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Sumiki

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Blog Entries posted by Sumiki

  2. Sumiki
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeFMztwJpKk
     
    Catoire is a highly neglected composer, but his works are steadily gaining their due recognition - in no small part due to the CD of his piano works released by super-virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin. Russian and French, both influences are heard in his music, although in his best works, he takes French fluidity to new heights. The second Prelude from his collection "Cinq Morceaux" is one of the best things he ever wrote.
     
    Catoire's music exhibits plenty of rhythmic complexity - in this piece, much of the gossamery texture is due to its consistent 3-against-2 polyrhythm. (The right hand plays in a 12/16 time signature while the left hand plays in 4/8.) It's been on my to-learn list for quite a while, but its considerable technical difficultly (mainly in the aforementioned rhythmic complexity) make it daunting to begin.
  3. Sumiki

    Aftermath

    By Sumiki,

    BrickFair was quite the awesome. Long entry coming in a few days once I get back home, but it was great.
     
    My Heavily Armored Wasp ended up getting third, which was ridiculously cool - it actually ended up edging out Makaru's Kahu. Again, it's really just fun to get nominated, even if the concept of winning is hopelessly out of reach.
     
    Also Xaeraz and Valendale and I slapped each other all weekend, especially after being ... moistened. With snipples and snapples.
  4. Sumiki

    BrickFair Nomination

    By Sumiki,

    There have been way too many crazy awesome things that have transpired over the past three days, and these things will be chronicled in a blog entry in due time, but I just wanted to say that one of my MOCs - the Heavily Armored Wasp - was nominated for Best BIONICLE!
     
    My chances of actually winning, however, are somewhat less than slim: I'm up against DeeVee's Vayland Dragon III, Steve the Squid's wearable Bane mask, and Makaru's Kahu, so I'm basically just thrilled that I got nominated and have accepted the fact that I'm going nowhere beyond that.
     
    Of course, many, many thanks to the always-awesome Nukaya for nominating the Wasp for consideration.
  5. Sumiki

    I'm At BrickFair!

    By Sumiki,

    When this entry gets posted, I'll be somewhere inside the Dulles Expo Center, getting registered, setting up MOCs, and making absurdly long vendor raids.
     

     
    BRICKFAIR
  6. Sumiki
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3z0eMiMrNw
     
    Originally a working title, this Nocturne was composed in late June and early July of this year, and was premiered in concert on my birthday, the conclusion of a three-week-long composition workshop at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. This is the same concert I alluded to in a previous entry, so yes, that's me at the piano. (Bow ties are cool.)
     
    The melodic content of the Nocturne was developed out of the arpeggiated phrase that becomes practically an ostinato by the piano. Emphasis is given to the flute and cello as solo instruments as opposed to the piano, which mainly executes arpeggiations (in various forms), emphasizing harmonies and rhythm, with only occasional melodic content. Both the other players got confused with the beat at certain points, and I can't blame them - there's one passage where the time signature goes from 4/4 to 7/4 to 5/4 to 6/4 to 7/4 to 3/4, but we got most of the kinks worked out in rehearsals and that particular section went off without a hitch.
     
    To round off the piece and to give a sense of night coming to a close, I included a birdsong imitation at the end. Also present near the end is a musical shout-out to Alexei Stanchinsky's lone Nocturne, an underrated piece and one of my favorites in the genre.
     
    Since I know what was supposed to be played, I noted no less than six deviations from the score upon hearing the recording - two by the flutist, two by the cellist, and two by me. The great thing about pieces that no one's ever heard before, though, is that there's no way of telling what was accurate and what was inaccurate.
  7. Sumiki
    We're taking our time going up to BrickFair this year, getting there in two days instead of one. We're just about to head out the door towards Richmond.
     
    I'm pumped!
     
    And I have lots of hats!
     
    This is exciting!
  8. Sumiki
    Slowly gettin' through the pictures, over a month afterwards. As always, hover for information.

