Vacation notes

To celebrate the fourth, we attended a parade run (twice) around a tiny lake in the hills of western North Carolina, then watched hula hoop/greasy pole-climbing/pigcalling contests. I won a dollar wagering on the winning hula-hooper but lost it backing the wrong pole-climber. After dinner, watched square dancers on a couple of abandoned tennis courts. Walking home, we squashed lightning bugs.

Last week’s events included canoeing on the New River (America’s oldest) with Wahoo, watching Horn in the West, lots of fiddling at BRAG and pottery at Montreat. The highlights: waving sparklers around a fiddler stoked camp-fire, singing Amazing Grace, hearing a young fiddler riff on Summertime. Despite occassional patches of sun, the week was soaked in fragrant green fog.

Meanwhile, Matt Welch compares the blog boom to the dotcom bubble and foresees tears: “Once the funny money was gone, so too were the celebrity journalists.”

And Steve Locke builds a pool pool as his neighbor relives a bike trip across America from 1995. 1995.