JerseyPete
Well-Known Member
How is the food diversity there? Indian, Thai, etc within how many minutes. Is there anything you miss about NJ?
The Joy of Mountain Biking
- Thread starter MissJR
- Start date
serviceguy
Well-Known Member
Not sure if it's the southern life, being married or whatnot but I count way too few f-bombs...ok folks... i am currently trying to avoid work so i'll start updating this shit for you. to make it easy on myself, i was going to offer up an AMA post, but then i quickly came to my senses and said fuck that... you people will just have to get updates in spurts. although... you can ask me anything but i may just ignore you.
WE MOVED!
Yeah... you people already know that. But i'm recapping the past few months and, frankly, i don't feel like trying to figure out where i left off. We are in Brevard with a shit ton of lawn stuff to work on so stop on by and pick up a weed whacker and help us out!
The house is great. Not perfect but i really like so much about it. we can literally ride to pisgah from the house, i have my own office (previously i was just in a corner in the bedroom) and it's ours: no HOA or landlord bullshit. we have places for the bikes and a good amount of storage and it's quiet here... and dark... we can sometimes hear oskar blues if there's a loud band playing but, even then, it all goes quiet at 10. (for those not familiar, we lived on a very busy street, right off 287 in morristown... constant noise and lights). so the change was more than welcomed. we also have a neighborhood fox which makes me happy.
and we've even had a few guests! @Norm and Julia stopped by briefly for some dinner on their collegiate invasion of the south, @soundz done gone and stopped by two times... the second time practically moving into our driveway... and my parents flew down for a week to check out the place. we also have two others coming at the end of the week for a few days to visit as well.
NEW BIKE! FITNESS!
i finally got my mid-life crisis bike! fancy little orange ripmo which is a lot of fun in pisgah. i'm getting more comfortable with the trails (and the fucking climbing) and i'm feeling like my fitness is finally coming back. with all the moving and the stress associated with that (and work... more on that in a moment), my strava was starting to look like i died. i may have even gone an entire month without doing anything. plus we got the keys to the house in november so all the group rides were winding up for the season and we were kinda just floating in unpacking mode. but now we're more in to a routine and i have weekly co-ed monday ride with Cognative (check out their bike clothes... they're nice!) and a wednesday women's ride with Sycamore... plus our normal "just us" weekend rides (sometimes hikes) and sometimes a Tuesday and Friday ride or run thrown in there. It rains here A LOT but, for the most part, we can ride pretty quickly afterwards. but the winter not so much... we had to do a few gravel rides and dupont closes some of the more popular trails in bad conditions. overall, i'm happy and we have a lot of new trails to explore.
WORK!
ok... so first thing first.... my supervisor was fired pretty much right after we moved in. i had heard some rumblings something was up after work gossip about her getting drunk and saying a few not so nice things at a company party... well, i messaged her at lunch about something and about an hour later my editor in chief was calling me telling me she was out. i never even got a reply from the lunch time question.
a few things about the situation: she micromanaged the fucking hell out of me. and if she wasn't "managing" me, then she was picking on the copy editor. constantly. now, part of me feels bad for her... her daughter was having a lot of mental health issues and we could see it affecting our supervisor. we told her many times to just take a day off... off the clock... no one would have to know and she wouldn't have to use a vacation day. just go shopping or get a pedi or a massage or read a book... anything to relax. she never fucking did. and it affected all of us. she was obviously trying to control something since she couldn't control what was happening with her daughter. i tried to be very understanding but i was at my wits end and was seriously considering quitting in the middle of a pandemic because i just couldn't deal with her shit anymore. another thing about the situation was that i know she was concerned about job security. she literally withheld important information from me to make herself seem indisposable. case in point: i do the layout stuff and literally make the pdfs for email and for print. i used to deal with the printers one on one all the time. we had a good relationship... so good that i could literally email or call them and ask them for help. when the new company bought out my old company, she started taking over dealing with the printers... which is fine if you're trying to do the legwork and find new printers and negotiate contracts and all that... but she literally never told me who the fucking printers were. she made me email her the pdf and then she would send it to the printer. when she was fired, we literally had IT and accounting looking for any emails and invoices to find out who we were using. how royally fucked up is that? and she did that with a number of things where for a while we were flying blind trying to undo some of the bullshit she created.
