Dayton Where?

In a class I'm taking right now, History and Nature of the English Language, my professor was talking about how Dayton TN used to be called Smith's Crossroads. 

When the railroad came through though, the good people of would-be Dayton pulled what would not be their last public relations stunt and changed the name to Dayton, after Dayton OH, which was at the other end of the rail-line.

Although I'm not nearly interested enough in this to research it properly, I think I can finally intelligently theorize as to why so many town names in Pennsylvania where I grew up are shared (to the great confusion of customers when I worked for an alternative energy heating dealership that sold to Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Ohio) by towns in so many other states:

Ohio copied all of Pennsylvania's town names, and then Tennessee copied all of Ohio's town names, which is why when I say I am from Troy, worked in Mansfield, and go to school in Dayton, everyone in America assumes I am from their state.

Of course, I guess being frustrated at Ohio and Tennessee for confusing my life is a bit hypocritical. The original Mansfield is in England somewhere, and I hear Troy was somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean––before it got destroyed by those bloody Greeks.

Animal

It's been a great spring break. Not because I did anything at all fantastic, but because I spent a lot of time with a lot of great people. Tomorrow I head back to Tennessee for the final month and a half that is left of my undergraduate career. Today I took some photos around the hill, mostly focusing on some of my family's animals, and under some strange influence, decided to compile them into a short video.

The Highway to [from] Hell

Yesterday was so ridiculous that I still can't believe it. The stuff stories are made of. Bad stories.

My friend Meagan and I left Dayton Tennessee at 6:30AM yesterday morning. We both live in Pennsylvania and so wanted to get a jump on the normally 12-13 hour drive. As an added incentive, there were tornadoes predicted for that afternoon. Not something we cared to stick around for.

Only five minutes from campus, I started hearing a strange low noise whenever I hit the accelerator. I checked all the engine lights, checked the oil––twice, and finally suspected it was something to do with the flex-coupler or muffler.

When the noise intensified to a deafening blast that we could hardly talk over, my theory was confirmed. I called my Dad for what would be the first of about about 15 times that day, and he advised that as long as it was just the muffler, we should keep going. That was about 15 miles into the 750 mile trip.

When, a short time later, I started to hear the muffler dragging on the ground, I knew things had just become more complicated.

I pulled off at the first available exit, which happened to be a place called Bulls Gap Tennessee, but I will henceforth remember as the only town in the world without metal coat hangers. I stopped at a gas station, inquired if they had any wire, and when I was disappointed, bought some duct tape and jacked the car up to make a temporary fix. Since the exhaust pipe runs at several hundred degrees temperature, I knew the tape wouldn't hold long, but it kept it suspended off the pavement long enough to get to a dollar store––the only store in Bulls Gap. They had only plastic coat hangers, but I found some zip ties, which, when linked together, worked very nicely to cinch the errant pipe up into its original position. The noise was still deafening, but I hoped the ties would at least last most of the way back.

They melted in about fifteen minutes.

Engine roaring and exhaust pipe dragging down the freeway, I pulled off in Kingsport TN, which I will henceforth remember as the only city in the world without level ground.

At Walmart, we finally found some metal coat hangers to untwist and wire the pipe up with. But there was no level ground. Even the Walmart parking lot was slanted, and when I tried to jack the car up for the third time that morning, it started to shift––not something you want happening when you're under it. We drove around town for several minutes looking for a level area, and finally thought we found one behind a pharmacy.

I jacked it up. There was nothing to block it with, but we were almost two hours behind schedule and I was in a bad mood, so I got under anyways. The pipe was hot enough still that it burned my hands, so I got back out to wait for it to cool. About 30 seconds after I emerged, the car shifted, the jack broke, and the car slammed back to the ground.

While I had avoided getting killed, I was now stuck without a jack. I called my Dad again, and he suggested driving it up on a curb. So I drove it up on several curbs before I finally found one that was just high enough to let me shimmy under. It wasn't ideal, but I was able to get several of the coat hangers, which weren't nearly as flexible as would have been useful, wrapped around, suspending the pipe a couple inches above the ground. 

