Well I’ve been working everyday for the last two weeks so I haven’t had a lot of time off. I’m either at the gym, work, or editing my Alaska video. However, I didn’t have to work until noon today, so last night I drove up to New Bern to hang out with Justin and his parents who had come down from NY. New Bern is a great little town. One of the oldest in North Carolina, it’s fought to preserve the historical beauty and keep downtown full of small shops, art galleries and in general really cool places. I must note that it is the birthplace of Pepsi, which is my main source of life giving caffeine. It’s also the home to Nicholas Sparks, the author. Apparently he’s around town quite a bit. There is some new development going on there, but it’s away from the riverfront for the most part which keeps the city really beautiful. It’s also quiet. Justin and I went out to get a beer last night around 11 and couldn’t find any place that was open. We drove away from downtown a little bit and found this dive called “The Ice Cooler” which was about as redneck and awesome as you could get, but thanks to stupid alcohol laws down here you have to be a member to drink. We finally gave up and bought a six pack of “Mackeson XXX” at the Hairy Peter(Harris Teeter). This is one of the best beers I’ve had in a long long time. It’s like a Guinness, but has a different taste. It’s hard to describe, but definitely my go to “relaxing” beer now. Of course I’ll still buy the Schlitz for getting drunk. Back to my point though. I always thought I hated the coast because, well it’s flat, sandy and hot. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I’m always going to be a lover of the mountains, but the thing with the coast is that it’s not the geography, its what people have done to the geography. New Bern is only a little more than an hour north of Wilmington. They’ve preserved the waterfront and made it into a park instead of throwing up condos and businesses everywhere. It’s almost as if they take a little pride in they’re antiquated architecture and natural environment. Wilmington is just trashy, not as trashy as Jacksonville, NC, but trashy enough. It’s a plastic town, mostly full of plastic people all in a race to see who can get rich the fastest. They lose sight of important things, and instead focus on material goals which drain all meaning from life. Don’t get me wrong, money’s great, just not when it’s the motivating factor in your life. Basically I just want to let it be known, that I think there was a chance I could have liked Wilmington, but the fact that they don’t take advantage of preserving the natural environment around here and instead try to profit from it by stripping the land and building on every square inch really puts me off. What’s next? throwing all your trash into the ocean because the landfill land is too valuable to have trash on? I’m sure the turtles won’t mind, I hear they love plastic bags…which is a whole other blog entirely.