Frankly, my dear reader....

Have you seen the list of the greatest American movie quotes? The truth is, people, I’ll have what’s going to be a rough time trying to fitting snippets and references to a hundred lines into a 600-word column, Gipper….
So I was sitting in the morning with a wireless heart rate monitor trying to model a top of the line ancient stone Acheulean hand ax.
That’s what happens when you cross your endurance athlete and your anthropology major. As you build it, star king of the ancient tools, it’s interesting to gauge (where else could I fit in “toga”?) how far outdoors technology (from airplanes to banks) has come on the face of the earth.
I studied stone tools at UNC. I wanted to try to make my own sometime, but they make the best tools with certain stones that aren’t common.
Some of the sharpest tools of all are made of obsidian – volcanic glass. Call me crazy, but thought I’d substitute a beer bottle. It didn’t work, but I did cut up my hands some. The usual poor sucker, but I’ll never be discouraged. I dunno.
I see dead technology as useful. Obsidian, sharp on a molecular level, is much finer than you’re stinking steel scalpel we don’t’ need. What a dumb tool – forget it! Modern doctors have even reverted to stone (reopen the history books – we’ll always have the start of the technological march we’ve always depended on to fall back to) as a contender, for lack of a better word, in some operations because you’re gonna get less scarring.
I’m not going to preach, but on first looking at your elementary tech, I’ve got a feeling that as time goes by you’re gonna need to know how to use the old ways even if they don’t always smell like a rose, bud. You can’t fight it – it’s a lively debate, and it’s close – but your old ways are here to stay. This is the beginning of a resurgence – they’ll be back. Nobody puts them away in the attic anymore.
Nobody’s perfect, but not stirred and with healed hands I felt lucky and got back on that horse. Lacking obsidian, flint or other good material, a problem had me stuck, but I was going to make due with the crummy shale I had. After all that, the stone was too soft.
At the other end of the human technological endeavor is my brand new heart rate monitor. Here’s another nice gizmo (Gorgeous, precious, safe, stellar -- no wires! plastics and technology got small at some point). I got the laddy from my health insurance company, which bribes me (no crime) to exercise.
The lil baby’s complicated – the clockwork best friend came with a mechanical mounting bracket. I saw no place to put it on me, but it turns out to be with the bicycle mounting setup.
It beeps when I’m about to become too slow walking/running, saying to snap out of it. Wrap the chest strap on you and it’ll talk to/phone/communicate/bond with the little watch thingy. My little friend will also beep to me if my heart stops – something I want to know about, seriously.
I’ve seized the chance – ready for my heart rate checks. I tried to test myself while I donated blood. It came back at 59 beats a minute with a needle in my arm –impressive….
Find them all? I hope some didn’t get edited out. If you feel the need – there’s a list on Chad’s blog at www.shelbystar.com/blogs.asp. If you can’t, I have to say don’t bother me (just kidding).
Because frankly, my dear reader, I don’t give a damn.
100.

Triathlon: "If I am meant to win, everybody else will drown."

