Volunteers needed to go to the moon

A local company is seeking volunteers to go to the moon. the volunteers won’t themselves go the moon, but they will help in the effort of local group TeamSTELLAR to win the Google Lunar X Prize by being the first private company to land a rover on the moon.

TeamSTELLAR is made up of a number of local businessmen and N.C. State engineers. The group is seeking volunteers to assist in a number of tasks, including administrative, fundraising, legal and engineering roles.

If you’d like to find out more, TeamSTELLAR will hold a presentation from 7 to 9 PM Tuesday, August 19th, on the first floor of Engineering Building II, Centennial Campus, N.C. State University (map here).

You’d have to be looney to pass up this opportunity.

New flag for the City of Raleigh

A few days with my toes in the sand made me realize the perfect new flag for the City of Raleigh was right under my nose. Or in my hand, more specifically. I held a water bottle from the Raleigh Parks and Recreation department, and on the side was Parks and Rec’s distinctive, cool logo:
Raleigh Parks and Recreation

Why not make this the official city flag? Imagine this oak tree logo emblazoned on a white-and-green flag (with no text, of course, as befitting a proper flag). It would be so much more attractive and distinctive than Raleigh’s current, tired old flag.

Home again

We are back again after three days at Carolina Beach. Our beach house was great except for two things: the blinds in the master bedroom leaked like a sieve and there was no Internet access.

I’ll post a more complete update over the weekend. For now its time to get my book and relax.

Home tonight

We got back this evening for an overnight stay in Raleigh before heading to the coast. Our timing put us into RTP right before 5PM, meaning we ran smack into rush-hour traffic. Gazing at the sea of brake-lights heading east, I thanked my lucky stars once again for my bicycle commute!

We stopped by Linville Caverns on the way home. The caverns didn’t disappoint, being sufficiently dark, damp, and stalagtite-y to keep us entertained. I expected there to be bigger rooms here and there but that’s not the way caves work. Still, it was a fun diversion.
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Chimney Rock

We had a great day today at Chimney Rock, the pseudo-state park here with a wonderful, chimney-like, er, rock. We started our tour of the park with the Hickory Nut Falls trail, winding our away around the mountain to reach the waterfall. Since Western North Carolina (WNC) has been suffering from a drought, the waterfall wasn’t much more than a trickle. One unimpressed visitor called it “some guy pouring a bucket over the top.” The water did reach the ground, however, and provided a nice backdrop as we snacked on trail mix and watched idiot park visitors attempt to scale the sheer cliffs near the falls.
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Whoa, that ain’t no mountain laurel!

Perusing this headline at WRAL made me think of a funny incidence on our arrival here Friday. Kelly went into the local grocery store to pick up some food. When she got back into the car, the smell of marijuana followed her. And it wasn’t just a whiff, it was very strong. Kelly of course doesn’t partake but it didn’t stop me from kidding her about it!

Driving back towards I-40 with the windows down, we were smelling it just as strongly, though there wasn’t anyone around, nor could we see any smoke from possible law enforcement burns.

It was really odd. The moonshine culture is alive and well here, so I’m sure the forests are full of it. Even so, I didn’t expect to be greeted by it when we arrived!

Greetings from 2,756 feet

We’re on Gateway Mountain now, just outside of Old Fort, NC on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Old Fort is exit 73 off of I-40, about 220 miles from Raleigh pavement-wise. We’re in a house overlooking the gorgeous mountains. Its surrounded by woods and up a quite-steep one-lane road.

I’d tell you how quiet it is here but the truth is the cicadas made a big racket last night. We must be surrounded by them. Even so, I think we’ll try sleeping with the windows open, because country noises can be soothing, too.
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Unfettered walk down Fayetteville St.

For my Monday lunchtime walk I went from my building at Hargett and Fayetteville Street all the way down to Memorial Auditorium and back. It was the first time since I’ve been in Raleigh that I could make that stroll without taking a massive detour around the ugly concrete monstrosity that was the old Raleigh Civic Center or the construction site that for a time replaced it.

The plastic road barriers are still partitioning the new Raleigh Marriott from the rest of Fayetteville Street, but foot traffic now flows freely from the north end of F-street to the south. This downtown thing is coming together nicely.

Stacking the forums on the biolab?

I’m really perplexed at the outpouring of support for the troubled Butner biodefense lab which appears in the WRAL forums today. In my opinion having deadly pathogens in my backyard is on par with having a nuclear waste dump there. Yet, there are posters in the WRAL forums who inexplicably loves them some anthrax.

Either someone’s stacking the forums, they don’t fully appreciated the danger of such a facility, or these people know what it is and truly think its a good idea.

Scavenger hunt in Raleigh August 23rd

A local group called Triangulator is planning to hold a scavenger hunt here in downtown Raleigh on Saturday, August 23rd. Looks like fun to me! Their announcement is below.

(By way of the Historic Oakwood email list)

Triangulator Part Deux: City of Oaks

People of the Triangle,

Back in May we held our inaugural Triangulator scavenger hunt in Durham. Over thirty people participated in the six hour multi-media, multi-modal (sub)urban (mis)adventure.

In the Bull City we climbed, we rhymed, and we memorialized, discovering coal chutes and hidden swimming pools and secret passageways in the process. We learned about why Durham was the city of medicine long before Duke Hospitals, unearthed the ghosts of the city’s industrial past and experimented with new uses for Fufu flour and Waxy Corn. But most importantly, we were able to see Durham in new ways: finding new intrigue and beauty in the places and people we pass by every day and discovering parts of the city (sometimes right around the corner) that we never knew existed. Check out some of the photos from the event on our interactive map (circa 1923).
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