Okay, picking up again from our trip to Durham. As I said before, I’m trying to reproduce the notes I took in a little spiral steno pad along the way. I pick up, now, in the evening of May 26, 2022.
Here goes:
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Right. We’re now at the AirB&B, which is a really sweet little house. We like it a lot. Should be fun to spend a few days here.
Right now, I’m working at the kitchen table. I’ll try to take as many notes as I can before I fall asleep.
Anyway.
For once, this actually has something to do with the story at hand. It’s a photo of me a few days after this entry when were visiting the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. I think of it as me visiting two old friends. VERY old friends. Actually, dating back to ancient Cyprus. But, heck, what’s life without a few Cypriots now and then?
We landed at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, which is (obviously) sort of between the cities of Raleigh and Durham. By the by, those communities have long ago begun to grow into each other. Before it is all done and said, it will be hard to say where one ends and the other begins, just as it is to set hard and fast demarcation lines for Dallas and Ft. Worth.
The airport, itself, was quite a relief from the total chaos and crowding of Austin. It was quiet, even serene. We discovered there were two terminals, one mostly for Southwest and the other for an assortment of other airlines. We were on Southwest, and discovered our terminal to be a delightfully uncrowded place.
We found the car rental offices easily enough. From there, we headed off into the city.
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We have a system, by the way. As I think I’ve said before, Martha loves to drive. So, if she doesn’t do *all* the driving, she does much of it ...and particularly when we visit unfamiliar cities.
But we have a curious division of labor. If Martha is fine behind the wheel, she hates, loathes, and detests GPS systems. And they have similar feelings for her. When she tries to use the map apps on her phone...well, not to put too fine a point on it...somehow...by some perverse magic...we get a total disaster.
And I don’t know why. She is pretty good with computers. And most of the apps on her phone work just fine for her.
But...
Let me recount just one of her more interesting interactions with the map programs . There was the time when I was driving and we were a little lost and I asked her to find a way back to the house and somehow she ended up firing off two distinct and different GPS apps, and ...somehow...she got them fighting. “Go right up at the next light!” “No, you Apple-based idiot, go left!” “Nonsense, you Google-centric moron. Right!” And so on.
Well, okay. Maybe I’m exaggerating. (I *never* do that, right? Of course right.) But the reality wasn’t too far from my fiction. We really did have two voices from two different apps, both on at the same time, and both giving radically different sets of directions.
And Martha, normally the most pacific of souls, was yelling back at both of them... “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, you stupid piece of silicon, or I’ll pitch you out the window and drive over you afterwards!”
Freaky.
Anyway, after several such incidents, we’ve agreed that she’ll drive and I’ll navigate. Or at least I’ll use the map apps on ye olde iPhone. Way less dangerous for us...
And for the iPhones.
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Anyway, we headed off into the city. And, very soon, we found ourselves in a pleasant little neighborhood, wooded and peaceful, where our AirB&B was to be found.
More to come.
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