then goes behind the counter and starts doing something, still slowly. He seems to have forgotten that we’re there, even though it is a tiny space and we are in his immediate view. We decide what we want to eat and what questions we have and make all of the gestures indicating we need him, but he doesn’t see us. Eventually, we think maybe we’re supposed to walk up to the counter to order; we catch his attention and ask. He looks slightly startled to have his attention drawn from his slow task and comes back around to our table. We ask our questions. I am especially curious about the specials on the chalk board with names like “Diesel.” He describes half of the specials when a family arrives. He says, “We’ll talk about the rest later” and moves away to give them menus. He turns as if to return to the counter and is startled once more when we stop him and remind him he was in the middle of describing the specials. Once we get through the ordering process, which includes coffees, he goes off and starts making coffee. I wonder what he was doing sitting at a booth when we arrived with no coffee made–we are the first customers of the day.

He brings our coffee eventually and we sit and talk, making it through an entire cup with no sign of food. Our waiter/chef seems to get distracted each time someone new arrives and it’s become obvious that he had done no prep for the Saturday morning crowd before we got there. He notices that we are out of coffee and asks if we want more on one of his passes. I hand him my cup and he turns, sets it on the counter, and then goes back to cooking. Another waiter arrives then. He checks on us and we point out the empty cup still sitting, forgotten on the counter. He brings me coffee and our food arrives about 10 minutes later. Now that there are 2, things seem to move along a little faster, but we cannot help but wonder if the first guy is high.

The food is hot and good, although Pat says his mushroom crepe is greasy. Megan and I are both pleased with our crepes that wrap around combinations of eggs, meat, and cheese. We finish up and head out, walking down to the park and continuing our tour of the North Shore waterfront, ending up on the Walnut St bridge and walking over to the South side. We pause often along the way, enjoying the view, the breeze, and the mass of people out on a beautiful Saturday morning. On the other side, we debate where to go–the Hunter Museum or the aquarium. Megan opts for the aquarium and we head downhill.

The Tennessee aquarium rivals the biggest aquariums in the US with a building for ocean exhibits and another for rivers, plus a butterfly exhibit and a huge atrium with otters playing in a simulated river below and many native birds flying freely overhead (although there is so much space, you need binoculars and patience to see them). I love aquariums. Today, I have the new experience of hand-feeding a shrimp to a sting-ray. It’s fascinating to watch the rays in a shallow pool where you can pet them, but feeding one causes it to come up out of the water to position its mouth high enough to grasp the shrimp. It’s my turn to be startled when I feel its teeth graze the backs of my fingers. I wonder how life would be different if our mouths were positioned where our belly buttons are.

We move through the exhibits slowly, not remembering many of them from our last visit, we are fascinated by the diversity of life captured behind glass. The penguins put on a good show for us. Watching them shoot out of the water, popping up several feet in the air to land on the rock ledge above the water with impossible grace, makes me marvel at the specialities represented by other species. Their feet are what really catch my attention, though. Thick and strong when they’re on the rock, but flipped back like tiny paddles when in the water, I cannot comprehend how feet can transform so dramatically in an instant.

We enter the butterfly exhibit and hunt for the species of butterflies fluttering around us. A woman with a toddler on a leash walks around us. As she tries to point out butterflies to her young son, he spots a “caution, wet floor” sign painted with butterflies, smiles and giggles and runs up to it, fascinated by the pictures at eye level. The woman jerks slightly on the leash and says, “No” firmly as he grabs the sign with both hands. She looks disgruntled and maybe embarrassed as she sees me smiling at him and says, “Of all the things for you to look at!” I am slightly disturbed when I witness parents who lack the insight to recognize that the world looks different to a child. I would have liked to have seen her get excited that he recognized the butterflies, even though they were drawings, and used that excitement to draw him into to recognizing the real thing if an opportunity arose, but not all parents are teachers. I turn away wondering if I could have or should have helped with that situation, but involving oneself with strangers’ children is always tricky.

We enjoy the rest of the aquarium, wrapping up our visit mesmerized by the jelly fish displays. Why is it that jellies floating calmly through gentle currents are so hypnotic? Returning to the bright sunlight outdoors, we decide to take Megan to our favorite Mexican place, Taco Mamacitos, for lunch. The waiter gives Megan the full introduction to the menu and sells us both on trying their most popular taco, which I’ve not had before. It is a hard shell wrapped in a soft taco filled with goodness. It’s the first time I’ve ever eaten a hard shell taco without half of the shell crumbling all over my plate. Finishing up our margaritas, we decide a nap is in order. We return to home base for an afternoon siesta and I think, “What a perfect Saturday.”