AB1 Tour 2014 - Week 12 - Chapel Hill, Durham, Cape Hatteras, NC

You know, when we started on this trip, I figured that whenever we’d arrive in a different part of the country,things would be markedly different. I’m not sure how … just “different.” Like if we were going to “Oz,” there’d be one town where you’d have people who were all three feet tall and wearing flower pots for hats and all the houses would be multi-hued. Then we’d be off to another town where everything would be green, glassy, and gigantic. “Imposserous!” you might exclaim, but emotionally, not intellectually, that’s how I felt things would be, should be, could be.
     However, we as a society have progressed to such an extent, modernized so much, that no matter where we go, except for the historical areas, there’s almost total similarity from one town to the next. The sameness, the franchising of businesses that begets the franchising of entire towns, that‘s what I’m talking about. So much of this country looks similar from one area to the next, unless you really hunt out the historical or unique features of each area. So that’s what we pledge to do, if not for us, then for you, poor, dear reader, who is living a part of your life through us as we jet (RV) from one state to the next. We’ll continue to do our best to keep you entertained.
     … What was THAT all about?
     OK, onwards to Durham and Chapel, Hill, NC.
     

On Sunday, June 15, we made it to a very rural RV park just outside of Chapel Hill, rural enough that deer felt no fear walking right up to AB1. We did our mandatory set up, and then “Mellow Mushroom” ‘ed it that night. 
Diedre was ready for a break the next day, so I was turned loose on that NCAA-multi-basketball-champion campus, Duke University, which I had watched for oh-so many years as their nutty students, nicknamed “The Cameron Crazies,” showed blind obedience and loyalty to their always-strong basketball team, the Duke Blue Devils.
     You’re probably aware (or maybe you’re not … that’s pretty presumptuous of me to say) that my favorite animal is, of course, the tiger, being born in the year of the tiger and having had a cat(s) as a pet since the age of four. But what you more likely didn't know is that my second favorite animal is that native of the island of Madagascar, the “lemur.” I just love watching these variously-colored, bright cat-monkeys do their thing . And Duke University, of all places, has a “Lemur Center” to study and help in keeping these clever animals safe from extinction.
     Apparently, however, I’m not the only one who so loves these furry denizens of the trees. When I got there, I sadly found out that the slots for tours of the lemur facility were booked up a month ahead, meaning I couldn’t see the facility till July 16 when we’d be in New York City, and that would be one hell of a day trip. So grudgingly, I moved on with my Duke University self-guided tour.
   

 Unlike last year’s trip to Notre Dame University or this year's earlier stop at the University of Texas, the athletic facilities at Duke were not all locked up tight. At the Wallace Wade Football Stadium, it was wide open. I walked in unencumbered. There were kids playing soccer on the field as students and faculty ran the track. It was a beautiful summer day and the college was letting all enjoy it.
     Similarly when I got to the venerable “Cameron Indoor Arena,” I was able to walk right in and watch a bunch of youth basketball games being played. Cameron is a great old edifice, being built in 1939. Attached was the “Duke Basketball Museum & Sports Hall of Fame.” It was just a wonderful tribute to the great names of the past. I was glad to note that one of their Hall of Famers was swimmer Jon Connor, so I was glad he was able to regroup and get past that whole “Terminator” problem he was dealing with.

     So just like at Duke, the same openness to facility could be said about the Durham Bulls brand new minor league baseball stadium downtown when I walked by for a look-see. I especially loved the giant sign they had standing above the left field fence in fair territory. It was a bull standing on green pasture land. The sign below it read to the players: Hit The Bull, Win a Steak; Hit the Grass, Win a Salad!”