Did I mention that it was pouring rain for most of this adventure so far? So by now I was pretty much covered in mud as we set off up 81 for the second time.

The coat hangers only worked for about 15 minutes before it started dragging again. Fortunately, my Dad had by this time started looking online for muffler repair shops further up the highway He found one in Harrison Tennessee and gave me the exit just before I passed it.

It was called Rusty's Muffler and was owned by an old man named Rusty with a long white beard. I explained to him that I just wanted it fixed so that it wasn't dragging anymore, but he said he could cut it off and weld a new piece of pipe on for $45 dollars, which was less than I was expecting to have to pay just for him to put it up on the lift and look at it. So we sat on the couch in his office for just about ten minutes which was all it took him to do it, and just like that, it was fixed. 

We had probably an hour of good driving before the storms seriously hit, causing a twelve car pile-up in just north of Salem Virginia, which caused us to have a two and half hour delay on top of the three hour delay from the muffler issues. We decided to try a detour through Salem and up 11, which was a good idea, except for another problem with my car.

After my family used my car for three months last spring, it has had some issues, including a broken AC and moisture inside. These two things taken together give it a major condensation problem when it rains and the car isn't moving fast... which it no longer was. So by the time we were halfway through Salem, I was literally having to wipe the windshield off every 45 seconds just to see to drive. This was finally fixed by turning the heat way up so that the air coming into the car was dry, and we finally did make it back onto 81 beyond the accident. But now we were five hours behind.

Things were uneventful until we reached Carlisle. That was where I was supposed to meet Meagan's Mom so they could make the drive back to Philadelphia. Meagan's Mom though, who had been waiting for five hours now, had accidentally run their car's battery dead. Fortunately I had jumper cables, but it was now a torrential downpour.  I was just getting dry for the first time all day, but jumping the car in the rain took care of that.

It was 1AM by the time I got home. That's almost 20 hours of driving; by far the longest it has ever taken me to make the trip between Dayton and home.

Mercy

This evening stayed relatively mild even after dark and I went for went for the best run that I have in months. Definitely the best one yet this year.

While listening to Moby and making my second of five laps around the road that encircles campus, I had a thought and was really overwhelmed by God's mercy on my life.

I've so often chosen to live in despair instead of faith, to be sad over the people who are not in my life and bitterly push away those who still are, and generally do my best to destroy myself in ways that I can't even go into on here but could be summed up in the words of one well known artist as "following death and all of his friends."

So I'm not quite sure where my line of reasoning came in, or if there even was one, but it came to me while I was running that it is amazing that in spite of everything above I could still, on this evening, be doing something like running that I enjoy so much.

Regardless of how I feel or don't feel most of the time, God has given me so much grace.

Salsa What?

This past week was probably the craziest one yet this semester. The generally relaxed pace of most of my classes had lulled me into not keeping up with the syllabi, and I found out Monday evening as I was heading out for tacos with some friends who I usually go out with after newspaper production that we had a paper due in History and Nature of the English Language the next day. This wouldn't have been horrible if it weren't for the fact that I had just committed in newspaper production to doing a relatively long video for Triangle about SGA elections that were happening that same night. So essentially, in that moment it went from being a late night to no night at all. Possibly the craziest thing about the week though, was how it ended: salsa dancing.

Yes, you read that right. Salsa dancing.

After standing at the table for Triangle at the organizational fair for presidential scholarship day, I decided to stay on campus to eat. I ended up sitting with my friend Meagan and some of her friends, who told me they were going salsa dancing in Cleveland with some other people and that I was invited if I wanted to come. I'm really a terrible dancer, and have never done any kind of Latin dance, let alone salsa before. However, I think I felt that I had been stuck in the same old pattern of not doing anything interesting or original for the last couple weeks and said yes anyways. So around seven, I got into one of three cars full of students who were all going to this "dance studio" in Cleveland Tennessee that no one seemed to know anything about.