     
     
     

    Day Twenty-Two



     


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    Day Thirty








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    Well folks, that's it. Hope you've enjoyed reading these past few weeks of entries as much as I've enjoyed reliving the adventure by posting them.
  9. Sumiki
    So, folks are posting music in the blogs. I figure that I might as well get in on the action, so I'll be posting my favorite pieces of music semi-intermittently. Might be weekly but iunno - depends on how much interest I can generate with classical stuff.
     
    http://youtu.be/oOQ7JvdzWig
     
    So! Leo Ornstein. Guy lived a whopping 109 years and produced a number of fantastic compositions. In his early years he was known for popularization of the tone cluster and lived around the time Charles Ives was experimenting with those same techniques. (Neither Ornstein nor Ives get credit for their uses of the tone cluster - that honor goes to Henry Cowell, mainly because he coined the term "tone cluster".)
     
    Ornstein's early works are dissonant, virtuosic, and occasionally violent, making his post-tonal works popular amongst the avant-garde of the time. After composing a number of these works, he took a short break from composition and resumed with less harsh works. Vestiges of the dissonance that epitomized his earlier oeuvre still dot his later compositions, but the older he got the more tonal his language became, much to the disappointment in the avant-garde that had put so much stock in his earlier career.
     
    His only Piano Quintet is brilliant, and the third movement is my favorite. Interesting notations include time signature differences between the strings and piano, tuplets that cross measures, and a plethora of poly rhythmic arpeggiations. It's a highly underrated piece that doesn't get performed nearly as much as it deserves to.
  11. Sumiki
    This has more or less become an annual thing to do on the Monday after BrickFair. In 2011, Brickeens and his dad toured various monuments and statues in the Capitol as well as part of the Air and Space Museum. In 2012, Zatth joined up with us as we went around the original Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum.
     
    So, BrickFair goers and fellow BZP members: who's willing and able to take a tour of Washington, D.C. sights on Monday, August 5th?
     
    (I wanted to put this out there well in advance of the 'Fair to make sure people are aware of what's being planned.)
     
    BUMPED 7/24 BECAUSE BRICKFAIR IS LIKE A WEEK AWAY ??? I'M PUMPED
  15. Sumiki
    YOU ALL KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS TOMORROW, RIGHT
     
    OF COURSE YOU DO
     
    PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU'RE READING IT ON THAT DAY AND NOT ON THIS ONE
     
    BUT ANYWAY
     
    YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, RIGHT?
     
    THAT'S RIGHT, KIDS
     
    SAY IT WITH ME
     
    IT'S SUMIKI'S BIRTHDAY
     
    (what, did you think I was going to talk about some movie or something? pfffffffft)
     
    Also, I must apologize for inactivity over the past few weeks. I've been pretty busy, but it's going to culminate in a concert wherein I play the piano portion of a Nocturne that I wrote for flute, cello, and piano. I put a whole lot of arpeggios in it so it's pretty finger-breaking but it sounds quite nice.
     
    nerve-wracking aaaaaaaa
     
    After this madness is over I'll definitely resume more normal BZP activities.
     
    Oh and then BrickFair.
     
    I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS ENTRY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT AND I'M TO THE POINT WHERE I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO BOTHER WITH CORRECTING TYPOS IF I MAKE THEM
  18. Sumiki

    The Voting Booth

    By Sumiki,

    I've always been a fan of the Voting Booth, especially on the old forums. When I got my Premiership, I was still a wee noob, and created tons of polls ... well, I tried to, at least. My habit of hitting preview-post canceled out the polls I made, which led to frustration on my end and by whatever FA had to come clean my mess up.
     
    When the forums came back, I was happy to see the Voting Booth busy again, but this spurt of activity didn't continue for very long at all. Soon the Voting Booth looked like a derelict of the forum it once was, and this saddened me. I made a few polls and people voted in them, so it's not like there's a severe lack of interest in member-based polls, just very few topics - but now, even the voters are decreasing. The number of staff members assigned to the forum (aside from the Mentors) was, as of earlier today, equivalent to the number of topics: a whopping three, and that's including the pinned VB Policy topic.
     