I wish I had some impressive story about why I skipped this year’s Over The Mountain triathlon.
I wish I could say I’d injured myself just days before the 37-mile swim/bike/run while skydiving/mountain climbing/scuba diving, but I actually didn’t get hurt doing those things.
I was reaching for a towel in the shower. Yeah. I pulled a muscle in my back while standing in my bathtub, twisting around a wall to pick up a baby blue towel.
We can laugh about it now, but at the time it would have hurt way too much to breathe that deeply.
No, seriously, I was hurting badly enough at one point that morning I looked around for something to bite down on. Did I bite a bullet? Heroically snap off the shaft of an arrow sticking in me to chomp on?
Nope.
As a true journalist I reached for my trusty ink pen, now laced with chew marks.
At work Jeff hooked me up with some over-the-counter snackie-poos that made the pain more manageable as it faded during the day.
But I didn’t think I needed to compete in an event that would tear me up even on a good day, so I decided to volunteer.
I’ve heard it said that everyone who competes in such events should help out every once in a while – give back a little. And get the t-shirt without having to pay the event fee.
I had a great time watching everyone else hurt. Maybe it’s just that I’m ethnic-German, coming from the culture that developed the specific word, die Schadenfreude, to describe one’s joy at watching someone else suffer.
But seriously, after having other folks slice oranges for me all these years it seemed appropriate to repay the favor, also untangling extension cords, preparing drinks (how much gin goes into this Gatorade? Just kidding), and sorting bags of wet cloths and flamingo-covered towels from the water stage of the event.
How many bags of wet Speedos or whatever can there be?
I also got to see some neat folks I know, including landlady Mrs. Harris and her clan.
Her granddaughter, Blakely, who’s here on a visit from her folk’s mission work in Thailand, was the first local lady across the line, so we got to interview her and I got to chat some with Mrs. Harris.
I wish my relationship with my ex-significant other was as good as with my ex-landlady.
All in all, I found a good way to test the triathlon waters and learned a little about how races work.
Now I’m scoping out other races I can pencil in on my calendar. I’m not too life or death competitive at this point.
Just as my high school football team took the fated, relaxed, East Asian-type spiritual approach to the game (if we will get our butts kicked, we will get our butts kicked), I take a similar slant on starting out in competition.
If I am meant to win, everybody else will drown.

Here you go with some shots from yesterday up at South Mountains State Park. Enjoy! 

Here we got with some fishing.... 

Here we go fishing with a line spooled around a drink bottle.... 

Here we go with folks coming up the stairs.... 

And here's some folks on the way down.... 

Dangers of the Cheat River

My Dad did everything he was supposed to do when he was thrown out of the whitewater raft.
He kept his cool, kept his feet pointed downstream and tried to keep his head above water.
The only problem was he came up under the raft while it was wedged against a rock.
Folks in my family usually take to the water pretty fearlessly.
When my Uncle Fred was a baby they knocked the bottom out of a crib and placed it half on the beach, half in the Pamlico River at my family’s cottage in the costal fringes of the state – allowing him to learn both land and sea equally.
There is no tide on the Pamlico.
Several years ago, on a narrower, faster river, we went whitewater rafting. My Dad, who was a varsity swimmer at Georgia Tech and was a state championship swimmer in high school, credits the experience as one of the few times he’s ever been scared on the water.
We were going down level V rapids (BIG) while West Virginia’s Cheat River was roaring in flood stage. We were wearing helmets and I was also wearing a new bracelet – you could buy gook luck bracelets or you could get a bad luck one for free.
Now the funniest thing about my dad nearly drowning is this: he had been sitting on my right. My Uncle Fred, who no longer lives in a crib, was behind me. When the raft jammed into the rock Fred was thrown into the position my Dad had just vacated.
The two men look pretty similar, so when I looked to see who had been tossed I was relieved to see my Dad was still there. It appeared my uncle was in big trouble, but hey, he didn’t have the car keys.
I would have felt really bad if my Dad had been killed while I was wearing my new bad luck bracelet.
Fortunately he made it out from under the raft and we enjoyed the rest of the trip. I have since been rafting other times and he continues to enjoy the water – albeit usually sailing a Sunfish on the 3 1/2 mile-wide Pamlico, where there are no rocks.

Well, here's a photo taken back in college and the two columns it spawned this past winter...

Thomas Edison once referred to his unsuccessful experiments as valuable discoveries of ways that don�t work.

Of course, his learning experiences didn�t involve being neck-deep in an ice cold river.

I�ve experimented with homemade boats my entire life. I�ve used everything from wire fencing to garbage bags � and usually a lot of duct tape.

I don�t use cardboard much these days (though my cardboard boat team placed second in competition at UNC a few years back).



ANYWAY, I�M honing a design right now. I got the concept from an Army survival manual a few years back and have developed it since.

You just mix a tarp, a few sticks and some rope. You could use shoelaces in a pinch.

This little trick has worked fine for me a half dozen times before, paddling in circles showing off my stunt in calm lakes. But I want my idea to evolve into a more practical craft, usable for longer voyages while camping.

So I put on my synthetic clothing, which will warm me even when wet, donned some old Army duds to absorb any cuts and scratches along the way, put my camera in a plastic bag, slung the tarp under my arm and walked to the First Broad River.



