A human-powered lifestyle....

I enjoyed living in uptown Shelby – able to walk to work, bike to the store, walk to church, run to Joe's….

Yet my job involved driving everywhere and being ready at a moment’s notice to drive anywhere, so I wasn’t always able to get in as much healthy and environmentally-friendly transportation as I’d have liked.

But at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I’m getting ready to spend a few years, parking is a horror and walking and cycling are a way of life. By the time I could have found a parking garage or waited for a bus… I could have hopped on my bike and been there. When I start to mentally math out how much walking I did my first two years between where I lived on South Campus and Franklin Street, around a mile away… I got a lot of exercise!

Later on I moved closer to the main campus and got a bike, but I still got in plenty of work zooming around Chapel Hill. Just getting to class each day is enough of a workout to keep you in pretty good shape.

June 29th I’m taking off with my folks to spend several weeks visiting family in Germany in a town that involves a lot of walking.

I’m looking forward.

"Officials Warn Rink Against 'Christian Skate' Night"

http://www.wral.com/family/9418138/detail.html

Ummm... I go to another Christian-themed, yet inclusive, private institution on a weekly basis myself.

Church.

Used to be this sort of thing ticked me off. Now, getting ready to start training to be a lawyer, I'm glad there's such silliness in the world. Lucrative, lucrative silliness....

Yay! Go hurricanes!

http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/jderrick/?action=view&current=HurricanesHockeywmv.flv

Some friends were going to the final game last week. Getting into town at the last minute after the move I didn't have a ticket, but I still got to tailgate and watch outside on the big screen....

"The Day They Hung the Elephant"….

http://www.blueridgecountry.com/elephant/elephant.html

Somehow this came up in conversation a few days ago. I’m not exactly sure how I get into those sorts of conversations, and sometimes I get the feeling folks think I’m weaving them a yarn. I’m really not. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Somebody even wrote a book about it…. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0932807755/002-8243804-7675254?v=glance&n=283155

"The Day They Hung the Elephant"

Turtle!

I found her in the woods a few days ago. You can tell she's a Ms. by the shape of her shell.

She hissed at me, but I'm used to getting that out of women... (just kidding).

“Happy Father’s Day.... Now drive the truck.”

Well, I survived the move from Shelby to Wake Forest. Not that I enjoyed it, mind you, but given the two options of survival or un-survival, I think I came out ahead.

And I couldn’t have done it without a little help from my friends, including The Star’s managing editor, Alan, the webmaster, Chad, a newspaper buddy of mine in Wake Forest named Nate and Joe, who had car trouble but was there in spirit. More on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com….

And of course my parents were there. My Dad even got to help on Father’s Day – “Happy Father’s Day,” read the card, “Now drive the truck.”

All the planning and worrying I invested in the project paid off. As my scoutmaster used to say:
to fail to plan is to plan to fail.

This mantra is especially relevant in the great outdoors, where help is not always near and sometimes Walmart is a long way away.

And now, to illustrate the importance of planning in life and the outdoors, is our very own, newly unemployed and law school-bound, John Derrick.

For instance, don’t go riding a broken down bicycle across Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein without a tent, sleeping bag, long pants or even shorts with a zipper that will stay up. This may sound like something that would never happen to anybody, but trust me it has.

Secondly, you can’t live on beer and chocolate forever. But it is fun to try.

For my recent move from Shelby I had months to plan, gather boxes, organize labor…. Moving to Shelby a few years ago, I’d taken the job on a Thursday afternoon and was in town the next Monday at lunchtime living out of the Econo Lodge while I looked for an apartment.

That was moving a little quicker than I generally like to, but it worked. There is a flip side to the importance of planning – the importance of flexibility. “All planning is bunk on first contact,” I’ve heard. So when I had to go to York, SC, last Friday to pick up the U-Haul I’d reserved weeks in advance to pick up in Shelby I was able to catch a ride with Chad who was heading kinda that way anyway. I guess that was flexibility.

Or that time when a UNC-Chapel Hill camping group headed to Asheville kinda missed the I-40/I-85 split somewhere up near Greensboro, and didn’t notice their mistake until South Carolina and then had to figure out an alternate route. That was stupidity and poor navigation, but there was some flexibility in there too.

That was the vehicle I wasn’t in.

So maybe it’s kind of a balancing act between the nebulous, fluid flexibility and hard, rigid planning – often neither way is the right approach and the best strategy is somewhere in the middle.

And remember, just because your Army ROTC unit didn’t explicitly tell you to pack something for a field training exercise didn’t mean they didn’t want you to bring it. Maybe they just thought nobody would need to be reminded to bring un… ummm….
Nevermind.

By the way, the best email address to reach me at right now is probably jderrick@alumni.unc.edu....

DRIVE TRAIN FELL OUT

See, cars seem particularly unhealthy when they’re involved in helping somebody else move. Not that they break down on purpose, or that there is any foul play involved on the part of their owners, the Moving Day Deities strike down an unusually high number of automobiles when a U-Haul gets involved.

