The Pamlico River (or at least my part of it....)

Socratic method....

Well, law school has started, and the profs talk a lot about the Socratic method, whereby the student learns by answering the teacher's questions.

Yay.

But do the profs know what happened to Socrates? He was tried, convicted and sentenced to suicide for corrupting the youth!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

Prof, do you really wanna die?

Do you feel lucky?

Well, do ya',....

Happy Birthday, McCain!

Is McCain too old to be pres?

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/
Is_McCain_too_old_to_be_0824.html

You know, maybe it's just that I was so young at the time, but Reagan, who entered the White House at 69, has always seemed like a grandfatherly, elderly man to me.

For some reason McCain, now 70, still seems to me like he could take on a platoon of my peers in a bar fight... and win.

Kayak...

Yep, here I am down east in my family's kayak: a Wilderness Systems Pungo 140... abotu 14 feet long with a couple hatches for gear and enough room to stretch out.

http://www.wildernesssystems.com/
product.asp?productid=4

"...more than four Napoleons in length!"

Kayaks, to absurdly over-simplify, come in two flavors – long and short.

And they are born in their conditions for very good reasons, specifically related to their duties in life.

Some kayaks are short, shorter than Napoleon (who was actually taller than we give him credit for). They are very good at turning, but not going straight. Imagine paddling one of those twisty, turny kiddy bumper boats from the fair – exciting and maneuverable going through rapids, but rather frustrating over ten miles of open water.

Other kayaks are longer, sometimes more than four Napoleons in length! With keels, ridges, rudders and other devices that bite into the water and hold them on course, they’re great at going long, straight distances, but would turn through tight rapids about as well as you could slalom a dragster.

Both of these extremes, and the many combinations and variations along the spectrum, originate in boats built by the northern Aleuts and Inuits to hunt seals or penguins or ice or whatever they wanted to eat. Their sturdy, swift crafts were made of animal skin stretched over a framework of wood or bone.

Mine’s made of plastic, and takes a lot less dead seals to make. More on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com….

My family has one about 14 feet long (two Napoleons and maybe a penguin or two) and it’s blue (maybe the color of Napoleon’s eyes, or maybe not). It leans towards the cruising end of the kayak spectrum, tracking pretty straight and with a couple of hatches for gear.

It’s also got a cupholder, which I imagine is pretty handy on extended whale-hunting expeditions.

While some of the shorter whitewater boats are so compact the space for your legs is actually molded into the hull (apparently you sometimes even select a boat based on your inseam measurement…) our boat has plenty of room to stretch out and move around. In compromise, the hole in the hull where you sit, the cockpit, is pretty large.

On a lot of kayaks the hole in the top of the boat in which one sits is pretty small, allowing you to wear a special waterproof “skirt” that fits snuggly around you and loops over the rim of the cockpit, keeping water out.

This actually allows you to roll the boat upside down (kayaks are a little more tipsy than the QEII) and quickly bring it back right side up, a trick known as the “Eskimo roll.” But if you mess up, as I’ve been prone to do, you can always just tug the skirt from the boat and you’re free (though upside down and underwater) in an instant.

For the original kayakers, hanging inverted in icy water, sewn into their snug boats, a “wet exit,” if even possible, wasn’t a fun option. So they learned to roll their boats.
I haven’t tried rolling mine. I’ve rolled little whitewater numbers in a pool before but I’ve fortunately never had to roll one in the wild and don’t even have a skirt for my family’s boat, which we just use for relatively flatwater cruising.

Down east a few weeks ago, on North Carolina’s watery end where the North American continent frays into sea, I got to go on a few short cruises. And next week I’ll get to write about them.

And yes, I know penguins live in the southern hemisphere. It was a joke.

If they had lawn tractor pulls I’d be impressed....

Nude sunbathing is very legal in Germany, a fact that I can’t say I’ve never enjoyed.
But I didn’t exactly know beforehand that my bicycle path along the Ems River was going run right through a colony of dozens of unashamedly naked German men.
Darn near exclusively men, they were.
Not that there’s anything wrong with dozens of naked German men around a bike path along an old canal, but they do certainly spice up the intro to a column.
And no, I didn’t take any pictures.
I was riding along the river, kinda. I’d heard from family we were visiting in my mother’s hometown, Muenster, about a new bikepath along the river, and I’d set out to follow it.
That was proving difficult.
I’d follow a trail along the river, and then it would veer away from the water into some fields. And then a through a town. And then I’d find a sign that seemed to indicate I was headed in the right direction but it would just lead me to a T in the road, with no further sign to indicate where I should go from there.
I did see a deer once.
At some point I just really kinda gave up on following a particular route and started playing connect the dots with the towns, generally following the basic direction of the river but truthfully just trying to get me home.
It wasn’t such a long ride – just half a day, certainly shorter than the 12+ hours I’d spent riding to the Netherlands and back – but we were still in a heat wave. In a country where not too many folks have air conditioning because they generally just don’t need it, 100 degrees is hot….
So I was drinking a lot of liquids. Plenty of water, juice, beer, soda I know I shouldn’t be drinking…. I literally probably went through a gallon on the ride.
At one point I passed a poster for a tractor pull (photo on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com), hardly the traditional German pastime.
If they had lawn tractor pulls I’d be impressed.
In the end I got back to Muenster just fine. Actually, in some respects I felt better following my rides in Germany than I do during my ones here in the States, where I’m riding along the roads in traffic, constantly looking over my shoulder and giving myself a sore neck. Over there I’m more often along a specifically designated bikepath and don’t have to worry as much.
But oh well. I moved into Chapel Hill this past weekend to start law school in a few weeks, and plan on checking out their cycling scene.
I’ll let you know how it goes….

Check back next week for the nekkid’ Germans....