GATHERING THE sticks and constructing the boat took only a few minutes. Launching downstream I was surprised how quickly the current carried me. The craft turned easily but making way across the flow was hard.

Paddling with my hands didn�t cut it in a fast-moving river and I got stuck on a log after a few hundred yards. When the bow went up the stern went under, water came in and I went down.

I made my way to shore, put on another layer of clothing and dragged out my little boat. It was structurally fine. But it was filled with water and so was I.

I rolled up my tarp and made my way back home, a shivering muddy mess. It was beginning to sleet.

Along the way I ran into the editor�s wife. Way to make a good impression, John, looking like a cross between a hobo and an evacuee from Dunkirk.



OVERALL, I�LL take inspiration from Edison and say that I didn�t fail - I learned a lot.

I need to use more sticks, and maybe leaves, to improve my buoyancy. I also need to be able to control the boat better in a current.

So I�m prepping for a rematch, ready for another experiment and further learning experience.

It took Edison more than a thousand learning experiences before he got a working light bulb.

That�s a lot of time in very cold water.
 

I�m not Lindbergh proving a new technology by flying over the Atlantic or anything, but my homemade tarpboat easily carried me more than a kilometer last week.

Following a dreadful, disappointing and wet episode with a tarpboat-turned-submarine, how shall I refer to my recent success?

Tarpboat Redux? Tarpboat, Part Deux? 2 Tarp 2 Boat? The Tarpboat is back, and badder than ever - and this time it�s personal?

After a learning experience in the First Broad River, I started thinking about what I could do differently with my creation of sticks, rope and tarp. There had been a lot of obstacles in that river, I hadn�t been able to maneuver very well and the lip of the boat was too close to the water - not leaving enough room for error or waves.



LAST THURSDAY I drove down to the Broad River, a more open waterway with fewer things to hit. I took two tarps this time - one to cover the structure of the craft and the second to cocoon the boat, providing a double hull on the bottom and a barrier against waves on the top.

Moving out into the current I tried a U.S. Army entrenching tool - a folding shovel - as a paddle. I also had a spiffy, bright orange life preserver and was dressed about as well as one can to counter hypothermia following a dunking. By the way, don�t try this at home.



I MANEUVERED tentatively at first, mindful of what happened last time I�d tried sailing a tarp on a cold, swift river in December. I went under the N.C. 150 bridge and was feeling more confident by the time I passed where I had parked at the Broad River Greenway.

Overall, things went swimmingly and I didn�t need to use my safety gear. The paddle greatly aided maneuverability and the second tarp kept me almost totally dry - waves lapped up on the boat while going through Class I rapids but harmlessly flowed away.

My improvements worked. I�d basically made a kayak in 10 minutes.



I WAS even comfortable enough with the boat�s stability to pull out a camera and shoot some pictures. Check out some video on The Star�s website: www.shelbystar.com.

After twenty minutes in the water, I made my return to shore and paced off how far I�d gone. One small cruise for me, one giant leap for tarpboats?

Frenchman Louis Bleriot became the first to pilot an airplane across the English Channel in 1909, earning a place in the history.

I should at least get a cookie.



View Video at:

http://www.shelbystar.com/tarp%20boat/video.htm
 

4 States, 2 Feet, Part Duex

Pasta, rich in energy-filled carbohydrates, is a tradition among endurance athletes.
But ravioli, eaten on the eve of an all day, four-state road trek, should not be crunchy.
I was trying out an Italian place in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, along a 20-mile stretch of road I was about to walk connecting that state with Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. I was not impressed.
I mean, c’mon. Pasta’s pretty easy. It was one of few foods I was sure my college cafeteria couldn’t screw up too badly, so I gravitated towards it. That’s part of how I became a quasi-vegetarian.
Anyway, I’d spent the day driving up through Virginia’s mountains, taking a side trip to the national D-Day memorial, to a campsite on the Potomac in Maryland. The next morning I took another look at my route.
Since I didn’t want to cover the whole stretch twice on foot, I figured I’d drive to one end, drop my bicycle, drive to the other end, and start walking. Or something like that.
I actually wound up splitting the trek into two main sections. For the first jaunt I parked at a trout hatchery near the Virginia border and rode to Berkeley Springs, where I locked up my bike at a spa.
Then I walked back to the car.
You know it’s getting bad when the goal you’re fixated on is reaching an unincorporated municipality (I don’t think there was even a crossroads. Just a BP station) called Omps.
I actually saved a Chihuahua in Omps. I was walking along the road, as folks are prone to do in Bob Dylan songs, wondering how I could fit the word “flamingo” in this column to keep up my streak, when I heard a young girl screaming, as young girls are prone to do.
Or is that just around me?
But she kept it up rather persistently so I started paying attention. A Chihuahua was running across her yard towards me. So I started running towards it, to try and get my ankle bit as far from traffic as possible.
When I’m out on my little adventures and a dog comes at me, I’m not so worried for myself. If the dog wants to tangle a tooth in my bike tire it’ll be his problem. I just don’t want the pooch to get out in the road and under a car.
Anyway, I intercepted the beast and the Chihuahua was saved.
I expect a statue. Maybe a parade.
So I finished the first section and drove north to Pennsylvania to walk south and complete the second. Check out the blog, www.shelbystar.com/blogs.asp, for some pictures.
After finishing that final major foot stretch I rode my bike from Berkeley Springs back up to my car near the PA border, crossing the border on foot and completing a day of very hard trudging on hilly asphalt.
I certainly gained a new appreciation for the wheel – a day worth of pain on foot was just a quick, breezy jaunt on a bike.
Back in my car, on the was back to North Carolina I stayed at a motel so cheap there wasn’t even a Gideon’s Bible and drove the entire Shenandoah National Park. For a $10 entrance fee.
I also stopped at Natural Bridge. My grandparents visited it years back, so I figured it was worth a try.
A young George Washington (yeah, THAT George Washington) originally surveyed the large stone arch with a creek flowing under it and a highway currently going across it. Later on, Thomas Jefferson bought the site preserve it for public viewing. For a $10 entrance fee.
I’m not sure which president was responsible for the adjoining wax museum, put-put golf course and monster house.

How about these folks -- riding across the US to raise support against cancer, one of them himself a cancer veteran... http://www.shelbystar.com/john/cyclists.htm
 

I recently received the following comment to a post of mine:

Anonymous said...
Loved your article and the photos. What are some of those sites you used to map out your route and get the satellite views?
So here you go�.
There�s a google.com function that�s pretty cool. From www.google.com click on �more� at the right hand side. Then click on �maps,� again on the right. Then click on �satellite� again on the right for a satellite view.
I joked in my column about the stealth black helicopters They have flying all over the place, but you can see the cars in the above shot of the old N.C. Capitol.
You can also try terraserver.microsoft.com/ or geography.usgs.gov/partners/viewonline.html for maps and stuff.
There�s always www.mapquest.com and one of my favorites (GREAT graphic capability) is www.us.map24.com/, which has a function that lets you map a route avoiding major roads - useful for cycling.
Enjoy, take care, stay safe.
 

I was trying to remember how to spell “anaphylactic”....

Here's a good one from last summer.....

It takes a very special sort of person to get up at 6:30 a.m. to swim 3½ miles across the Pamlico River.

And by “very special,” I mean “cracked.”

Well, that’s pretty strong language for someone my size to use — let’s just say it would have been a great morning for sleeping in.

But I was headed towards the south shore from my family’s small cottage at 6:40, with my dad motoring aside me in my small dinghy as the waves got bigger and the jellyfish grew thicker.

I hate jellyfish.

We don’t have the deadly jellies around our summer place in Beaufort County, a little downriver from the town of Bath. And we don’t have them every year. But when we do have them, we have them in Biblical proportions.

And my expression of esteem for these creatures of God knew no higher level of eloquence and clarity than after I got tangled with the fourth one in the first mile.

But lest you think the broad brackish waters of North Carolina’s aquatic fraying fringes only hold gelatinous stinging critters, we also have crabs.

It’s been a really good year for crabs.

I found one during my swim. Or rather it found me. To be specific, it found my thumb.

Maybe I should have taken a cue from the two-foot stingray I’d found in the river the day before. It was dead.