but we're in a better spot now and i think people i work with are realizing how much work i actually do. not to say my supervisor wasn't a hard worker or anything but she definitely tried to secure a place for herself in the company by hiding behind "i'm the only one who can do this" bullshit. in fact, some people are so happy with how i've stepped up and "fixed" some things and how open and honest i am about what i'm doing, i was nominated and won the quarterly limelight award with my company. it's basically where your coworkers highlight (nominate) those who've done some great work the past quarter... 5 of those people are randomly picked... 4 get $250 bonus... and one gets $1000 bonus... YEPPERS... this gal got the big money
AMA!
ok... not really... but i know i'm leaving a lot out... so feel free to ask some questions and i'll fill in some blanks and elaborate... or maybe just completely ignore you!
PHOTOS!
Franklin checking out the backyard. we have a lot of trees... and they drop shit everywhere.
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Jimmy comes to visit and Steve grows a mustache
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new bike!
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squirrels everywhere!
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That's good info to retain in order to estimate the best/faster way to the nearest bathroom...
So in Brevard, we have awesome food trucks, a lot of good Mexican and burrito places, Thai place that is great... There's a pop up pizza shop that's good for the thin crust brick oven type pizza... And a couple of coffee shops and roasters that I like. A really nice but expensive farm to table restaurant... a cheesey kind of touristy soda shop that actually hits the spot and a hot dog place that is really good (even with things like kielbasa and brats and stuff). Obviously Asheville has a bunch of stuff but that's like half hour + from here and we really don't go there too often. I also really like a chicken and biscuits place in Hendersonville. And, of course there's the usual fast food places I don't eat at.
I miss Lokl in Morristown mostly. Really liked their coffee and getting a croissant or baklava. The coffee shops here are missing a little of that. Aside from the pop up pizza shop, I don't trust pizza here.... We've found decent enough bagels but there is a place here that steams them (shudder). It's not so much that we're lacking here... Just not as plentiful and fewer and farther in between.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Fucking hell...
Actually, I have been trying to drop less bombs. Pretty sure there's a gosh darn rule about that.
Also... The town has public restrooms. And they're clean.
My opinion:
Great Thai in town. The Mexican options are oddly huge. From surfer burritos to street tacos to the generic Mexican restaurants and also food trucks.
Missing Indian and good ramen locally. Need to head towards Asheville for that although I think an Indian place just opened up closer.
Oddly the town is missing casual burger places but all the food trucks with amazing burgers makes up for it.
I wish there were more casual food options, no waiter, etc.
I would say I miss NJ trails as they have their upside, but I can go sob on destination trails a bike ride from our home.
And jughandles. Kind of miss those. Still getting used to suicide lanes.
You know, everytime I'd go to the south I think I'd annoy @MissJR hitting up every BBQ place I can.
Now that we're here we've gone to the two BBQ places in town each once. Neither have outdoor seating. One is drive through only (it's kind of a stand) and the other is a sit-down restaurant. There's a kind-of-bbq place that we do hit up and their ribs were really damn good but I go more for their Kielbasa and other sausage type sandwiches. The stand one is really good however.
12 Bones is on my list but I swear everytime we're in the area it's outside their hours. I think I learned of it because Obama ate there.
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
the worst is when people don't use the suicide lane to merge into traffic, say turning out of a business onto a main road. i've sat behind some people that do not get this concept and it makes me rage.
Seriously we're country enough here that I'm just somehow just so relaxed that I don't mind waiting behind slow southerners. Just driving to the slightly more populated towns I get anxiety with traffic. I think NJ broke me.
I will say that when I'm driving down the road and someone does what you're saying and gets into the suicide lane I think they're going to drive right into me just before they stop in the middle.
They're actually putting in a ton of circles here...