When google maps led us through a railroad yard surrounded by warehouses and car garages to a one story building ringed with Christmas lights and a sign that said "Luv 2 Dance," I think at least a few people in my car were wondering what they had gotten themselves into.

Despite the slightly questionable location and appearance, it ended up being a great place though. It's owned by an Hispanic family from the area and hosts all kinds of dance events ranging from salsa to ballroom. They had a dance instructor, which was good. As I said before, I had no idea how to do salsa, and that went for probably a little over half the people in our group to. So after a half hour lesson or so, they turned down the lights, fired up the disco ball, and everybody danced until about midnight.

One thing that made it interesting was that it was a pretty random group of people. Actually, it seems like whenever I do something like this it's a random group of people who don't normally do things together. But then, judging by the frequency at which I do things with people, just the fact that I'm there probably makes it a random group of people automatically. But I guess I'm okay with that.

7 Things I May Miss About College (and 7 I won't)

While making a list of bullet points with a numerically symmetrical list of counterpoints is one of those blogger/comm professor/Baptist preacher-isms that I try to avoid, I will be posting one today, simply because I can’t think of a better way to express this.

The end of my final semester of college is drawing near. As it approaches, I have more and more often found myself thinking about different aspects of life that I have taken––or been made to take for granted if not for the past four and a half years of my college experience, then at least for the past two and a half that I have been at Bryan College. These things fall, with a few exceptions, into one of two categories: Things I think I will miss about college, and Things I think I will not miss about college.

Last night it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to actually write these down, which I have now done, if only for the sake of reference. While these are by no means comprehensive (and adding to or amending them may be the subject of future posts) I think they at least hit some of the highlights. I was also surprised to see how closely related some of the items were, even when they are on opposing lists.

Things I think I will miss:

1. Being in an environment where drinking coffee and discussing politics or theology is considered an end unto itself.

2. Getting to experience things from a myriad of fields and professions without actually having to commit to any of them.

3. The ability to influence or impress people in a highly controlled and closed environment.

4. Only needing to be anywhere specific for a few hours a day.

5. Frequently getting to meet people from all over the world.

6. Being in a place where there is pretty much always something going on.

7. Being around lots of people my own age.


Things I think I will not miss

1. Paying other people for me to do things that I don’t want to do.

2. Having to watch people––and probably myself at times––get angry and stressed or else acting self-important because of things things that have absolutely no meaning or consequence outside of the extremely controlled and closed environment that college is. 

3. Expensive textbooks that change edition roughly every 4.2 seconds. 

4. Sharing a room.

5. Abiding by the rules of an extremely strict behavioral code OR ELSE taking elaborate measures to break them without getting caught––either of which options leave me feeling like I live in Iran (no offense to my Iranian readers).

6. Doing all of my housemate’s dishes for the three-dozenth time.

7. Having to be around people all the time and having people think there is something wrong with me if I ever express or act on the fact that I don’t like being around people all the time.

Rice and whatever

Since moving to the townhouses, that is, the apartments here on campus that are separate from the dorms, I've been off the meal plan. This is nice, because I save some money, (last semester almost $600, counting what I spent on food) although it does mean having to come up with other ways of getting food. So rather than taking it as an opportunity to live off of McDonald's  for six months as some people I know, I decided it would be a good time to cook for myself.

While I do end up eating quite a bit of stuff like eggs, sandwiches, and mac and cheese, I've also tried to make some more interesting things at least several times a week. This evening I decided to do stir-fry.

I had done this several times last semester, but usually just with whatever I happened to have lying around + rice. This time I tried to get some things you would more normally expect in stir-fry like water-chestnuts and soy-sauce and such. I think you are usually supposed to use peanut-oil instead of olive oil, but I don't really know what else I would use peanut oil for, so I wasn't about to by a large container of it. I think olive oil is healthier too, and I always have that around, so I stuck with it.

It turned out quite well, at least by my standards.