The Ocean Is The End Of The Road

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E-mail has really slowed down in the discussion groups I participate in. Maybe it's because people prefer texting. I don't see any difference between texting and chat rooms except that not as many people swarm together simultaneously. I don't do either. Chat rooms never took my fancy and texting seems more like something the younger crowd does to flirt and carry on like the baby factories they are. It's expensive from what I hear.

I may become somewhat of a drunk again. The hard stuff seems to help with the arthritis. Why not booze it up if it helps stave of the poison I'm taking the medicos call "medicine". Booze doesn't really help with the pain, but it does seem to distract from my focus on my medical condition. i spend just about my entire day doing something that serves my illness, and a drink or two of vodka lets me consider other things.

It doesn't matter what other things I consider either. I went over to my brother's house late yesterday afternoon to return something of his I had borrowed and though he was not home yet, his wife was and she had visitors. Her twin grandsons are still here, and a woman named Beth was up visiting from Wilmington.

She's the friend of a friend of my brothers who has left her car filled with her stuff parked over in the corner of his yard. She intended to buy a house in Wilmington and make a new home there, but so far only has rented a small apartment until she finds an area of Wilmington she thinks would be nice to live in.

It might be difficult for me to make a decision about which section of Wilmington I'd choose to buy a house make a home of. It's grown so much since the government finished InterState-40 to the north side of town. It still has a small town atmosphere to some degree, but the big money in moving in and there are huge shopping centers popping up all over the place.

The Cape Fear River is the immovable object that controls how the city/town grows. The government is finally building a huge bypass around the northern part of the city. It's taking a long time because there are so many swamps to pass through. That's the same problem all of the coastal towns have along the coastal plains. The water that drains from the Appalachian mountains has gotta go somewhere before it gets to the ocean, and when it gets to the flatlands the rivers get shallow and the water spills out over the river banks into the delta regions.

It's an engineering problem that has been faced before all along the Atlantic coast, but the place I've seen it most frequently was when they attempted to run I-65 above Mobile, Alabama. They dug deep through the mucky part of the swamps there to put a long bridge over the Mobile River, and just before they turned the traffic into it the whole deal slid at least ten feet south, and they had to tear it all down and start again. It took years longer than expected.

The construction around Wilmington seems to be about done, and they have traffic on it, and it seems to be holding up real good. Now they have to cross the Cape Fear River, which should be that big a deal, but after they get across the river they run into more swamps that are bigger and probably deeper. If I were wealthy I'd buy all the land I could where the bridge ends on the southwest side of the Cape Fear. Most of it is already owned by Dupont, so even if I were rich now it would probably be too late.

The town I live in is about half-way between Raleigh and Wilmington, and I'm quite satisfied with my location. I can go to either city in an hour. The woman I was talking with at my brother's house stated that the reason she chose Wilmington to move to from Cincinnati, Ohio, was that it has lots of cultural activities. There are gonna be lots more in the near future. Roads mean everything to new growth.
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