An Adventure in Moving

Well, for those of you who haven’t gotten the news yet, I’m going to law school.

Sorry, but this is going to involve leaving The Star. I love the paper and I love my work, but I’m plotting some changes.

Jeff, Skip and the rest of the folks here have known for a while now (months, actually) and have already gotten my replacement lined up. They’re sorry to see me leave but happy for me. We’ve been working to try and make the transition as seamless as possible. I’ve been invited to keep blogging and writing columns, and look forward to doing so with some selfish motives.

"Adventure Columnist" sounds a lot sexier than "Lawyer."

I asked my Dad what he thinks of my plan.

"Being an adventure columnist is sexier than being a lawyer? No way! Why, being a corporate lawyer is so, well - you're right."

He’s a lawyer.

So I’m moving in with my parents in Wake Forest for the summer (yes, this makes twice I’ve moved back home since graduation. They enjoy the free labor), then over to Chapel Hill in August. I’m packing and getting ready to move in mid-June and going through all that stuff. Actually, I’m using a goodly number of those outdoorsy skills they taught in scouts – being prepared, resourcefulness, planning ahead….

First of all, the Ingles on 74 west out of Shelby has stacks of really good cardboard boxes they’re happy to give away. Knowing where to find packing materials may not be quite as valuable as knowing how to find water in the desert, but I’ll take what I can get.

I’ve been working to get all my ducks in a row for the past few months. Pack a box here, recycle some stuff there, ferry a carload stuff to my folks’ house, give away a terrarium (read – cracked aquarium) that I’ve been using as an end table….

Everything I handle at my leisure now, on my own, with plenty of time and in good weather is one less hassle on moving day when it’s a hundred degrees, we’re running late, I’m tired, my folks are frustrated, we’re bleeding and swearing, it’s starting to rain… more on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com.

I’ve heard that moving is considered one of the more traumatic things a person goes through. I’ve not seen any formal study on the matter, and I’d have to place a massive divide between such a comparatively minor hassle and the horror of losing a family member, fighting a war, facing deadly disease or other such terror, but I can agree that moving and starting school involve some changes.

Just because a change is good doesn’t always mean it’s easy at the time – ask some of my friends upon graduation, not always with jobs waiting for them. Or maybe a newlywed getting used to their new a roommate. Or a friend of mine who just had a baby. That’s a big change in her life, and a good one (I got a new buddy, Yay!), but I’m sure there were and will be a few times when it’s not a whole lot of fun. I guess the big steps are some of the hardest, but potentially some of the best.

Personally, being fortunate enough to have the option of a graduate education, I can’t complain.
Rather I try to be thankful for my blessings and look to these strong examples set by my family and friends as we map out our lives as artisans, entrepreneurs, soldiers, parents, teachers….

That’s the adventure.

Empty nest....

Well, the little birdies we were following a few blogs below this one aren't there any more. Let's hope they've happily flown the coop -- maybe you'll see them around....

...put a scope on the .22 magnum....

Old Winchester 9422M from my Dad plus a scope from our webmaster Chad... Only at 25 yards, but I was just trying to get my hands on it...

You can actually trace where I shot low, adjusted a few clicks higher, hit low again, adjusted, was high for a bunch of rounds and then got it right....

I then moved the target to 100 yards, but I was hitting about a foot high. Don't know where that sort of rise came from! Coulda fiddled with the scope to compensate, but I just switched over to the flintlock instead.

We'll see how it goes....

Turtle, part 2

The Star sent me across North Carolina a few weeks back to take pictures at the exhuming of Brenda Sue Brown near Lillington for her return to Shelby. It was a rather sad task, but I got to see some areas of the state I hadn’t gotten to in a while.

And I saved a turtle.

As I related in last week’s column, which I’ve got on my blog at jderrickstar.blogspot.com, I’d gotten there early and taken the extra time to explore a nearby state park.

Things had already started at the churchyard by the time I got back, so I just left the big turtle I’d found in the road in my car and got to work.

