Halls Motorsports Thursday Night Dinner Rides

I have neglected to write posts regarding the Thursday night dinner rides I have been attending. Every other Thursday evening, Halls Motorsports hosts a dinner ride. Typically a nice loop route is chosen to ultimately end up at a restaurant.

I attended the March 27th ride. It was a blast. We headed down D.I.P. over the Dog River bridge, down Rangeline Road, back to D.I.P. and down to AL 188. On AL 188 at the end of Bellingrath Road is Mary’s Place. Mary’s Place was a nice little “country family style” restaurant. I am not sure of their typical menu, as we all opted for the buffet, which consisted of fried fish, fried shrimp, grits and various other good old country style items. Not the best place i have ever eaten, but not too bad for a buffet either.

Last night was a lot of fun. Steve, the sales manager from Halls was attempting to give me and Randy (another Burgman 650 rider, directions for the loop we would take. As he was describing the route, he decided that Randy and I had a better idea of the route and that we should lead out the ride.

I figured that most of the group would eventually pass us, as the sport bikes typically like to do a little “hot rodding”. Amazingly though, the whole group stuck together. We took HWY 90 all the way to Grand Bay and then north on AL 188/Grand Bay Wilmer Road to Airport Blvd, and then east to Schillinger Road where we ate at Hacienda San Miguel Restaurant.

I have to say I was very impressed with the service last night. Not only did 20 people show up at one time unannounced, but the service was fast as well. They set us up out on the patio. The server was truly amazing. He took all 20 orders at the same time, without even writing the orders down. As far as I know, he didn’t mix up a single order. The next thing that really impressed me was that he had a separate ticket for each person or couple. Most restaurants would require one ticket for a party that large.

Steve has asked me to come up with the route and restaurant for the next dinner ride, as I am familiar with so many dining establishments as well as knowing all of the nice scenic roads from my years of road cycling. The pressure is on now!

Property Search

Julie and I have been searching for some land to build a home on for a little while now. We had narrowed it down to a couple of parcels.

One is off of HWY 225 about 6 miles south of I-65, between the HWY and the Tensaw River. It is over 12 acres in a subdivision. The subdivision actually is a single road that dead-ends at the river. The end of the road has a neighborhood park with river access and dock. This property is about 18 miles from the lodge Julie manages, so it would be a much easier commute for her when she needs to go to the lodge.

The second parcel is 11 acres in Stapleton, AL. One drawback to it is that it is not in an actual development, so some of the property around it could be developed in the future into who knows what. One advantage to this property though is that if you go through the construction entrance (the back gate) to Steelwood Country Club, it is only 2.5 miles to the lodge Julie manages.

In the first paragraph, you may remember that I stated that "we had narrowed it down to a couple of parcels." "Had" because since then, Julie learned through one of her clients of a community being developed near Bay Binette, AL. Dauerwalden is a Conservation Community.

We visited for a tour last weekend and will be visiting again this weekend. The tough thing for Julie and me is that each parcel looks great and has unique features. There is a 24 acre plot that would be one of the most secluded choices. Then there is a beautiful 5 acre plot that has no other connected property, it is totally surrounded by community common property, some of which has already been turned into a conservation easement that can never be developed. Because of the wide variety of the available plots, we will be taking an architect out with us in the next week of so to get his professional guidance on potential parcel choice. It is a pretty interesting concept. So far, I rank this new development at the top of the list.

Today we went to GreenCoast 2008, a Green Expo at the Mobile Convention Center. The expo highlighted sustainable products and services for the green build market. We saw plenty of interesting building concepts that we hope to implement into the home we build.