Greg and Kat's blog

I’m back in North Carolina now. As Greg blogged, I wasn’t able to do everything while at home because there was just too much to do, too many people to see, and not enough time to do everything or see everyone. Sorry to those I missed. I promise I’ll see you all in December.

My trip home was slightly crazed. Greg and I woke up at 3:30 am to get to the airport by 4:30 am for my 6:00 am flight. Because of the new security measures, they want you to be at the airport 1 1/2 hours before a domestic flight. This would ordinarily make sense. However, security at YVR doesn’t actually open until 5:00 am, so being there any earlier is just dumb. My mistake #1.

My mistake #2 could not have been avoided. My original itinerary was to fly directly home to Chapel Hill from Toronto (after Tina and Oli’s reception near Halifax). However, since I decided to add a trip home to Vancouver, my two flights (Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Raleigh/Durham) were on separate itineraries. Bad. Bad. Bad. They wouldn’t check my bags all of the way through to RDU. So when I got to TO, I had to go to baggage claim and get my bags, which is outside of security, instead of heading directly to Terminal 2, and claiming my bags there to take them with me through customs (if they had been checked all the way through), which is still inside the secure area. Instead, I had to re-check-in at the Air Canada counter. Normally this isn’t a big deal. However, for some reason it was a zoo. The check-in kiosks were 5-deep, and the line to check baggage stretched far enough away that you couldn’t actually see the counter. So, even though I was there 2 1/2 hours before my flight, I only had 30 minutes from the time I actually checked in to the time my flight was supposed to leave. Luckily customs was super short, as was security. I got on the shuttle bus to go to Gate E (for the record, I HATE Gate E). I was so relieved when I got off the shuttle. But then I stepped into the small terminal that houses 13 gates (E254 to E266). It was pandemoneum. There were people everywhere and planes at every gate, but the screens weren’t displaying any relavent info on which gate to go to. Apparently, Air Canada’s computers had gone down that afternoon. This was after the morning flights were all delayed to due bad weather on the East coast. So, everyone was in this small terminal, nobody knew anything, and random flights were being cancelled. My 4:00 pm flight was cancelled. However, the 12:30 pm flight was not, and it was delayed. So, I was the second-to-last standy-by from my flight to get on to the “earlier” flight, which finally left the terminal at around 5:30 pm. From what I gathered, that may have been the only flight leaving the terminal for the new few hours. They weren’t sure whether the “later” 9:30 flight was going to be cancelled or not. So, I got to RDU only 2 hours later than scheduled (although a lot more stressed out that scheduled!). Bad news, my luggage did not get on the plane. Oh well, no big deal – I still had clothes back at the log cabin. So, I took a cab home, took a shower, and went to bed. My luggages were delivered to me by 11:00 am then next morning. Not too bad. The worst part was that I was stressing about missing my 4:00 flight while I was in the check-in line because the screens said that my flight was on time. They knew that the flight wasn’t going to be on time – heck the 12:30 flight was still there! They could have at least changed the status to delayed, and I would have had a slightly less stressful day.

Anyways, I’m back now. I just finished my abstract for SICB, the conference I go to almost every January. Keith is looking over it now. It seems wrong to me that the title of my abstract has both “telencephalon” and “starling” in it. I think I’ve made a horrible mistake. I think I’m going to go home now.

We were in three provinces today: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Weird. Less that a week ago I was in the states! It seems so long ago!

Oli and Tina’s wedding was on Saturday (there are a few highlights in the Gallery). It was TONS of fun. Crazy hectic, but fun. Tina looked gorgeous, Oli was dashing, Francois was in a suit (and looked quite good!), and everyone and everything else was beautiful. Tina and her father arrived at the church in a white vintage car. During the ceremony we held gold crowns over Tina and Oli’s heads (let me tell you, I’m glad Tina isn’t any taller or else my arm would have fallen off!!!). Afterwards we went to the Chateau Vaudruil (spelling?), had pictures taken, and then enjoyed one of the best meals I’ve ever had: roasted vegetables and bocconcini with tomato appetizer, mushroom rissoto, berry sorbet, filet mignon (perfectly cooked) with potato and veg, arugala salad, and then yummy wedding cake and a dessert table! During and after dinner we danced, ran around during a scavenger hunt (Greg can take his belt off in record time, but not his socks – go figure!), hula hooped, and danced some more. Tina and Oli definitely know how to throw a fun party! Can’t wait until Vogler’s Cove!