Take Chad’s truck for instance. We’ve written about it on our blogs before: just search for DRIVE TRAIN FELL OUT. Seriously, Chad, Alan and I in his big, tough, manly 4x4 at a light on the way to move Alan’s mum. The light goes green, the pedal goes down, the drive train goes to…. the worst shaking and shrieking of metal I’ve ever heard.

So Chad had to leave us to accompany his towed-away truck. I still think he got the good deal that day.

But this move went really pretty well. I tried hard to have everything well organized: enough boxes, have the truck ready when my folks got there, minimize the amount of brute labor they’d have to do, while maximizing the mule-work of myself and my young buddies.

Yay….

In case you're interested...

... I survived the move from Shelby to Wake Forest yesterday. Later this summer I'll shift over to Chapel Hill, where I'll start law school.

In case you're really interested, the best way to contact me now is probably jderrick@alumni.unc.edu....

"... the lady at the ABC store recognized me..."

Chapel Hill’s going to take some getting used to.

I’ve been scoping the place out in preparation for starting law school in the fall, and I don’t like some of what I see.

First of all, I don’t know where I’ll shoot my flintlock. As classes ramp up I may not have too much time for marksmanship and some of my other hobbies anyway, but if I did want to go shooting the best I’ve been able to reconnoiter online are expensive clubs and little indoor ranges that wouldn’t like my big blackpowder rifle.

I’ve gotten spoiled living here in Cleveland County with a free, usually empty, rifle range only 20 minutes away.

And I’ve gotten spoiled by Royster Memorial Golf Course here in Shelby. For under $200 I joined as a member and have been able to play to my heart’s content for the past year. That’s really cheap for golf and has given me an affordable education in the sport.

I’m not sure I’ll find that sort of deal around Chapel Hill. Truth be known, this area has spoiled me with everything from trout fishing to ultralight flying to boating… even though I’m going to keep doing these things and writing columns about them, I’ll miss doing them in Cleveland County.

And I’ve enjoyed all the people I’ve gotten to know and things I’ve gotten to do with The Star. Driving my trusty Camry from Pennsylvania to Louisiana, flying in a B-17, getting to know a community….

I’m amazed at how many folks in the community have gotten to know me through my work at
The Star. Folks say hello to me on the golf course, at the laundromat, around town and everywhere else. Even the lady at the ABC store recognized me (I was buying a birthday present for someone else, honest).

Lots of folks have wished me well as I leave, passing along kind comments and sharing good fellowship. I’ve got an unbelievably nice letter from a reader in Boiling Springs that I’ve spent the past week trying to figure out a worthy response to. The people and the community have been far too good to me during my time at The Star.

And even just working at a paper, always at the center of the news, is an experience.

When a reporter at The Star makes out an assignment for a photographer, the writer prints out a sheet of paper with the basics of the shoot so we’ll know what to get a picture of.

These sheets of paper wind up in pockets, camera bags, cabinets and everywhere else.

I’m going through my apartment, getting ready to move to Wake Forest for the summer and then to Chapel Hill in the fall. I’ve given some things away, recycled others and been generally working to cull down the pile of what we’ll have to move. I’ve been finding the assignment sheets for two years of photo shoots.

And I can remember every single one of them.

"Students Use High-Pitched Ring Tone Many Adults Can't Hear"

http://www.wral.com/technology/9353826/detail.html

I'm not sure which is more clever -- a ringtone adults can't hear or a noise that can repel teens....

"Black Cat Ale"

Some folks were asking about a recent beer I brewed, so here's the recipe from www.mrbeer.com...

"Black Cat Ale

This spooky pitch-black ale is a malty, roasty English-style brew. The higher alcohol content
makes this brew the perfect warmer for a cool fall night, and a hit at any Halloween party.

Ingredients:
1 can St. Patrick’s Irish Stout
1 can Golden Wheat UME
1/3 oz Willamette Hops
1 cup Honey (you provide)
1 Muslin Hop Bag

Brewing Instructions:
1. Clean and sanitize the following equipment according to your Brew Keg instructions: a pot of
three quart size or greater, a metal spoon or metal whisk, your keg fermenter, keg lid, spigot
assembly, muslin hop bag, and a funnel or cup measure for transferring to the keg fermenter as
well as your can opener. Keep all on a sanitized surface.
2. Place 4 cups of water in the pot. Bring the water to a boil add in the honey and stir to mix well, then remove from heat.
3. Add the St. Patrick’s Irish Stout, Golden Wheat UME and 1/3 oz Willamette hops (in hop bag). Stir with a sanitized spoon or whisk until fully dissolved. This mixture is called the wort.
Note: Hops will appear as green leaf particles and will not dissolve.
4. Add 4 quarts of cold tap water to your sanitized keg fermenter.
5. Add the wort from the saucepan to the brew keg using the funnel or cup measure, and top up
with cold tap water to the 8.5 quart mark. Stir to make sure that the wort is all one temperature.
Preferable temperature is between 70 and 80 degrees.
Warning: If the temperature is too hot, there is risk of killing the yeast.
6. Sprinkle the yeast from the packet on top of the wort. Allow to sit for 5 minutes, then stir the
wort vigorously with the sanitized spoon or whisk.
7. Screw the lid in place and set the keg fermenter in a room with a stable temperature (68 to
76°F is best). Leave the fermenter for at least two weeks, or until the fermentation has ceased.
8. Bottle in PET carbonated beverage bottles or non-screw top beer bottles, using the correct
amount of priming sugar as directed in your Brewing with Mr. Beer booklet. Carbonate as usual,
allow to lager for at least one week before popping the first one open for best results."