    During my time as a Mentor I was more of a forum wanderer than at any other time during my BZP career, as the job description was basically "go where the unapproved posts are." The VB's lifelessness really struck me, and I submitted some ideas for reform to some of the other staff and specifically to Smeag, then the VB FL. (This was, of course, before the advent of the Tracker.) This led to no reforms, which is why we're still talking about this now, stemming off of the "BZPower's Activity" Tracker ticket. (I don't blame Smeag for inaction, as the forum was relatively busy when compared to what it looks like now, and while I genuinely respect the wisdom he gained in his post as FL, under the circumstances, I think it may be time for reconsideration.)
     
    My suggestions are as follows:
     
    I. Make posts count! I see arguments for posts counting in the off-topic realm, but if any forum needs it, it's the Voting Booth: an all-but-dead LEGO-based forum with an easy method of attracting attention and regaining activity.
     
    II. Let non-Premiers post topics! I've never seen any logic to keeping this around in any forum - it's hardly used for anything and no member has bought Premiership for the purpose of being able to post topics there. It made sense when polls were a hot commodity - anyone remember the old Premier Poll-Making Squad? - but in this day in age, it makes hardly any sense.
     
    Considering the nature of this kind of change I would say that, at best, only one of these would be done, and the decision comes down to Watashi Wa, the VB's current FL. This makes sense on a number of levels, but it all basically comes down to increasing awareness and activity in the forum. These rules are the last vestiges of a forum that once featured a great amount of activity. Once they were good and served a useful purpose - one to control spammy posts, and the other to help capitalize on the popularity. In the present day, these regulations are now unnecessary hoops to jump through.
     
    Should the Voting Booth attract enough attention to aggravate the problem that led to the implementation of the first of these two policies - namely, brief posts that stated nothing more than the member's particular vote - we should include in the VB policy that any member who wishes to post stating their vote must include a reason as to why they voted in that way. This is not a requirement to post, nor would it be a mandatory implementation alongside the ones posted above! This is simply an alternate solution to a problem that, if things go well, might rear its head again.
     
    What do you think?
  20. Sumiki
    More pictures than the first week, enough to do something with BZP's BBCode parser near the end of day 11. As such, the remaining Week Two pictures will be relegated to a separate entry. Hover over pictures for background information.
     

    Day Eight


     


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    Day Nine








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    Day Eleven








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  21. Sumiki
    I rescind my earlier statements about how awful the idea seemed.
     
    It looks ... pretty good? Only so much can be discerned from the trailer, but the animation style looks pretty cool. Also, quite a cast of actors they've got there.
  22. Sumiki
    I've had a few days to recover from the second Great American Road Trip, and in that time I've combed through my 4,396 pictures. Thirty days is a little more than four weeks, so I think a four-part series of pictures - the best of the best - might just be in order. (Day one did not have any decent pictures, so I'm starting on day two.)
     
    ALL PICTURES HAVE BACKGROUND INFORMATION. HOVER OVER PICTURES TO READ.

     

    Day Two
     
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    Day Seven








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  23. Sumiki
    We got an early start and headed out of Alabama, soon making it to the Georgia state line and the Eastern time zone. From there we headed up to Atlanta, where I learned that tales of the city's traffic had not been exaggerated. We took the beltway around the city instead of going through it directly. I cannot imagine what kind of mayhem we'd have run into if we'd gone right through, as the drivers on the beltway were crazy enough. (I learned why signals are so rarely used: as soon as you turn one on, some bozo cuts you off.)
     
    Eventually we meandered around Atlanta and arrived in the suburb of Lawrenceville, home of the triple-A Gwinnett Braves, where we located the stadium and collected our pennant as well as pictures of their nearly-new stadium. Soon we were back on Interstate 85, bound for our penultimate stop of the day: Greenville, South Carolina for a pennant from the Greenville Drive, the single-A affiliate of the Red Sox. Our arrival there was greeted with the similar brand of eerie wariness that we'd received elsewhere on our deep-south pennant chases, but we got a pennant and headed for the North Carolina border.
     
    Outside of Greenville we stopped at a Chick-Fil-A to eat. We used up nearly the last of our cash getting chicken strips and a sandwich - the only bill left was, quite strangely, a 100-dollar bill. With this as our only cash, my dad's after-snack peach milkshake was bought using it, which prompted nearly the entire restaurant staff to check and double-check the bill for accuracy. The comical nature of the counterfeit concern was apparent from my perch at a booth across the building. (The bill, of course, checked out.) My mom proved our trustworthiness to the cashier by returning a phone left in a nearby booth by the store manager - and while I cannot be entirely sure, I think they may have been using the opportunity to test us.
     