JerseyPete
Well-Known Member
How do you folks handle the transition of health and medical professionals such as GP, dentist, ophthalmologist etc? Word of mouth, Yelp, Google or ask your NJ person for a recommendation?
JerseyPete
Well-Known Member
I thought someone was going to say that moving out of NJ cures everything.
For main doctor we asked for a recommendation from a local friend that's from NJ. Which was good as I looked into it and I wanted someone in a larger practice with good affiliation with the hospital and that doctor aligned with that perfectly. Doctor is about 3/4 mile from the house. There's a lot of doctors here as there are a lot of old people here...
Dentist was less easy but I looked at the ones with good google ratings, size of the practice and if they take our insurance. They are all booked out 6-8 months for hygienists. There's one larger practice that our insurance takes that I booked some appointment months out but they called me a few days later to come in due to a cancellation. So now I'm in with them and they were pretty good. Long-term practice with multiple dentists, etc.
I had to get a bone scan and that was 25 minutes to Hendersonville where the bigger/better hospital is along with all the related offices/etc. The local hospital is basically behind our house but it's not huge.
I haven't seen the eye doctor yet but Joy has as she needed contacts. That's near the hospital that's about a mile away, I think there's two choices in town and that's the bigger one.
There's a local town facebook group that is basically just people asking "Hey, I need a septic guy, can you guys recommend someone?" or whatever with lots of feedback so if I was looking for something specific I'd probably ask there.
This town is getting the mountain town issue of people moving in with $$ and a lack of service jobs. Like I mentioned above, hygienists are in short supply as it's not a huge draw to move here as a hygienist, as opposed to work-at-home mountain biker. Service workers etc are in short supply especially with all the seasonal tourism traffic into town.
Actually, I'd like to hear @Pearl 's opinion on the privately run DMV down here. It's a disaster and you need to make appointments 6-8 months out to get a license. Which everyone complains about. However I'd say it's 1/10 of the pain of a NJ DMV experience. Was in and out in 20 minutes with a Real ID. @MissJR was smart and made the appointments before we moved down here.
License plates/registration is a totally different office and run by the county and doing that was oddly a really pleasant experience dealing with a woman that was really friendly as opposed to anyone I've ever met in a NJ DMV.
Random update:
Next week we are flying back out to Phoenix where we will begin yet another trip to the Grand Canyon!
We also have reservations at the Phantom Ranch again for two nights!
So originally the park was supposed to shut everything down for construction... but then things got delayed and, instead of doing the lottery thing they normally do for reservations at the PR, they just opened up the dates for a wild west internet free for all and somehow I got thru and was able to secure two nights again. We offered the extra beds in the cabin to a few people but, unfortunately, things didn't work out so it's just going to be me and Steve heading down to the bottom. It remains to be seen if we both make it back up.
I'm hoping we can hike a bit more to the northern side (last year we made it to Ribbon Falls) but we'll see how the weather is and how our legs hold up. There is also some talk of shutdowns so I'm not sure how much our trip will be affected since the Phantom Ranch is actually an outside company (Xanterra). Also there are a few sections of the trails that will start to close down about the time we are there.
Anyway... that's where we stand for now.
Next week we are flying back out to Phoenix where we will begin yet another trip to the Grand Canyon!
We also have reservations at the Phantom Ranch again for two nights!
So originally the park was supposed to shut everything down for construction... but then things got delayed and, instead of doing the lottery thing they normally do for reservations at the PR, they just opened up the dates for a wild west internet free for all and somehow I got thru and was able to secure two nights again. We offered the extra beds in the cabin to a few people but, unfortunately, things didn't work out so it's just going to be me and Steve heading down to the bottom. It remains to be seen if we both make it back up.
I'm hoping we can hike a bit more to the northern side (last year we made it to Ribbon Falls) but we'll see how the weather is and how our legs hold up. There is also some talk of shutdowns so I'm not sure how much our trip will be affected since the Phantom Ranch is actually an outside company (Xanterra). Also there are a few sections of the trails that will start to close down about the time we are there.
Anyway... that's where we stand for now.