I left the windows cracked.

There’s a lot of neat stuff between Lillington and Shelby – including "The Last Hardee’s On Earth". Near Carthage, on the way to one of my old scout reservations, is a burger place. For years, as we headed down to camp, this was the last vestige of civilization before we jumped into the woody abyss. Now it’s surrounded by dollar stores and other fast food places, but I still stopped off for a milkshake….

There’s got to be a quote from "Casablanca" that fits right there. "Usual suspects?" No…. "Play it, Sam?" No…. "… for old times' sake?" ahh, good enough.

My old scout camp was closed, but I got a nice drive through the Uwharrie National Forest. I’ve stomped down around 150 miles in the Uwharries – two 50-mile backpacking trips that each lasted four or five days and a 41-mile ultramarathon that lasted 11 hours. That hurt in way’s I’d never even imagined possible.

On the southern edge of the woods I ran by the Town Creek Indian Mound. I studied these architectural Native American artifacts in college. This particular one is apparently not open on

Mondays and the gate was closed. At least half of it. I did a quick circle through the parking lot, just to turn around, and got a glimpse of man-made hill on the way out… before they could chase me off….

I got back to the Charlotte area and enjoyed dinner at The Flying Saucer. Around 80 beers on tap. And the food’s good, too.

It’d been a good day. I’d taken pictures of some very sad things, but it was aiding a worthy cause and the Brenda Sue’s family was very appreciative.

After things were finished at the churchyard in Lillington I got the turtle out of my car and walked down to a pond behind the building. Some of Brenda Sue’s family, who’d been crying shortly before, joked with me about the transplanted critter. A hissing turtle has very definitively a right end and a wrong end.

Set down by the waterside, though perhaps surrounded by a graveyard’s death and tears, at least this one’s a little better off.

It’s nice to get a little goodness out of it all.

Wow, this was in my Mom's home town....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060518/od_nm/
germany_plane_dc;_ylt=ArR9rouFZbR46YHc93dzOjESH9EA;
_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA
... that link may be expired... check this one --

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?
ContentBlockID=dbea8ea9-43af-46c4-
b3f2-c9532ad012d9&

And here's a little of what the US Air Force Museum has to say about P-51 Mustangs....
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/p51.htm

Oh, what a difference a week makes....

A hike at Raven Rock State Park...

http://old.shelbystar.com/video/John/hike_0001.wmv

"... they’re warm blooded. They ought to know better..."

I saved a turtle on Monday.

When I see the untimely demise of a roadside possum, I feel bad. But they’re warm blooded. They ought to know better. Turtles can’t really hop out of the way like a squirrel or raccoon.

They deserve a little extra care.

Last Sunday evening I drove up to Wake Forest to spend the night with my parents before heading back down to Lillington the next morning. They were exhuming the remains of Brenda Sue Brown, whose 1966 murder is still unsolved. Her remains were being brought to Shelby to
be closer to family, and I was taking pictures.

My job isn’t always a heaping helping of fun, but sometimes it’s the photos I enjoy taking the least that matter the most.

But I got to visit my Mom on Mother’s Day, which was nice, and I got a good drive through some parts of Memory Lane, NC, I don’t get to often, but where I have had some very good times.

Driving south through Raleigh, I passed an office building where I worked for a summer, one of my favorite bars (check the blog – jderrickstar.blogspot.com) and hit up Bob’s Army Surplus on the way out of town.

Over the past 15 years, Bob’s has been the source of more scouting supplies, hobby equipment and birthday gifts than I can remember. On this particular day I landed a metal box for .50-caliber machine gun ammunition. I don’t have an .50-cal rounds, except for the lead balls I use in the flintlock, but these strong, watertight boxes are great for storing all sorts of other things – like some of my more, umm, "volatile," muzzleloading supplies….

I got to Lillington pretty quickly and found the churchyard a few miles west of town. Being early, I took an hour for a quick hike around Raven Rock State Park. It was a nice little jaunt through singing birds and blooming flowers to a big rock overhang on the Cape Fear River that doesn’t really look like a raven but that’s okay. I’ve got a video on the blog.