    We'd gotten no more than a few miles over the NC border before, in the span of about five second, it went from 90 degrees and ominous to a 60 degree downpour where we could barely see a foot in front of the car. We exited near Bessemer City and wound our way westward out of the storm. Using dad's dog-like navigational skills, mom's GPS and iPad maps, and my studious analysis of a road atlas as old as I am, we navigated north and east on secondary roads and followed the storm the rest of the way home. Our route took us on NC-150 through the Lake Norman area, where we saw - amongst other stupidities - folks water-skiing while lightning struck and thunder rolled. I understand the reports of Lake Norman deaths now.
     
    Before we knew it, we were home and unloading our things into the house. I'm glad we sprayed for bugs before we left, as a number of them are curled up. We've gotten rid of the ones along the main walkways in the house, but we didn't get them all and as such will need to vacuum them up tomorrow.
     
    On this trip, we covered more states and provinces than we did last year (26 to 25) in more days (30 to 28). We traversed the continent in a manner that would nearly encircle last year's route, but we somehow ended up with less milage (8252.2 to 8355.4). Total mileage for both trips combined comes out as 16,607.6. The number of car fixes increased (3 to 1) and we ended up with more pennants as well (17 to 15, though we got four free ones in Vancouver).
     
    Tomorrow: we sleep in. Our trip has come to its conclusion earlier than we had planned, but I would prefer it this way, as the similar scenery of our southern excursion increased our anxiousness to get back home.
  24. Sumiki
    We wanted to leave our hotel room as soon as possible, so we ended up getting on the road out of Louisiana at around 9:20. Our first stop of the day was Vicksburg, Mississippi, which we arrived at around 11:00. We entered the visitor center and watched a short movie detailing the events of the Vicksburg campaign before going on the auto tour around the battlefield.
     
    Vicksburg was a stronghold along the Mississippi River and widely considered the key to holding the river by both Confederate and Union forces. The Confederates stationed at Vicksburg were led by General John Pemberton, who was one of the more incompetent generals of the war. Ulysses S. Grant, along with other Union generals, had tried various times to get to Vicksburg with no success, but Pemberton left Vicksburg eastbound and engaged Grant's forces. Grant routed Pemberton's forces until Pemberton - for some unknown reason - thought it was a good idea to retreat the entire way back to Vicksburg, which was built up with fortifications.
     
    When Grant arrived, he was anxious enough to get the campaign over with and secure the Mississippi for the Union to order frontal assaults on the nearly impregnable fortress that Vicksburg had become, but these were unsuccessful. Eventually, having more supplies than the Confederates, he outlasted them in trenches until the southern forces could no longer bear the hunger and disease through the ranks. The surrender of Vicksburg occurred almost exactly the same time as Gettysburg.
     
    The auto tour took us along various sights along Union lines and trenches. While veritable forests have grown up almost everywhere on the battlefield now, the hills are clearly unnatural and are the remnants of the Confederate stronghold. We worked our way past large stone and marble monuments set up by states to commemorate where their infantry units were located along the battlefield, and in that regard it's very similar to Gettysburg. The open spaces there were made it easy to see the eerie hilliness of the terrain, with the lines clearly distinguishable by the naked eye even today.
     
    (As far as monuments go, Illinois had the best one: a massive domed structure with the names of every known Illinois native present at the battle. They were organized by unit and within unit they were alphabetized, making it easy to spot various set of brothers who had signed up at the same time. The floor had a mosaic design depicting Illinois' seal, and at the very top of the dome was a hole the same size as the seal on the floor. I'm sure there was more symbolism in the structure there than I noticed.)
     
    The heat was ridiculously oppressive, as the dry heat we'd accustomed ourselves to in the southwest had morphed into mugginess so thick I'd venture to call it a warm airborne slush. Opportunities to walk around outside were already severely limited due to the fact that they don't want people climbing all over the battlefield and that there are no less than three species of poisonous snake in the region, so we didn't miss anything.
     
