If it's Tuesday, it must be Nashville

Okay, fine, so it's actually Wednesday. And it's Atlanta. And tonight is Sacramento. But these photos are from Nashville!

These are the delicious buffalo tempeh strips at The Wild Cow in Nashville. Everything on the menu is vegan unless you request dairy cheese. (No, I don't really get it, either.) The buffalo strips and "ranch" had great flavor, but definitely aren't as amazing as the all-time reigning king of vegan buffalo wings, at the old City 'O City in Denver. And of course, the company there was also fantastic. (A2, we miss you!)

Here is my reuben, which was good, but not great (the bread needed to be toasted more, and the tofu needed to be more heavily fried.) The side of BBQ seitan was very tasty (and in the right of the frame you can see the remains of the buffalo strips, which we demolished.)

This is J's seitan philly, and garlicky kale. Also tasty, but again, not amazing. We would totally go back, but would branch out some on the menu.

From Massachusetts: this is a mural I painted on a wall in my college dorm in my first semester, Fall 1993. Still there, with a few later artistic adaptations. (It used to say "...ITY)

In Revere, from a hotel room window. I noticed plenty of traffic on the road below, but zero on the overpasses. Clearly this needed to be explored.

The roadbeds themselves are abandoned. You can see them on this google map link, just north of the hotel. It looks like maybe they used to be highway on/off ramps, but it's hard to say for sure. Could also have been access roads to the abandoned Muller Airfield / Revere Airport. (Scroll down on that link, or search Revere...) It made for an interesting way of crossing that rotary to get to the bus stop on the west side without walking alongside traffic.

Did some mountain biking and urbex last night with D3 here in Atlanta, including the fascinating Hartsfield Incinerator site.

Named for the former mayor of Atlanta, William B. Hartsfield, just as the airport. In searching for it, I found this amusing bit of historical commentary in a google book: William Berry Hartsfield: Mayor of Atlanta, by Harold H. Martin (1978.)

...his profound interest in garbage paid off in honors when in May 1963 a new incinerator was named for him -- a fitting tribute, according to editor Eugene Patterson. "After all what more appropriate monument could be raised to the hottest-tempered old tyrant in the municipal annals of benevolent despotism than a roaring, 1,500-ton fountain of blue blazes," wrote Patterson. "Where is the man who has done more slow burns, roasted more enemies alive, thrown up more smoke screens or carried more coals to Newcastle than the former mayor who will be honored by a city that was shaped brick by brick in the kiln of the irascible genius? Bill Hartsfield never cooled off in twenty-three years as mayor. Now his temperature belongs to the ages." (p.171) 

This is the rusting but still climbable conveyor strutcure. 

Here is the observation post on the top of the conveyor, just above the massive hopper. 

To get up to it, you briefly have to crawl up the conveyor belt itself before switching out to the stairs (visible on the right.) 

 Lots of old cylinders laying around. 

Naptime! 

Under the pavement, the forest.


Which a little searching indicates might be an adaptation from a beautiful Wendell Berry poem:

IN A COUNTRY

ONCE FORESTED

By Wendell Berry

The young woodland remembers

the old, a dreamer dreaming

of an old holy book,

an old set of instructions,

and the soil under the grass

is dreaming of a young forest,

and under the pavement the soil

is dreaming of grass.