On the way back to the churchyard I found the turtle in the road. I’d noticed a pond behind the church and figured the critter would have a better life in the pond than in the road….

Read The Star next Thursday for the second half of John’s trek across North Carolina….

The Flying Saucer....

www.beerknurd.com

With something like 80 beers on tap and 140 in bottles, it’s a Mecca for connoisseurs. And if you drink 200 (not all at once) you get your name and favored quote on the wall!

So far I’m only up to 30 – the closest Saucers are in Charlotte and Raleigh….

Grad-Cam!

www.shelbystar.com/medarch/media-97.wmv....

Well, we’d been joking with photojournalist Kaylin Bowers, who spent this past semester as an excellent intern at The Star, that we were gonna make her take photos for us at her own graduation at GWU today. Then wheels started turning and somehow somebody got the idea to wire her to video her walk across the stage….

We’ve got a variety of videocameras at The Star, but they’re all pretty big and bulky – a bit obtrusive. So I started poking around for some options. A real spycam, like you see in a necktie or a pack of cigarettes, is really pretty expensive.

I found some webcam options and a little video gidget that didn’t work very well and that’d have to be hooked up to a computer, but these options involved more complexity, hardware and wires than we were looking for.

But frustrating myself with these toys at The Star, I came across a little tool there we haven’t used a lot – this thing:

http://www.dcfever.com/jebsen/archos/
archos/archos_gmini402_1l.jpg

http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/
dvdplayers/archos_gmini_402_camcorder.jpg

It’s a variety of "Archos." It can’t shoot video quite as well as some of our other gadgets, but it’s small, flat, can be conveniently concealed…..

So then I had to figure out how to hide it.

This is where I have to make some confessions. I’m actually quite good at sewing. This is going back to Scouting skills – string, rope, knots, crochet (ok, there’s no merit badge for that, but I did crochet a hatchet sheath once. And those doilies in the office – all me). Seriously, I’m no professional seamstress, but I’m good enough I scored a free dinner or so sewing patches onto Army uniforms for ROTC buddies back in college.

Okay, I’m weird. At least I’m useful. Mostly harmless….

So I sewed a little fabric pouch for the Archos. I used black, to match GWU’s graduation robes (aren’t you proud, Martha)…. a ribbon to hang it from around the neck…. a tautline hitch (yep, got the merit badge for that one) so the height at which it hangs can be adjusted, a safety pin (mini carabiner) as a quick release mechanism….

And then I realized that the angle at which the device hangs on an individual is very variable depending on who it’s hanging on. So I used patches of Velcro attached to the back as adjustments as to how far it’ll hang from the body that can be added on or taken off as the situation dictates.

This morning I met Kaylin at GWU before the graduation ceremony. She had some duct tape, did some experimenting, figured out what worked for her, and did an excellent job.





Congrats, Kaylin!

"German Luftwaffle Chain Offers Waffles, Overwhelming Air Superiority"

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39674

"Sherpa Can Already Tell You're Not Going To Make It"

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48227

"A man of advertising cannot prepare for a low-oxygen ascent by jogging in Aspen.... However, I have never seen a wristwatch like his, and am looking forward...."

Ahh, The Onion.

"Wow, I am a hippie"

All of a sudden "miles per gallon" has become sexy. At least according to the commercials….

With gas prices doing what they’re doing we’ve suddenly been reminded that gas isn’t free and conserving it is good. It’s good for the wallet and it isn’t bad for the environment either….

I’ve been trying to be a good, environmentally and socially conscious Camry driver -- keeping my ‘99, 4-cylinder, automatic transmission Sedan in good working order, keeping my tires appropriately aired and even burning ethanol-mixed gas when possible.

Because I’d rather burn American, renewable corn booze.

Now I’ve gotten my Federal tax refund back I’m thinking about a "TerraPass," terrapass.com. Basically, you buy off the equivalent of your car’s yearly pollution by funding clean energy projects, trying to make your auto effectively a zero-emissions vehicle.