    (Not only did the siege of Vicksburg result in one of the first uses of trench warfare in history, but also featured a crater blown into Confederate lines - both tactics used at Petersburg later on in the war.)
     
    Before the road looped back around to go back along the Confederate lines, there was the USS Cairo on display as well as a small museum dedicated to it. The Cairo was one of seven steamboat warships that made up the Union's small inland navy, and was sunk by the first usage of electric torpedoes (or what we'd call "mines") as it rolled along at its max speed of a whopping nine MPH along the Yazoo River. All of the hands safely got off the ship, but the Cairo sank to the bottom of the river and was covered by silt. The ship was lost and nearly forgotten until the 1950s, when scientists ascertained its position underneath the silt on the bottom of the river. In the mid-60s, a crane - itself, ironically, known as the Cairo - helped to lift the ship out of the water. After accidentally cutting the ship in two, it was towed away for restoration which continued into the early 80s. It was then transported to Vicksburg for display under a gigantic white tent.
     
    How good a shape the ship is in cannot be overstated. While load-bearing beams that had rotted were replaced during its restoration, almost everything on the ship was still original, including the boiler area and gigantic pistons that drove the water wheel. (The ship ran on a ton of coal an hour when running at top speed.) The explosion that led to its sinking is still visible near the front of the ship, and the coolest thing about the experience is that they built a trail through the ship so you can actually look at what the sailors did while on it. The museum next to it showcases the preserved artifacts found on the ship, such as vases that look as good as new and smooth-looking, nearly unworn leather shoes. The brass firing mechanisms used on the cannons were in astounding condition and bottles of ammonia were not only still intact, but also half-full. The bell recovered from the ship had actually trapped 1863 air and, when it was recovered, burped it back out.
     
    After exploring the Cairo, we'd had enough of the mugginess and got back to the car to get around what remained of the battlefield, which mainly consisted of more monuments for Union and Confederate units alike.
     
    We left the park around 1:30 and headed on I-20 to Jackson, which is not only Mississippi's capital city but the home of the Mississippi Braves, the Atlanta Braves' double-A affiliate. Their stadium was nice and we purchased two pennants (one for the minor and major league teams alike) from a very dull lady who barely talked and reacted blankly to the things we said. We thanked her anyway and were back on the road within short order. In about an hour's time we arrived in Meridian, the last town of any repute before the Alabama border. We got gas there, and - quite hungry by this point - we went into town in a futile attempt at getting something to eat. We got a sense of the Meridian downtown in as far as we wanted to get, but we left hungry.
     
    We continued along the highway as magnolias began in the median and along the sides of the roads. The magnolias got bigger as we approached the Alabama border, which we did a little after 4:00. We stopped at a badly laid-out welcome center and learned that the double-A Birmingham Barons were not playing today, but were yesterday and would be tomorrow. This threw another wrench in the debate between stopping in Birmingham and just sucking it up to get to Atlanta, which continued in the car in various forms as I drove us into Birmingham, where we finally found a parking space at a hotel and went in to inquire about getting an Internet signal for the iPad map software and possibly a room for the night.
     
    The hotel was full, despite their severe lack of parking due to repaving of half their lot, but the stop was not a waste as we met and talked with their assistant general manager, who is originally from Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He knew a lot about the evolution of Charlotte as well as the Kannapolis/Concord area due to the fact that he'd worked in Concord hotels, and is neither a fan of racing nor the rampant Dale Earnhardt worship present in that region of the state. Hungry but fearful of eating too much, we split a club sandwich and hit the road again to a hotel an hour away, which we'd booked in Oxford on advice from the Wilkesboro fellow, who spoke highly of the hotel quality in the area.
     
    The sun began to set as we worked our way through the surprisingly upscale Birmingham. We avoided a lethal time-killing combination of road construction, backups through multiple stoplights, and a crash ripe for rubbernecking by getting on the Interstate and heading on out to Oxford. We made good time as we worked our way through more NC-like terrain at the southern end of the Appalachian chain where the mountains are no different than large hills. Despite an utterly black road that no one could possibly see - dark to the point that I was convinced it sucked light in and ate it like a ravenous wolf on steroids - and small, highly faded stop signs away from the road to the point that only I saw them - and out of the corner of my eye at that - we made it safe and sound to the hotel at 8:30, where we ordered a proper dinner of three hamburgers. While not great they were certainly serviceable enough, and we wolfed them down along with many glasses of lemonade. (We didn't go the pitcher route this time, though I think we easily could have finished one off.)
     