Anyway, by the fifth jellyfish, after the passing ferry’s captain hailed us to make sure we were okay, I was trying to remember how to spell “anaphylactic” and thinking maybe I might wanna play again some other time.

Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. My Dad was as good a sport as could be. He handled the boat as well as he could through the whitecaps.I don’t know whether he follows me on my adventures out of fatherly love or morbid curiosity, but he did everything he could — including making room for me when I broached into the boat like a Polaris missile.

I’ve successfully swum the river before, as has my Dad, and I’ll make it again some other time. I was carving a great pace until weather and venomous animals foiled me.

What did I learn? Pick a day with better weather? Pick a time with fewer jellyfish? If we’ll poison our rivers, swimmers will have fewer menacing critters to contend with?

No.

Panty hose. Reportedly, jellyfish can’t sting through the small mesh of panty hose. That’s the scientific truth, or at least a really good practical joke.

So if you see someone flailing about in the Pamlico River with one set of panty hose over his head and arms and another worn in the more conventional fashion, it’s probably me.

I won’t pretend to know you if you’ll just look the other way.

One Road, Four States, Twenty Miles, My Two Feet....

Years back I read �We� by Charles Lindbergh.
I asked my Dad why Lindbergh spent the majority of the book on his �boring� early years, his training and the things leading up to his historic trans-Atlantic flight, which is all I really wanted to read about.
Dad said that maybe it was because Lindy wanted to place greater emphasis on the events that created him, the formative years that set him up for The Spirit of St. Louis - showing that his life wasn�t just about the glory, but the planning and tedium that precede greatness.
Ohhh, wisdom stuff.
I walked a 20-mile stretch of road last weekend passing through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania - not the North Atlantic, but a feat none-the-less.
And true to Lindy�s example, the seeds of success were sown long before the reaping of triumph.
Can I copyright that?
I�d noticed the four state�s proximity years back, poking at the idea from time to time on the Internet - a great research resource.
I went online to map out my route and I was also able to track down a campground I could stay at the night before the hike. It�s incredible the great mapping sites out there. You can even scope out satellite views, to check your intended path�s geography and congestion.
You can almost zoom in close enough to see the black helicopters (and flamingos) They have all over the place. Except that they�re using stealth, making them invisible.
But along with the logistical preparation comes physical preparation - something I�ve typically been pretty good at.
Some folks in my Scout troop thought I was too skinny. On my first backpacking trek, a 50-miler, it got down to ten degrees, I was the smallest kid in my crew and more than half the hikers quit.
I didn�t.
I wasn�t skinny - I was fit and had trained for weeks beforehand, walking around the neighborhood with a 70-pound backpack
As I�ve heard said in the military, �The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.�
So I tried to get all my ducks in a row and did some long runs before heading up the Appalachians to walk four states.
Still, there�s a strange duality. �To fail to plan is to plan to fail,� according an old Scouting saw. But �all planning is bunk on first contact,� quoth Murphy�s Laws of Combat.
My feeling, and experience, is that flexibility is very important but it also pays massively to nail down the variables you can beforehand - because once you get out there you�ll face issues you never even knew existed.
And a lot of the preparation goes into increasing flexibility - I might be looking for a motel, but I�ve got a tent in the trunk just in case. I might be planning on only going twenty miles, but I�ll train to go even father if I need to.
And in the end it turned out I needed to.
But that�s next week�s column. In the meantime check out my blog for some photos: jderrickstar.blogspot.com.
After I got back I told my Mom about the trek. She didn�t miss a beat. I guess after 23 years my folks have gotten used to phone calls about skydiving, the broken down bicycle, that midnight trip to the ER�.

I actually saved a Chihuahua in Omps. I heard a girl screaming over on my left while I was walking. I turned, and she was chasing a little dog who was running towards me, and the road. I ran at him to intercept as far from the road as possible and a man came and scooped him up. All's well that ends well.... 

Even thought the route ran through mountainous areas, the road was relatively flat. 

Wow that was a long road. I had to walk that stretch twice. 

Here's the Potomac River, dividing West Virginia and Maryland.... 