Just how much of a tree-hugging hippie am I and how many guns will I have to shoot down at the range to compensate? I actually don’t consider the two stereotypical extremes incompatible, and really quite complementary, but that’s another column.

That I’ve already written.

I think I found out about the program on CNN.com a while back. According to their website, they’ve got a third party auditing and keeping tabs on them, insuring they’re legit, and come quite well recommended.

So my $49.95 ($79.95 on my new Lamborghini, or not….) would go to fund things like buying pollution out of the environment on the "Chicago Climate Exchange…. a voluntary cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide pollution," a system that gives companies a financial incentive not to pollute, and which makes sense in my head if not in this column. TerraPass programs also further wind energy and derive electricity by burning cow manure.

Wow, I am a hippie.

But am I fifty bucks worth of hippie? Are those environmental programs the ones I most want to support? Have I done all my research? I mean, is my little portrait of Ulysses S. Grant doing more for the world traded for a TerraPass, or spent bowling?

I just can’t decide. I just can’t make up my mind. I need your help.

Yep, that’s YOU.

Yes, my dear reader, you’re getting ready to do that American thing (No, not eating junk food, watching crummy TV shows and driving overweight cars). Voting.

Just go to The Star’s new, shiny website, shelbystar.com, to vote in our daily poll. I look forward to what folks think I oughta do and being able to blame my personal actions on others.

In the meantime I’ll enjoy my relatively efficient, increasingly sexy, Granny-mobile.

Maybe if I’m lucky then svelte, skilled and bespectacled (that "Woody Allen" flair) will come into vogue, too.

Graham's First Flintlock....

So Graham, our cops and chaos reporter, and I headed down to the range last week....

http://old.shelbystar.com/video/
John/grahamflintlock.wmv

This Week's, Ummm, "Column"....

Ok, so things got too busy at the wrong times and there was no written column. But I keep a few photos in the hopper just in case....

A flower at South Mountains State Park.

Beer Cheese Dip

Here we go with a fun one….

1 large round loaf of bread
2 big jars of Cheese Whiz… (this’ll make more than you really need, but what the heck…)
3 tablespoons Worchester sauce
as much hot sauce as you want
1 tablespoon of minced onion
12 ounces of flat beer

Cut off the top of the loaf and hollow it out, leaving enough bread to serve as a bowl of the cheese dip.

Speaking of the beer cheese dip, make that by mixing the beer, cheese, et al.... together. All those little pieces of bread left over get piled around the cheese-filled loaf for dipping.

You can use non-alcoholic beer if you’ve got an officemate who’s not into alcohol….

Cuteness Incarnate....

At Alive After Five yesterday....

When photographers go wild....

Touche! At the nuke evac drill in KM yesterday.... Myself vs. Mr. Bobby Horton in a shoot off..... Thanks for the photo!

And here's Pete, seeing just how radioactive he is....

More Flintlock Vids....

Check these out -- from some German website in slow motion:

http://www.1447-aschaffenburg.de/
Spass/Videos/Film_steinschloss_3.wmv (1.9 MB)

http://www.1447-aschaffenburg.de/Spass/
Videos/Film_steinschloss_2.wmv (smaller size, 390 Kb)

Getting to Green River Cove Road…

Well, somebody asked for specific directions to my favored spot on Green River Cove Road near Saluda…. So here’s the basics of how to get there:

Basically, you take U.S. 74 west until you run into U.S. 26 headed up to Asheville and then take exit 59. Go down the ramp and take a right. Take the first road on your left and you’re there.

Hugh Koontz, copy editor and fly fishing columnist, clued me in to the road shortly after I got to Shelby and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Have a fun drive down, do some fishing, maybe some tubing… on a pretty day there’s always somebody doing something.

And here’s an online map:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=green+river+cove+road,+saluda,+nc&ll=35.270149,-82.315922&spn=0.060545,0.171661&om=1