A change in the winds

Fall has arrived in Richmond. The leaves are turning and the temperature has fallen below 60 degrees several times this week. This change in the season leaves me wanting to have a few indoor tourist activities in mind for when we finally do reach winter. I know Richmond is home to great museums, which I have visited very few of. But beyond the museums, what does Richmond offer to the cold-weather tourist?

East Coast Truckin' Nationals

This past Saturday I did something the likes of which I have never done before.

I spent the afternoon at the East Coast Truckin' Nationals in Petersburg, Virginia.

My decision to visit a truck show came out of a semester-long class project on Semi-truckers rather than a tourist urge, but I still think it deserves a moment of recognition on this blog for a few reasons. First, because as a grad student with limited time, a trip to P-burg maxed out the hours I have to dedicate to the pursuit of tourism. Second, because as a girl who grew up in the North Shore Suburbs of Chicago where trucks and truck shows are not of huge interest to most people, this was truly a Living Richmond opportunity for me.

My fellow group member and I got to the truck show around 1 PM, and immediately felt like we had joined a new world. As we got out of the car at the the Virginia Motorsports Park, we were quickly greeted by loud music with even louder bass. For $18, we got to spend the entire afternoon truly immersing ourselves in trucker culture. As we were reminded by one truck driver and owner, this event isn't the complete trucker experience. He pointed out that these shows are the kind of thing that those who truly love their trucks do for fun. By going to the truck show, we didn't get to see a lot of company drivers (they don't own their own trucks, so they don't have a truck to enter for the judging) and we were in an environment where truck drivers were completely relaxed. While I recognize that a day at the truck show is a limited perspective, I think that when I combine it with my team's online research and our visits to the Ashland truck stop, we're starting to get a well-rounded understanding of the world of the American semi-truck driver.

In Petersburg, I spoke with truckers, got to see the truck that won the Mid-America Build Off (The Beast! Almost 1/2 a million dollars in modifications!), saw a modified school bus do wheelies at close to 120 miles per hour, and saw a truck with jet engines attached to it do 3/4 of a mile down a track at over 140 mph while trailing flames and smoke. Some highlights of the trip included:

1. Meeting an owner-operator who was so friendly that we spent over two hours with him and his crew, interviewing them on camera
2. Being accepted enough by his crew that we watched the modified truck showing with them
3. Standing in line to have Kate's Peterbilt hat autographed by a member of the Chrome Shop Mafia
4. Seeing the amazing number of little kids who know so much about trucks that it would take me months of research to catch up
5. Shattering some of my stereotypes about truckers

Props to Kate for finding this show. Truly the most interesting and loud-fun weekend I've had in a long time.

Ugh. Speeding ticket.

I just got my first speeding ticket. I'm looking for a traffic violation lawyer who deals well with the City of Richmond court.

Any suggestions?

69th National Folk Festival

I spent this morning wandering around the National Folk Festival, which is taking place on Brown's Island and around the Museum of the Confederacy. The Folk Festival has been going on since Friday. If you haven't had a chance to stop by yet, make sure you stop in before it ends tonight. At 75 and sunny, today was the perfect day to enjoy the outdoors in downtown Richmond, listen to music and eat culturally interesting food.

I saw the gospel group The Madison Hummingbirds (video above) and Rosie Ledet & the Zydeco Playboys. After listening to those two groups perform, I started to wish that my life came with upbeat background music. The musicians were incredibly energetic and obviously enjoyed sharing their music with everyone at the festival.

Lastly, I entered a drawing to win a Smithfield Ham. After asking me to enter my name, the woman manning the booth found out that I was a grad student and seemed a bit worried. She suggested that if I win the ham, I call the Smithfield hot line to find out how to cook it so that I don't kill anyone. What great faith in my ham-bilities!

I hope I win that ham... I need to prove myself.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

One of the things that I have enjoyed greatly since moving to Richmond is the city's proximity to the free museums of Washington DC. Ever since my Mother made me skip my school's 8th grade trip to DC, I've wanted to see the Holocaust Museum. I had always heard about how moving the museum was, and am a true believer in the idea that by learning about the past we can avoid making those same mistakes in the future. The Holocaust Museum may not be fun, but I think that it is our duty to understand what happened and to use that knowledge in our own lives.