     All this freedom of facilities was so nice to behold. It was only when I tried to check out the old Durham Bulls minor league baseball stadium (1926-1994) where the Kevin Costner movie, “Bull Durham” had been filmed, that Durham’s graciousness to tourists ground to a screeching halt. The OLD stadium was LOCKED!
     Really?!
     I stopped for some nourishment (a pizza slice and a Diet-Coke”) at Durham’s “Mellow Mushroom” where they had the World Cup soccer game on. As long as I’m already cranky about the old Bulls’ Stadium, I’ll continue on in the same vein. I must be getting old, because everywhere I go, they’ve got soccer on and not baseball.
     Again … really?!
     Maybe it’s all the immigrants here now who love “futbol” so much. In my day (there’s a phrase I thought I’d never use), soccer would have never gotten a second look by the neighborhood kids. Back then, it was baseball, basketball, and football during the day, and a stirring game of “Off to See the Ghost Tonight” in the evening. I mean, we were serious athletes, but we were still kids.
     I’m on a roll now. Another “dagnabit” moment (a phrase Diedre and I use when we sense the other one is acting a bit too crotchety for our age) occurred later at the Duke book store. I was there trying to just buy a simple blue T-shirt with the word “Duke” on it over the breast-pocket area. But try as I might, I couldn’t find anything there without a Nike logo. I mean, the “swoosh” is ab-so-frickin-lutely everywhere! I hear they’re even changing the NCAA name so that it’ll soon be the “NIKE Collegiate Athletic Association.” Oh, and the Duke T-shirts were $30 … not gonna happen! I didn’t get a Duke T-shirt.
     On Tuesday, I crossed the tracks and made my way over to Chapel Hill to the campus of the arch nemesis of Duke, the North Carolina University Tarheels. Diedre decided to join me that day, sort of. We did parallel hikes and agreed to meet up later. She saw the campus’s “Playmakers Theatre,” then stopped by The Old East. Built in 1793, it’s the oldest state university building, not just in North Carolina, but in the whole darn country. How about that?

    

 I spent more of my time obsessed with college basketball. I made it to The Dean Smith Center, the University’s esteemed basketball arena which was similarly open and available to the public. Not to be outdone by Duke, they, too, had a basketball museum, this one highlighted by the accomplishments and glory of one Mr. Michael Jordan.
     Back in Arizona, one of my softball buddies, Mike Graf, has been a longtime Tarheel basketball fan, even though he’s never been to the campus. Mike played high school basketball in Illinois in the mid 1960’s, so I sent him a postcard of the “Dean Dome,” dated it February, 1966, and wrote on the backside as if it was a recruiting card. I signed it from Dean Smith who was the coach back then. I figured that should make Mike’s day finally getting recruited by North Carolina.

     My Carleton College friend Bob Strauss (“Oh great, not another college friend story” you’re probably saying) who we would be seeing in the next two weeks in both Atlantic City, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA, put us onto a restaurant run by friends of his. It was called, simply enough, “Kitchen.” It was a great place, and the owners, Dick and Sue Barrows, were so nice. Diedre had the mussels in a Thai red-curry sauce, a very unusual and tasty recipe. Being the ever-daring culinary explorer I am, I went with the hamburger. It was good, too.
     On Wednesday, June 18, we did a rarity for us and pulled up stakes midweek. This all had to do with us making it to a Washington Nationals baseball game on Sunday, June 22, the only home game they would be playing during the week we would be in Washington D.C. That only gave us three days at Durham/Chapel Hill and three in the Outer Banks, a destination I had looked forward to for 11 years.
     Back in 2003, the Phoenix newspaper had done a series of articles celebrating the Wright Brothers and the centennial of the first heavier than air, powered flight. In reading about how they traveled from their home in Dayton, Ohio, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, for several years to test their theories, I became enthused with their story. I had to see these “Outer Banks.” And now, I was there.

That spec of a person in the field is DK.

   We started off slowly the next day with a trip to the Cape Hatteras Light House, the tallest brick lighthouse in North America. It was constructed in 1870.
     This lighthouse, and others like it, were crucial to this area as you’ll see by our next destination that day: “The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.” This place was great! They had stories and remnants of over 600 shipwrecks in the area caused by anything from shoals to storms to wars. You don’t think of World War II taking place in the waters off North Carolina, but the seashore along The Outer Banks came to be known as “Torpedo Junction” because of how many Allied tankers and cargo ships were sunk by German U-boats. They even had parts of the Civil War ironclad, the U.S.S. Monitor, there. It had taken part in the first ever battle of two iron-clads ships when it fought with the Confederate “Virginia” early in the war. Naval warfare was never the same after that.