    Tomorrow: we return home after a month on the road. Today marks the day we go beyond the 28 of last year, but, ironically, we may just end up with fewer miles even though we could nearly encircle last year's route with this year's route. I suppose we've cut down on the meandering this time.
  25. Sumiki
    We got the call from the dealership around 11:00 and had the same older gentlemen who dropped us off pick us up and drive us over. The car's oil was changed and the water cooling system belt had been replaced. We cautiously got onto the freeway, but all systems were nominal as we took it up to speed.
     
    With a fully functioning car - the first time since Utah - we headed east on I-20 bound for the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Our previous route would have taken us to minor league teams in San Antonio and Round Rock, but this route takes us to the Texas Rangers in Arlington and the independent AirHogs in Grand Prairie.
     
    The landscape became more grassy, with mesquite trees replacing the scrub brush of previous days. The flat prairies were replaced by hills that rolled increasingly, to the point that I now fully understand why they call that region "Texas hill country." The rolling hills built up our elevation until we lost all of it going down a 6% grade on a curve, a section that the usually laissez-faire Texas government actually put up signs about. North Carolina warns you of every little thing on the road whereas Texas - like most western states - only put signs up on the worst of the worst parts of the road.
     
    (At this point my dad said "look at the grass - it's like a plant!" This, we assume, referred to the fact that the grass was not uniformly growing but instead mostly grew in small clumps akin to exceptionally furry scrub brush. That, or he's just being crazy again.)
     
    Before 1:30 we had made it to the outskirts of Fort Worth where we split off on the western terminus of Interstate 30 which took us through the center of Fort Worth - but not before we passed under perhaps eight or nine bridges simultaneously. The traffic was not as bad as anticipated so we quickly passed through Fort Worth and entered Arlington, a suburb situated roughly between the two major cities.
     
    (Side note: If you're in the middle of nowhere, good luck finding a Texas policeman, because there are none. However, in the Fort Worth city limits alone, we saw no less than four policemen with cars they pulled over. People still drove crazy, but it was significantly less crazy.)
     
    We meandered off the highway and finally found parking after about two dozen marked-off entrances to a large parking lot. We finally worked our way in and headed across the street to the gift shop, where we found the pennant section and selected one. Soon we were checked out and headed back to I-30.
     
    A lot of independent league teams are situated next to or near larger metropolitan areas that have major league teams, but cannot have two due to strange and slightly arbitrary zones set up by MLB. While larger cities such as Los Angeles or New York can support two teams, areas such as Dallas/Fort Worth or Minneapolis/St. Paul can only support one team apiece. As such, both St. Paul and Grand Prairie (right next to Arlington) have independent-league teams - both in the American Association, one of the larger and more respectable independent leagues. We'd called the Grand Prairie team office earlier and were promised a tour before we could get a word in edgewise. We got to the stadium and the lady we'd called did not disappoint in terms of friendliness and excitability.
     
    Our tour guide did not have access to various keys that would have been helpful in getting around the stadium - which is exceptionally nice considering it's an independent league team - but she was a staff member who doubled as an usher and one of the few who didn't have a business card. Her excitability cannot be overstated - she reminded me of you when you're hyped up on a high predisone dose.
     
    The Grand Prairie team won the American Association championship in 2011, but their attendance has shrunk to the point that, if all the fans of an average game sat together, they could only fill up perhaps three sections. Apparently the previous general manager had a tendency to give tickets away, and when the current GM stopped the giveaways, attendance plummeted. We gave her some ideas accumulated from our experiences in Sacramento and Vancouver as to possible ways of getting the attendance back up, and she promised to pass them on, but at the same time she expressed opinions intimating that the higher-ups in the AirHogs staff didn't always value her opinions because she was an usher. (She knew more about what needed to be done than anyone else did, though.)
     