And here's the spa in Berkeley, West Viriginia, where I can for a sit down in the park after the walk. Cute town. Great ice cream. Lousy pasta. Seriously, ravioli should not be crunchy. 

Arlo Guthrie is Deep Throat..... Well now we know who Deep Throat is. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/31/deep.throat/index.html It�s neat seeing the different reactions coming out of folks who played different parts in Watergate. How about the convicted conspirator saying Mark Felt should have followed the chain of command and told his superiors of the illegal activities going on? Warn�t it said bosses doing said shenanigans? Or how about the Watergate burglar who was on the news saying Felt was a crumb and that he didn�t understand how the former FBI official could live with himself? When did we start turning to this crook for ethical commentary? And the best thought I�ve got on the case, drafted from an Arlo Guthrie website a while back: The blank stretch on Nixon�s tape is 18 � minutes long. What else is 18 � minutes long? �Alice�s Restaurant��. �You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant, (excepting Alice)�.� (By the way, that's a photo of Woody, not his son Arlo....) 

Oh, but I do enjoy nearly getting hit covering sporting assignments.... Good luck to the KM softball team this weekend as they grab for the state championship. For a shot where I did get hit, check out http://www.shelbystar.com/photos/johnderrick/gallery%204%20burns%20rscentral%20100804%20jd16.jpg 

It’s kind of like nuclear arms escalation. The squirrel raids my feeder....

I have a very special relationship with squirrels.
It’s not just that they crop up again and again in stories about a crazy Army buddy catching one with his bare hands, hungry raptors on campus and deadly air conditioning units. I also have a birdfeeder.
Some birders complain about the squirrels that rob their feeders, cheating their cardinals, wrens and flamingos. I personally think they’re half the fun.
Maybe it’s the eco-friendly version of hanging around watching the bug-zapper, but I’ve had many a good time seeing one of these little rats climb a sheer pole, make an incredible jump or flail their legs like Wyle E. Coyote running off a cliff as they fall backwards, foiled by my smooth metal squirrel-proofing.
It’s kind of like nuclear arms escalation. The squirrel raids my feeder. So I develop a deterrent. So the squirrel thinks up a way to defeat it. So I up the ante….
Then at some point I learned to stop worrying and love the [squirrels] – they’re really quite photogenic. Tuesday wasn’t the first time I’ve come into work with a photo of an inverted squirrel on my feeder. Our editor, Skip, jokes that I’m working the upside-down squirrel beat.
It’s better than the rabid possum desk I worked at my last paper. Still, I’m not sure where it fits on a resume.
But now I’m not content with the standard angle – I want a down the muzzle shot.
If I lay under the feeder I’ll spook the critter, and they are very clever. The eastern gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, can smell a nut under a foot of snow (I bet you can’t do that). So I have to be stealthy….
I found a cardboard box I can place the camera in. A little bailing wire, a few yards of string…. Voila! I can place the boxed camera under the feeder, retreat to concealment and pull the string which pulls a wire that hits the shutter when I want to take a picture.
Yes, I was a Boy Scout.
So a few days ago, in preparation for the coming of the Squirrels, I revived a bird feeder design I’ve been tweaking for years involving nothing more than two soda bottles, some bailing wire and duct tape.
I’m an Eagle Scout, actually.
You can see a photo and crafting instructions on my blog, www.shelbystar.com/blogs.asp. And these things are so cheap and easy to make they’re the Liberty ships of birdfeeders – I can replace them faster than the squirrels/Germans can destroy them.
You see, it’s a whole lot deeper than simple bird feeder-box-tape-string-wire-photography. “Squirrel” is actually a nickname of mine – apparently a tag I earned at one fire scene where I hopped around quite busily, like a squirrel in the headlights, making sure to cover all the angles and working past the point of my sweat obscuring the viewfinder on my camera.
I hear Chief Roland Hamrick of the Cleveland County Fire Department does quite an entertaining impersonation.

I say again, my birdfeeder design is not squirrel-proof. It is however cheap and easy to replace. On a somewhat related topic check out www.scarysquirrel.org/recipes/recipe.html -- recipes for squirrel cakes, squirrel kabobs... "there's lots of things you can do with [squirrel]."
(just kidding)