I walked away from the museum with two thoughts:
1. The curators of this museum have done an amazing job at weaving together video, artifacts and texts.
2. I still cannot imagine what the Nazi regime must have been like for those who lived it

On the one hand, the Holocaust Museum was truly well done. The time you spend in the museum's permanent exhibit is a journey from the beginning of the war to the end, and does a nice job of showing how seemingly insignificant changes came together to create genocide. On the other hand, I was disturbed by the number of middle school aged kids who looked bored or were making fun of the exhibit.

I stepped over stones that were used to pave an actual Jewish ghetto. I walked through one of the rail cars that was actually used to transport people to concentration camps. And yet, while I can connect the stories told at the museum to my own life and future, I can't say that I truly understand what that must have been like. Standing alone in a rail car in an air conditioned museum, it is hard to understand what it must have been like to be sandwiched in with 100 frightened and tired people people, travelling 30 miles an hour day after day in the middle of a freezing winter.

It was a wake up call to realize that for many of the teenagers at the Holocaust Museum, this trip was nothing more than another chance to prove ones coolness by putting others down.

Camping in Julian Price Park

After a seriously stressful week at the Adcenter, I needed to escape Richmond and my apartment for a bit. To accomplish that goal, I called up a friend from undergrad who lives in Chapel Hill. Allison and I have been friends since we were 18 years old - we met on a pre-orientation camping trip before our freshman year at Kenyon College. Since that time we have lived together for 5 semesters, have had the same friend group and major, have lived in Hilton Head Island at the same time and have taken many bad pictures.

I was looking for an escape from the city and Allison had just gotten a new tent for her birthday. As a result, after a sharing a fabulous Shabbat dinner with the Greenberg's (Allison's boyfriend's family), we threw our gear in her car and drove to Boone to meet up with some of her friends for a weekend of camping and hiking.

The weather was perfect for the entire weekend, with blue skies and a slight breeze. I would have never dared to go camping at this time of year in Illinois, so I was especially thankful for the 70+ temperature. At Julian Price Park off of the Blue Ridge Parkway, we met up with four friends of Allison's who were also camping. Our site was perfect and it was great to meet a bunch of new people. A camp fire, s'mores and a star-filled sky may be one of my favorite forms of therapy.

After camping for the night, Allison and I headed off on our own for a quick hike the next morning. We drove around the Blue Ridge Parkway for about half an hour admiring the scenery, and then choose an hour long hike that paralleled a stream bed. The trail was deep in a valley in a hugely dense part of the forest, and so at times it felt like we were hiking at dusk.

Sometimes I wonder about my career choice. I know that strategic planning and working in an agency are things that I want to do. I also feel more connected to forests than I do to many people, and know that I will be happiest living in a cabin in the middle of the woods. I haven't yet found the connection between those two dreams. Are there any national ad agencies in national forests? Unfortunately, I don't think so.

The Italian American Festival

This weekend, I visited Richmond's Italian American Festival. The whole experience should have been right up my alley, given that I'm an Italian culture junkie and a somewhat of a foodie, but I left the festival with mixed reviews.

On the positive side, Saturday was a beautiful day to be outdoors and enjoying the Church Hill neighborhood. The mix of foods smelled wonderful even from a distance of a few blocks, everyone involved in the festival was incredibly friendly, and it was wonderful to see such a large gathering of Richmonders. I certainly wasn't the only one taking advantage of the fabulous day.

On the negative side, though, the Italian American Festival seemed to focus much more on mediocre sausage and pepper sandwiches (not so mediocre that I didn't eat the whole thing) and store-bought cannoli. After enjoying cannoli from a great little bakery in New York a few weeks ago, the one I bought at the festival seemed like it belonged to a different species. With such a vibrant Italian community, I would have expected more from the festival. Where were the fabulous foodstuffs I had envisioned? How exactly was this festival giving me any sort of immersion into Italian culture? Even the musicians seemed to be on break during my stroll down Broad Street.

To end on a positive note, I did buy a fabulous sausage, and have been eating it one little slice at a time since Saturday. If only I could remember who sold it to me...