Columbia, South Carolina is a walkable state capital, and the area around the Capitol building has plenty of agreeable spots to walk to. The Capitol building itself is a peculiar architectural folly – a classic Greek/Roman base complete with grandiose steps and towering pillars, but topped incongruously with a weathered bronze cupola and dome which seem to have wandered over from some eccentric Victorian’s mansion. The Capitol grounds have the requisite number of monuments to the fallen heroes of various wars, interspersed with (in March at least) truly splendid beds of blooming azaleas, dogwood, and other gifts of nature.
The main street of Columbia starts at the Capitol. Called, appropriately, Main Street, it is the core of activity every Saturday, when a craft/produce/food truck fair takes place from 9-2 year round. Folks line up for barbecue, for chicken with grits, and even just for coffee. If you are a fan of vintage clothing, kitchy art, and herbal cosmetics, you’ll have fun here. If not, you’ll still have fun watching the parade of people and pets that wander the street in search of that perfect vintage leather jacket, or the ideal potpourri.
And there’s the food…
And the street musicians…
And if you get tired of the crowd, you can always go to the art museum, only a block off Main Street…
Or to the Richmond Library, a truly amazing collection of books and nooks to read them in. only a couple of blocks in the other direction…
If you must be on a freeway, make it forested. Stretching out on either side of Interstate 77, the road between Charlotte, South Carolina and the state capital at Columbia, is a piney woods. Almost no bill-boards, almost no signs of habitation for miles. Just green and rustling trees on either side, two strips of well-maintained gray asphalt, and a green lawn median.
If you must be on a freeway, make it flowery. I-77 is lined in spring with flowers. Gnarled wisteria vines twine through the long-leaf pines that line the road, bursting into garlands of purple blooms. In the understory are drifts of white dogwood. Every so often comes an accent of bright yellow – is it Scotch broom, or a Carolina native? At 70 mph I can’t quite make it out.
If you must be on a freeway, make it fast. I-77 heads almost due south from Charlotte to Columba, and once you clear the clutter surrounding Charlotte and its abysmal airport, it’s a very straight shot, with excellent signage directing us to our desired exit near the Capitol.
My well-traveled son swears that the Newark Airport is the worst he has encountered in several cross-country and round-the-world trips. Based on my recent experience, I would contend that the Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) in North Carolina is a challenger for the worst organized transit point that I have seen in the US. (Some middle-European airports have been worse, but they have the disadvantage of operating in a foreign language, so some allowance must be made.)
What’s wrong at CLT? It started when we landed. Most major airports swoop the traveler over ocean, beach, green farmland, with maybe a view of soaring skyscrapers in the distance. At CLT, you come in over red clay, bulldozers, and cranes. Construction is ongoing and omni-present.
Then you land. In some airports (Austin-Berstrom International in Texas is a good example) , the runways are bordered with flowers, shrubs, and other welcoming landscaping. At CLT it is dirt and asphalt, dirt and asphalt, as far as the eye can see.
Once we were off the plane, we needed to navigate to pick up our rental car. Should have been east, but the construction was endemic inside the terminal as well as outside. Signs for the rental car desks seemed to point in both directions. Passengers thronged the endless passageways, most looking anxious. Per its own website, CLT “has one passenger terminal with 115 gates (more than any other single airport terminal building in the U.S.). That’s a lot of places to be intending to go.
If we hadn’t had a guide, we would have been wandering for hours. Fortunately, my companion’s limited mobility had moved us to reserve a wheelchair. We have learned that a wheelchair at an airport is the equivalent of a magic carpet, operated by a genie who can whisk you through doors marked “Emplyees Only”, take you to the front of the line at Security, and work other magic. But CLT puzzled even our expert.
We picked up our baggage on the second floor, and the rental car center, per our airport map, was also on the second floor – of the parking garage opposite. So near, and yet so far! There is no direct access from the terminal to the parking garage on the second level, so we followed the signs saying “Go to Level One and take Walkway to Garage.” It was a long wait for the elevator, and a long echoing bland tunnel to the other side of the street. There was another elevator – and a line a dozen people long. “We’ve been waiting quite a while,” said one of the queue members. We looked for signs of movement in the elevator cables visible through the glass walls of the elevator shaft. No visible activity. We waited a while longer, and our wheelchair attendant whispered, “There is another way.”
Back through the underground passage, and an elevator shaft in operation. Up to the fifth floor, and across the bridge to the parking garage. Another wait for an elevator down, and we were finally at our destination.
Once in the arms of Hertz, we felt safe and comfortable. Our car was waiting, the exit was marked, and we were on our way… almost. Even though the center of Charlotte is well away from the airport (see skyline in photo above), somehow the downtown traffic was RIGHT THERE. Several stoplights and many brakelights later, we made it to Interstate 77.
A young friend of mine, after serving as a poorly paid intern/underling for several years, was finally offered his dream job, with a nice title and a decent salary and even some side benefits. He told his partner and they began to dream about upgrading their housing, maybe doing a bit of traveling, paying off some debts.
And then he failed the drug test. If you contract with or receive grants from the state of California, California’s Drug-free Workplace Act of 1990 requires you to certify that you provide a drug-free workplace. The Dream Job was partially funded by the state.
Studies from the American Psychiatric Association suggest that 5% to 10% of all drug tests may result in false positives and 10% to 15% may yield false negatives. The APA recommends that before submitting to a drug test you should confirm with the lab you visit that a second, confirmatory test will be performed on any positive drug test that may occur. “When initial screening drugs tests (called immunoassays) result in positive results, a second confirmatory (Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry or GC-MS) test should always be done.”
My young friend, confident that he had no problem, did not do this.
And the organization for which the tests were being given had not contracted for retakes, so none were allowed.
Why he failed – he is not and never has been a drug user, but he grabbed one of his partner’s favorite poppy-seed bagels for breakfast as he was heading out the door that morning.
I fancy I can hear my readers groaning “Yeah, right!” in disbelief. But multiple reputable websites (including the National Institute of Health) note the possibility of a false positive result on a drug test because of the trace opiates in poppy seeds. I believe my young friend, not least because of his partner’s tearful regret for her ill-fated preference.
If you were planning on crossing Death Valley in the summer, and your car had a 5-10% chance of dying on the way, would you make the trip? Would you trust its maintenance to a mechanic whose work had a 10-15% chance of failing?
If you had optional surgery scheduled, and you had a 5-10% chance of being paralyzed afterward, would you go ahead? What if there was a 10-15% chance you didn’t really need the surgery?
My young friend had no choice but to take the test, despite the odds. The drug test is required, though a 5-10% chance of a false positive result plus a 10-15% chance of a false negative result means the test is only accurate 75-85% of the time.
What can my young friend do? Jobs in his specialty are few; the chances of a similar opportunity arising are probably less than the chance of a false positive which cost him this one. The Dream Job is being advertised again, and candidates are being interviewed.
“I’ll have to find some kind of job to pay the bills,” he says. “But I may never have another chance as good, no matter how many poppyseed bagels I don’t eat.”
Allyson Johnson 