   We finished the day with a nice but windy walk along the ocean.  From there, we made a protein stop at a storefront that had caught our attention earlier: the aptly named “Try My Nuts” store. One item that particularly caught me and my warped sense of humor was an apron that read: “Many Have Eaten Here … Few Have Died.”

    It’s amazing what the housing boom has done to Cape Hatteras. Everywhere you looked were giant, colorfully painted, tall houses on stilts. There were absolutely tons of places to rent.  We enjoyed just driving and admiring the architecture of the area.

     There was some incredibly sad news awaiting us that night when we returned to AB1. An e-mail from my cousin Sydney informed us that her sister, my cousin Alex Smith whom you had met last year in our Dallas, TX, blog, had passed away after a short illness. This was an incredible shock. Alex was only 64. We had such a great time with her last September and even took in a Rangers baseball game with her. I especially love the photo of Alex, her nephew Alexander, and me. I called it: “Alex-Cubed.” Rest in peace, dear cousin.    

 Friday was our big “Wright Brothers Day” and boy, was I ready for something uplifting … plane-speak wise, I mean. At the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, we climbed all the way to the top of Big Kill Devil Hill to pay our respects to the Brothers’ Memorial. This was where they first utilized unmanned gliders which helped answer any of a number of critical questions about how flight works. The monument, built in 1932, reads as follows:
     “In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright,
     conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.”
     The Wright Brothers chose Kitty Hawk because they needed three things to achieve flight: wind, sand, and solitude. With Kitty Hawk, they got all three and then some.
     It seems obvious now, but one of their first tasks was to design and build the first effective airplane propeller. It proved to be one of their most original and scientific achievements. The power they would need for flight would come from a 4-cylinder, gasoline powered, 12 horsepower engine.
     On the morning of December 14, 1903, the brothers brought out onto the flat area beneath Big Kill Devil Hill their 40’, 605-pound “Flyer.” Wilbur had won the coin toss to determine which of them would get the opportunity to be the first man to fly, but he then lost that chance when he over steered on take-off causing the Flyer to climb too steeply, stall, and then dive back into the sand. The first flight would have to wait three days while the Flyer was being repaired.
     December 17, 1903, the landmark day, really started at 10:35 a.m.  Orville had the first success! With the wind at 27 mph, the brothers proceeded to have four successful, heavier than air, sustained powered flights. Next to a reconstructed hangar and a workshop simulating their 1903 structures stands the “First Flight” boulder which marks the exact point where man left the ground to soar in the air. I had to stand next to that one. 

Subsequent stone monuments mark the landing points and distances of each of the four flights: 120’, 175’, 200’ (the first three each took about 12 seconds), and finally, 852’. During this last flight lasting 59 seconds, pilot Wilbur was considering going all the way to Jersey City, but he hadn’t packed a lunch, so …
     Actually, the Flyer crashed after that epic fourth flight and would never fly again. It was damaged too badly.
     Nearby an artist had created a huge sculpture of the entire “First Flight” scenario complete with a sculpture of the actual photographer who was there and who took the epochal “First Flight” photograph. We lucked out and were able to get Diedre on top of the sculptured plane’s position that Wilbur had taken on nearly 111 years ago. I got the photo of Diedre and just to add to the authenticity of our photograph, I somehow was able to take the picture in black and white to simulate 1903 photography. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 The adjoining museum had an exact-size replica of the “Flyer.” Only a week later I would be able to see the original at the Smithsonian’s “Air and Space Museum” in Washington D.C.
   
Our excited duo finally took a breath and grabbed lunch in the little town of Duck, NC. You may be aware that my e-mail address starts with “alexduck” and that the softball team and tournament I started in Minnesota back in the late ‘70's and is still in operation is named “Duck Soup” after my favorite Marx Brothers movie. I am all things “ducky,” so being in the town of Duck meant a lot to me.
     

While we were waiting for our lunch orders to be delivered, Diedre found on-line a recipe for “chocolate-zucchini bread.” She asked me what I thought. I ruminated pensively for a moment, then gave her my answer:
     “It sounds like the battle between good and evil.”
     And that’s the truth … THPTHH!!
     Next stop: Washington D.C.