We’re now in PEI. Going to drive around the island tomorrow, and then head back to Nova Scotia on Wednesday.

This past weekend Greg and I rented a car (as our POS can’t go on the highway for fear of losing it’s back axle and killing us spectacularly) and went on a BBQ mission: to attempt to compare the Eastern and Western styles of North Carolina BBQ. On Friday night we stayed local and had what Adam said was the best eastern style BBQ around – Bullock’s BBQ. We had tried to go to Bullock’s the week before, but were detered by the long line-up at 7 pm on a Friday night. So, this time we were prepared. We went at 5 pm and even beat most of the older people in the door. We had the family platter, which was BBQ (chopped pork), fried chicken, green beans, coleslaw, fries, hushpuppies and brunswick stew (shredded chicken and pork in a light tomato-basted stew). It came family-style. There was a ton of food. I must say though, I wasn’t totally impressed. The BBQ was okay, but not really all that tangy for Eastern style, the chicken was bland despite being deep fried (no 7 secret herbs and spices there) and the green beans were soft and mushy even though we think they weren’t canned. Now, to remind everyone, Adam is from Lexington, the capital of Western-style NC BBQ. So, maybe he doesn’t like the tanginess that’s supposed to accompany Eastern-style BBQ, and therefore this place is his favorite of Eastern-style places. It was okay, but not great.
On Saturday we headed to Lexington, which is about 2 hours west of Chapel Hill and hosts a yearly BBQ festival. After getting a little lost trying to find it, we started off with lunch at Lexington Barbecue, another recommendation by Adam. We each had the BBQ sandwich, and shared an order of hushpuppies. I got an order of skins to go. Oh, and I tried Cheerwine, a NC cherry-flavored soda, which is sweet and pretty good. We finished off lunch with a slice of lemon meringue pie and a slice of chocolate pie. Everything at Lexington BBQ was good. It was also the place I got my first BBQ souvenir shirt. I’ve decided to get shirts from some of the places I go in NC and then afterwards make them into a souvenir quilt. We’ll see if that actually happens!

We did a litte sightseeing in Lexington (drove down Main St.) where we took some pictures of the decorated pigs they have on the street (thing whales in Vancouver). Then it was off to Winston-Salem, the home of the first Krispy Kreme. We went to the only Krispy Kreme in town, and got 4 doughnuts. Upon looking around the store, we realized that they didn’t have any historic plaque or anything saying that this was the first store. Sadly, I don’t think it was. Oh well…

In attempting to do a little local sightseeing we found a part of town that is a preserved (read touristy) Moravian village, complete with people in period costume. The Moravians were apparently the local settlers from Czechoslovakia (I think) via Germany. We walked around the town (only a few buildings – most of which you have to pay to get into and see re-enacted displays) and went to the bakery where we bought crispy-thin Moravian cookies.

Then it was back to Chapel Hill via Greensboro, where we stopped to pick up dinner to go (more Western-style BBQ). This time is was back to Stamey’s BBQ, where we had already gone with Greg’s parents. We got a sliced BBQ plate with beans and hushpuppies and a chopped BBQ plate with fries and hushpuppies to go.

On our way home with stopped at JR ‘something’ (‘outlet’, ‘liquidators’, something like that). On our way to Lexington we kept seeing billboards for JR. Greg figured this place was probably crappy, but may be interesting. It was. This was the first place I’ve been where you could get miscellaneous crap (the liquidation part), cigarettes, discount books, collectible dolls (the whole back of the place was dolls), or cigars (a room-sized humidor) all under one roof! Needless to say, we didn’t buy anything, but it was worth the stop just to see it all.

Once we got home we had our BBQ plates, and then later that night Greg didn’t feel so good. I think having that much meat in 2 days didn’t really sit well with his stomach, and he thought he was going to throw up. But luckily, that didn’t happen. So, Meatfest 2006 was a success.

So far, Western-style NC BBQ seems to be our favorite, but we’re going to give Allen and Sons BBQ another shot. This time we’re going to order the BBQ sandwich to make it more comparable to what we had a Lexington BBQ and Stamey’s BBQ.