This is my last post from down here is Charleston, SC. Tomorrow I shall be moving up to New Bern, NC. Well mostly. My stuff will be there, for the next day I shall fly to Boston for the month of September. Then back to New Bern until the new year when I will be taking off to travel around for awhile I hope.

Who knows. It is all up in the air, I would like to be in one place that I like for at least 6 mo. to a year without moving. By moving I mean across state lines and not across town. A place that is not newer construction, i.e. sprawl. I want trains and subways. I like things to be within easy biking distance for me; about 20-30 min. tops. That means about 7-8 miles depending on the traffic.

I am hoping to get the bike and zenkrak in Boston at the same time. I am really looking foreward to biking around the various parts of the city.

here are some more bridge pictures but from night this time. If all goes well I will be doing more night riding tonight.

MMMMMMMMMMM....................Coffee Good


I do love me some coffee.
It is one of the magic B's in life, as in coffee Beans. Everywhere I have ever lived or visited I go to the local coffee shop. It is even better if there are several local coffee shops, then I just bounce around with a smile on my face and a full bladder.

Luckily Charleston, SC fulfills this. Well sort of. There are several coffee shops that are part of the Coffee Cabal. With names that shall not be fully typed or mentioned, like Port City ****, and Star*****. Alright open your eyes and take a deep breath, the bad things are no longer here.

Along comes Tony & Kathy Jones to save the day! These are the illustrious pioneers of Rutledge Coffee & Cream. Good things come in nice neighborhood sized packages. This is the kind of place that is inviting at first glance. When one walks through the door you feel as if you are in the living room of a friend or relative you haven't seen in a long time and dearly missed, (if they use wrought iron tables and chairs all the better). The coffee is self serve and piping hot and delicious. The food......oh man.....the food. The food is all-natural, the coffee is fair trade, the produce and fruit is organic. The prices would not make you think that everything was like that. RC&C are definitely not at the pretentious end of the food service spectrum.


The bulk of customers are college students and other local residents. Then they have me who has to ride his bike from James Island just for the privilege.

Tony and Kathy have been here since November 2004. The coffee shop has been here longer though, since 2002. They have really made it a great place to come and have a bite to eat or just a cup of joe and relax. They have it right. This is how a coffee shop should be done.

This is the part of the front room where the magic happens, that is, the coffee leaves the air pot and enters my mug.


This is the front room with the chairs facing the window that over looks Rutledge Ave. That is my computer on the table by the wall. They are a Wifi hotspot! Not only that but it is a free hotspot! As if I wouldn't come in here anyways. This whole thing, being pictures, typing, asking questions, and publishing on the web was all done here at the shop!


So if you are ever down here in Charleston visit Rutledge coffee and Cream, (even if you aren't visiting me like you should).

If you will pardon me for a minute please. This is my own fun little space here in this world. Because of that I am going to use this for various rants and raves. So I will be plugging places I believe in very strongly often.

Don't you hate big box "media" outlets? Sure the prices might be lower on some things here and there, but you actually end up paying more in the form of taxes that help support them and free handouts like the roads that lead only to them. Wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere where the employees actually know something about the product they are selling? Wouldn't it be nice to know that the profits from your item are staying in the same zip code instead of going over seas somewhere? ( I feel a rant coming on, so I will steer away from that and back to the task at hand.)

Here in Charleston there is such a place. I thank the gods daily for 52.5. This is a store that was designed with a Zenkrak in mind, i.e. lots of music of the harder to find variety, many movies as well, for rent and sale, books and magazines.

Yeah, yeah I can just hear you now, “Barnes & Nobles has books, magazines, and.........Mediaplay has....”. Blah, blah, blah. True, they have more crap, but they don’t have Clay Scales.

Clay is the guy behind it all. He opened the store in 1997 at 52.5 Wentwoth in downtown Charleston, thus the name. The store is now at #75, but it just didn’t have the same ring to it so the name didn’t change.

This is the view one gets when you walk through the front door. All good stuff.
There is also cool stickers and such from microcosm.

Check out the store website at corporaterocksucks.com

Here are som more pictures of Charleston. I am trying to get a bunch of good ones since I am only here for another week and a half.
I just couldn't resist the skinny building. It is available to lease, it would make a great weight loss center!

These are some of my pictures from the new Cooper River Bridge.
They are from the bike lane side of things since I don't drive. It is like 2+ miles from one end of the bike lane to the other. Riding up the bridge was pretty entertaining since it is the only "hill" in the region!

This is the road/bridge that connects James Island, where I am, with downtown. It is part of the future interstate beltway, but not connected in yet. It is actually nice to bike on over to downtown. Soon I will be riding from the house on James Island to this roadway, and across downtown and over the new bridge to Mount Pleasant ans out to Sullivans Island! Maybe I'll also ride out to Folly Island when I get back to the James Island side of things. I need to plan out a Charlseston Tour de Islands!
This is the new bridge going over to Mount Pleasant from downtown Charleston. You can see how the old set of bridges seem to coexist nicely with the new bridge. Aparances can be decieving. There is one spot that the old bridges look as if they were constructed to swerve in and around the new bridge pylons seductively. They come with in mere feet of each other there!

This is the view that has downtown sort of framed by the new bridge. This is the view one would get by going over the bridge from James Island toward downtown.

My roomie, Buzz, is now famous.

Here is the link to the article, wheeeee!!!!!!!!!

I like the fact that he is kind of the loose cannon of the local poetry scene.
We had our own open mic night for a few weeks or so. It was at a poetically dingy tavern called the Upper Deck. So we used to get people to come out and get in touch with thier inner Bukowski.

Maybe we were just ahead of our time.

New Bern Underground

What is that bear doing to that poor tree!

Welcome home Zenkrak!

I like it when nature likes to welcome me home to Charleston by having some large spiders hang around ready to menace me. I mean, who doesn't like being menaced?
I'll be spending my last few weeks here taking pictures all around the area before I head back up to New Bern, NC.

Testing testing.....can you hear me now?