Please wear your bicycle helmet

Please wear your bicycle helmet.
Please wear your bicycle helmet.
Please wear your bicycle helmet.

I’m not sure I said that enough, or that it can be said enough – please wear your bicycle helmet.

See, I’ve even said "please."

I’ve written about the importance of bike helmets before, and I don’t mean to seem bossy or like a broken record or anything but now I’ve got a friend coming out of a week in the hospital following a bike wreck. He was wearing his helmet. I fear what might have happened if he hadn’t been. I really don’t want any cyclists around here so seriously injured or worse….

Apparently he was riding along and fell. The helmet did its job and broke, absorbing a hefty hunk of the impact so his head wouldn’t have to. I imagine the past week since the accident hasn’t been any fun for him, but he is thankfully expected to make a full recovery.

If you need any statistical background on the importance of helmets, the North Carolina bicycle crash data for the most recent year the DOT has it on their website shows 23 cyclists killed in 2004 – none of them were wearing helmets.

According to the state, helmets "reduce the risk of head injury by as much as 85% and the risk of brain injury by as much as 88%" and quality helmets that meet the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s standards can be found for between $10-15.

Helmets.org says to replace helmets after crashes, after they get old… I’ve heard it said every year because the materiel degrades with time. I’ve also read every three years because the technology advances. I’m not sure there’s a real Gospel timeline for these things, but as the website quoth: "Is it from the 1970's? Replace."

Also, according to the website, which has a lot of stuff on it, "many helmet users are not securing their helmets level on the head and adjusting the straps carefully. Those cute kids with helmets tilted back have their big, bare foreheads right out there ready to" well nevermind the gory specifics….

At some point I’ll probably screw up and forget to wear mine and hopefully I’ll live to regret it, but at least I passed it along. More on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com….

Anyway, now that I’ve whined that out of my system, I got to spend a few days last week down at the little fishing cottage my grandfather built on our coast near the Pamlico Sound. I really enjoyed a little down time. Check out the blog for some photos and even a video of the process of catching, cooking and cleaning crabs.

Oh, and by the way, WEAR YOUR BICYCLE HELMET.

Crabbing!

http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/jderrick/
?action=view&current=crabbing_0001.flv

More Bike Links....

http://helmets.org/

http://www.ncdot.org/transit/bicycle/

http://www.ncdot.org/transit/bicycle/safety/
programs_initiatives/helmets_factsheet.html

http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/pbcat/index.htm -- That's a really good link, lets you enter in tons of factors for bike accidents and check the numbers....

Bleeding and Swearing

Well, in my family the old saw is that whenever my Dad and I take on a project we end up bleeding and swearing. We also say that some of the worst days of our lives have involved U-Hauls. We’ve got nothing against U-Hauls just like we’ve got nothing against proctologists -- they may be necessary, but it doesn’t mean you enjoy using them.

And honestly, I’ve been a bit stressed lately. I’m not really, really sure why and I sincerely apologize for the times I’ve been too hurried, spoken too sharply or otherwise not lived up to my courteous potential. Things are going pretty well for me, but I really needed the few days I got off last week.

Ohhh.... Pretty Sunset....

http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/
jderrick/?action=view&current=sunset_0001.flv

Down on the Pamlico River last weekend.

6/6/06....

I first posted this a while back, but it seems rather timely --

That would explain why the devil never calls me back….

www.religionnewsblog.com/11134

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2005/04/0425_050425_papyrus.html

Believe it or not, the devil’s number, 666, has been revalued to 616 after some ancient papyrus documents have been read by scientists for the first time using new technological techniques, giving us “new” work by Sophocles and showing us this Biblical typo.

This makes me glad I didn’t get that tattoo (just kidding) and reminds me of an old joke about strict verbatim literal interpretation:

www.technologyinvestor.com/login/2004/Nov30-04.php

A new young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and law of the church, by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head Abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son." So, he goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery, where the original manuscript is held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old Abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes downstairs to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall, and wailing "We forgot the 'R', we forgot the 'R'." His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old Abbot, "What's wrong, father?

"With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "Celebrate, the word is Celebrate!"

CRAB!

Yep, it's a Pamlico River blue crab. I've actually had bad dreams about these before. Check out the column and video coming this week....

"A well-boiled octopus can be hurled close to 100 feet..."

"For more than 40 years, Detroit hockey fans have had the peculiar tradition of lobbing dead octopuses onto the rink whenever their beloved Red Wings reach the National Hockey League playoffs. A record 54 octopuses hit the ice here in a single game...."

http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/TCP/faq/TCPfaq2b.cfm?ID=59

I told folks I wasn't making this up.

Rest Haven, on the shore of the Pamlico River....

Nope, didn't alter the color or anything... this is really how it looked....