54: what marines fight for, waldo, gwathmey, wooden fist bump, train town, wade and the cigar, kugel, secretariat, the pineapple, ruritans, tree gobbling sign, shopping carts, buzzards bottom, cheapest hotel, no peeing

June 5, 2025

Richmond to Ruther Glen

got some waves from the kids on the way out of town

I saw the unanswered question on this billboard and wondered if the answer might be on the other side.

This sign looks really old, and it makes me wonder if that deaf student is now grown, with children.

I just took this picture because I love the name. It's like a puzzle in which the letters are mixed up and you have to figure out what the word is.

I saw several of these. The Richmond Area Bicycling Association must have a strong presence.

At first I thought he was offering a fist bump.

Ashland is known as a "Train Town." I forgot to get a picture, but two tracks run through the center of this area. Train enthusiasts from all over the country come here to visit.

After arriving in Ashland I walked my bike along the crowded sidewalk deciding where to eat. As I was ambling along, Wade, heading the same way, began talking. Starting with the usual comment of “I couldn’t ride my bike around the block,” he let me know that in spite of having been on Ozempic, and now Mounjaro, he just hasn’t been able to lose any weight. “I guess I’m just gonna stay 60 pounds overweight.” I thought, “This is the guy to ask where to eat,” and I was correct. He directed me to a nearby Farm to Fork cafe but the outdoor seats were all full so we chatted while I waited for one to open up.

When he found that I’d started in Key West he said he’d been stationed there in the 1960s “to “protect us from the Cubans.” It's where he learned to love scuba diving, and told me a lengthy story about how he lost the hearing in one ear as a result.

When he pulled out a cigar I thought he was about to ask if he could smoke. "Of course," I'd say, "Just not around me." Instead, he said, “I make these.” Holding it aloft he added, “I have my own company.”

Each one of the symbols on the band has meaning, but I don't want to spend too much time on it. It was interesting, though.

Huh. Not what I was expecting. The company, Orinoco, did well for about a decade, and he even bought out his partner, but it didn’t survive Covid.

“I have a good palette for the smell of tobacco,” he admitted, and I wondered how long a smoker can have a good sense of smell since smoking destroys olfactory receptor cells. Then I considered the fact that cigar smoke will penetrate through walls, through steel barriers, through airlocks, through space and time. It will find, and burn, your nasal cavities, even if you don't have nasal cavities.

Pointing to the band, he asked “See the honeybee?” I nodded, curious, and waited for more of an explanation.

“My family’s from Florence, Italy, and I went back there. I saw Michelangelo’s David and wondered, ‘How long can it take to look at a naked man?’”

Hmmm…. honeybee, honeybee….

“But, you look at him in the front and it’s 'I’m gonna kick your butt Goliath,' and you look at him from the rear and it’s ‘I hope I can pull this off, God.’”

Honeybee?

“My daughter’s an interior decorator."

She uses honeybees to decorate? A nickname, perhaps?

"I was in the museum looking at all the depressing paintings and she said, ‘What do you notice about all the paintings? There’s a halo of honeybees above their heads, and that’s how they signify their holiness.’ And I thought AHA! I’ll use honeybees.”

Honeybees.... I didn’t think he was going to get there, but he did in the end.

The honeybee, as well as his and his previous partner's initials.

He told me that in England it’s considered poor taste to smoke a cigar with the band on. “I taught law in England for three years over at Cambridge. When you go to take this off [pointing to the band], if there’s any glue, it’ll rip the cigar." Then, noticing the cigar. "Oh, look at that, I went and ripped it taking it out of the cellophane. It’ll smoke okay, just put your finger over the hole. Anyway, in America, you can smoke with or without the band. We don’t give a damn. They think we’re showing off how rich we are.”

He still holds some resentment from his time there fifty years ago, remembering an incident in the cafeteria: “They made fun of me because I sat down and started eating. I heard ‘em say ‘Oh My! [he gasped], he’s eating off his tray.’" Apparently, he committed the faux pas of not taking his plates off the tray.