Asheville '09 - Part 1

I had some vacation time I needed to use up and I couldn't think of any better way to spend it than heading to the next state over to visit with some friends that I've known for a few years now. So with a carton of cigarettes and a beaten up cowboy hat in hand, I filled her up and, using my car as a prophylactic, made love to the pavement.

Wednesday 1730 hrs.

After finishing a riveting seminar on aircraft fuel fire fighting techniques, I immediately hit the road and headed to the San Francisco of the South: Asheville, NC. Leaving Nashville, TN, the rain didn't help my 4 1/2 hour drive. Luckily, I had 10 hours of Coast to Coast AM downloaded to my iPod so the JFK assassination theories of Jim Marrs kept me company the whole way there. The rain cleared up about an hour into my drive. Then it was smooth sailing. That is until I hit "The Gorge". This winding 30 minute drive through the mountains on I-40 will have your asshole puckered tighter than Baryshnikov's unitard.

Upon arrival in Asheville, I met up with local radio personality and paranormal expert Joshua P. Warren at Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company. It's a brewpub that serves pizza and has a movie theatre in it. How sweet is that?
Joshua, who you may remember from my posts on Puerto Rico, was accompanied by Christopher McCollum of Haunted Asheville Ghost Tours, Vance Pollock (the only person in Asheville I've seen who's taller than me), and numismatist Shelly Wright.

It was about midnight so we headed to what was to be my abode for the next five days the L.E.M.U.R.* laboratory which was equipped with bedroom and bathroom facilities. The latter being the most important of course. I can sleep in my car, but I'm going to have reservations about pinching off a loaf in the back seat. At the lab, Joshua demonstrated some of the experimentation being done there with Schlieren photography and something known in small circles as a "coherent threadlike stream". Cool stuff. Also, later that night, Forrest Connor joined us and I was officially sworn in as a member of L.E.M.U.R. Then off to bed I was planning on exploring th downtown area Thursday before set up for the weekend's Bele Chere festival.


*L.E.M.U.R. is the League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained Phenomena Research. It is a paranormal investigation and research group based in Asheville, NC. It's president/founder Joshua P. Warren hosts the radio show Speaking of Strange, is a regular on the national late night radio show Coast to Coast AM, and has been featured on Discovery, Travel Channel, TLC, Sci Fi, and the History Channel.