    She took us through the parts of the stadium that she could, which included the suite areas which were nicer than the triple-A digs we toured in Sacramento. To get us to a larger suite she climbed over the small rails that divided the suite seats outside and let us in from the outside.
     
    The hallways are decorated with pigs crawling on or flying various vehicles, including rockets, airplanes, and - my personal favorite - a WWII bomber with baseballs for ammunition and bats for rockets. The stadium is filled with little touches, such as baseball seams on stairs. Also, the field is completely made of AstroTurf save for the circles of dirt making up the pitcher's mound and the area around the batter's box. Since independent teams have to make do with whatever money they get from attendance and souvenirs, AstroTurf for everything cuts down costs. (Plus it eliminates bad hops - a definite plus.)
     
    We got a picture of our tour guide holding Yoder the Duck, and she took us back to get us copies of a picture of the team right after it won the 2011 championship, among other pictures. She then took us downstairs to see the kid's playground area before taking us to the gift shop, where we got a pennant along with a hat and a t-shirt for dad. After thanking them profusely, we got back on the road at 3:30, and had no more destinations for the day save for one: a restaurant called Ponchatoulas in the middle of Ruston, LA, halfway between the Texas border and the Mississippi border.
     
    We got back on I-30 through Dallas until the traffic slowed to a halt, but we were able to exit and worked our way to I-35E which took us down to I-20, where we ran into a bunch of Texans with bad cases of road rage. One guy came within about six inches of sideswiping us while other folks raced around trucks without turn signals. Texans are nice to a fault if you talk to them but you wouldn't get that impression if your experience was defined by the drivers. Perhaps they get all of their frustrations out on the road leading to their mellowness in other endeavors.
     
    Traffic thinned out as we bolted for the border. At around 6:30 we stopped for gas in Waskom, the last town of any size before the Louisiana border - and they do not make it clear where the gas station is or how to get to it without ripping your axles in two. After running over a gigantic pothole that I'm amazed didn't do any damage, we crossed over the highway and tried accessing the gas station via an adjacent shop, but there was no connector, so we had to get back on the frontage road to get to the gas - which was badly needed as we had landed on the big red "E" and only had perhaps a half-gallon left in the tank. We filled up and washed the windshield with the help of little hotel shampoo bottles while under the gaze of a bunch of rednecks who practically emanated the sound of banjos.
     
    We got back on the road and within just a few minutes we'd made it to Louisiana, a state I've never been to before today. My mom told us about the history of Shreveport, named for a certain Captain Shreve that, over a period of many years, un-jammed the Red River and the bustling area that became Shreveport honored the man in their name.
     
    I'm convinced that if you take out the casinos, there would be no Shreveport.
     
    We successfully avoided a random bottle of Gatorade that fell out of the UPS truck in front of us as well as plenty of potholes. Unnecessary road construction has been my pet peeve on this trip, but I will say that Louisiana is a state that could use a heapin' helpin' of road work.
     
    (The Frenchness of the state was apparent when we entered: their welcome sign had French in addition to English and they had what I think was some sort of radio antenna shaped like a tall, thin Eiffel Tower.)
     
    Aside from these oddities, Louisiana's scenery is barely distinguishable from rural areas of North Carolina. The only discrepancy between the two is that Louisiana's trees are rather taller and occasionally curve over the highway to the point that it feels like you're driving through a tunnel. There was little wildlife but a lot of roadkill - the most we've seen since the veritable menagerie of Michigan. We mainly saw armadillo and dog roadkill.
     
    We exited in Ruston and navigated the one-way streets and road construction through its quaint downtown and found the restaurant where we saw a large group of people standing outside. Thinking that this was the line to get in, we figured it must be good. As it turned out, they were a party of eleven and we were seated when we walked in.
     
    The food was an odd combination of delicious and nearly unpalatable. I found the gumbo to be ridiculously atrocious, but the fried crawfish and fried pickles were absolutely amazing. We're finally back to the land of proper sweet tea, and although it was not the flavored sugar water I'm accustomed to, it was a good change of pace from the lemonade that's been our standard order throughout the trip.
     
    Tomorrow: Jackson, MS, or Birmingham, AL. We're going to get as far as we feel is possible after we tour the Civil War history in Vicksburg.
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