Moving to Asheville

This article in short: The purpose of this thing is whatever I want. And most of what I want is good food and cycling - all preferably with an Italian twist.

So we finally moved to Asheville. It is a place we have thought about trying to move to for a while. Unfortunately the place is kind of a BYOJ market (Bring Your Own Job), unless you want to be in the service industry. Thus, as professionals, Bean Counter and I were biding our time before something came along that would make the move and sacrifice (leaving our beautiful house, the pains of moving, the frustrations of selling) worth it.

Low and behold, just as we were getting ready to put an attempt at the move on the back burner, the Bean Counter received a call one afternoon when she was off work for holiday and we were spending a quiet afternoon alone. Through a bad mobile connection, Bean Counter had trouble hearing, and thus responding to, the person on the other end of the line - which is when she was met with a clear "Do you still want a job?" From that one phone call we went through 3 interviews, a fake dentist appointment complete with general anesthesia for myself (an excuse to ride Bean Counter of her former slavish employer for the day), to looking for a place to live in a week and a half.

The next month would prove challenging as the Bean Counter was away for work for a month, while P and I stayed in the Triad. It was all on me to put the time in on the bike, take care of P, and do some work while Bean Counter was gone the whole time - save the weekends. As suspected the whole process was difficult and stressful, yet the end results were known to be worth it - moving to a place we wanted to live, restaurants that actually present a suitable choice and meet our standards (two thai places and two worthy pizza places hardly present a choice), a food, coffee, and beer atmosphere that fit us (I created my own Google Maps to list and keep track of the food places, coffee shops and breweries to eventually try), and excellent riding.

So the purpose of this thing (Blog is too much of a buzzword and makes me roll my eyes when someone says "my blog" - as if it is actually worth reading. Good Lord, who the heck doesn't have a blog? And who the heck doesn't let it drift into oblivion?) is simple: Whatever I want. And most of what I want is good food and cycling - all preferably with an Italian twist. Well at least the cycling part. Very very very few "Italian" restaurants in the United States should be allowed to call their food Italian. Just because you throw a pasta in hot water for 20 minutes and drown it in creamy Alfredo sauce, does not make it Italian. Make the dang noodles real al dente, Italian food doesn't know what the hell "Alfredo sauce" is, and for God's sake, get a vino rosso della casa on the menu, for cheap, and that doesn't taste cheap. So I guess the food won't have much of an Italian twist. Whatever.