Wow, that was a lot of naked German men.
Wow, this is going to take some explaining.
After cycling to the Netherlands and back from my mother’s hometown in northern Germany (no, I was not using performance-enhancing substances – just look at my performance: it took me 12 and a half hours!), some of my family members suggested a bike path along a nearby river called the Ems.
This sounded nice, and I have a happy history or riding along rivers. While I was studying abroad in Freiburg, in southern Germany, I rode the Rhine all the way to Liechtenstein via France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
Riding alongside a big river generally means a pretty level path – no a whole lot of changes in elevation to pedal. And a good water-side bike path simplifies navigation pretty nicely. You just follow the river, enjoy the view and make good time.
So I figured I’d ride north out of Muenster to Greven, about 20 kilometers away, then ride up the river southeast to Telgte, and then head back west to Muenster. This would make a big triangle of maybe 60 kilometers or so – a little less than 40 miles.
But those little lines on the map don’t always match with the actual roads, and sometimes a little bushwhacking, a little bit of “well, that looks like a good direction” is necessary. Still I made it to Greven in good time and got a doener kebap at a Turkish fast food place.
A doener kebap is basically a Greek gyro in sandwich or wrap form – a quick lamb meal that can be Greek, Turkish, Turkey invaded Greece, Alexander the Great invaded Persia-part-of-which-is-now-called-Turkey, or as the band They Might be Giants said “Istanbul was Constantinople, now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople…”
... ehh, it’s from a part of world that’s swung both ways over the past few thousand years leading to horrible wars and some great fast food. More on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com.
So I took my Turkish doener and German beer and started looking for the path along the river. I found a really nice brick lane that promptly ended in a few hundred meters. Then I found another that I rode for a while until it went into a private farm, and then into the farm’s fields and then into the field’s barbed wire (it’s called “Stacheldraht” in German).
It wasn’t the first time I’ve had to maneuver a bicycle past barbed wire. But at least this time I didn’t get an electrical shock.
On the other side of the fence was a bumpy, narrow dirt path along the river, leading (eventually) through a colony of sunbathers.
Check back next week for the nekkid’ Germans.

Recent headline on AOL's welcome screen....

"Baby talk, trash talk
Know what Britney confessed & who Justin bad-mouthed"

I don't wanna sound apathetic, but I just don't care.

German Tractor Pulling....

Capt. Marks

Last Thursday I found out that a buddy of mine had passed away the night before following a chance accident.

http://www.dunndailyrecord.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=79890&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=&S=1

I was really put on my heels.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost a friend or family member. And I know every man is mortal. But after 14 years in the Marines, 16 years as a Green Beret, training as a HALO jumper and every other crazy thing you can do in uniform, stints as a fireman, cop, deputy, EMT, assistant pastor, competitive skydiving, every position in Scouting you could name….

He ate uncooked meat to toughen his guts, used a sander to toughen his bare feet (he hated wearing shoes) and I’d have told you he was ten feet tall and bullet proof and any suggestion otherwise was downright un-American.

It’s as if Chuck Yeager died of a toothache or Elton John passed away as a celebrated war hero and there’s a bunch of us kinda scratching our heads with puzzled looks thinking this just doesn’t seem fitting….

Returning to Laurel

Well, as the one year anniversary of Katrina approaches, The Star has sent Megan Ward and I back to Laurel, Miss., to retrace our steps and see how things have changed following a year of rebirth. Stay tuned in the upcoming days and weeks for more....

(Here's a hint -- this time, Megan and I dont' have to sleep on the floor. And we get showers)

Doener Kebap? Döner? Donair? Donner?

I love these things. These lamb, salad and sheep’s cheese creations are half the reason I’m not a total vegetarian. Seriously, the hard working Turks who make them at German train stations have saved me from hunger more than once and I am always eyeing worthy substitutes on this side of the pond. I sometimes get a good gyro at a fair or in a Greek restaurant and someday I’ll try making them on my own.

But for now I’ll just have to content myself with some good websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebap

http://turkeytravelplanner.com/details/Food/DonerKebap.html

http://www.serve.com/shea/doner.htm

Okay, I haven’t tried this recipe, but here you go: http://www.netcooks.com/recipes/Sandwiches/Doner.Kebab.html

Ooops....!

"Manatee Swims Up Hudson River"

http://www.wral.com/family/9646898/detail.html

Because everybody needs a tarpboat....

http://old.shelbystar.com/video/John/tarpboat.avi

Ya'll remember this from a couple winters ago? Chad dug up the video for me -- thanks, Chad!

Well, my dog can get to sleep, but my hermit crab and I can't so here we go....

So I had a beer on the Dutch side of the border and it was a pathetic little shot-sized slurp that was too young to die which I offed in two sips.

So I had a beer on the German side (but the receipt was still in Dutch) that was pretty good and I headed on my way, cycling back to my Mom’s home town, hours away.

On the way to the border I’d tried to pass though cute town centers and expose myself to the native culture. Lots of windmills.

After seven hours on the road I just wanted to get back, so I picked a bigger, straighter set of road-side bike paths that took me pretty directly past Ochtrup, Burgsteinfurt, Steinfurt… and then I have no idea where I was.

Let’s say you see a sign for the town you want to go to. That’s good, because the map can’t fit a town’s worth of roads into a half inch worth of print. So you follow the sign and it gradually leads you to an on ramp for a major highway you have no business on. The maps were too small, the roads were too big and I wound up bushwhacking my way to Laer (pretty church, windmill), not to be confused with Leer, a few kilometers up the road (yep, another church).

Took a left in Laer and wound up in Altenberge (not to seem anti-religious, but another freakin’ church).

It’s incredible what a bratwurst and a beer (my performance enhancing drug of choice) will do for the spirit, as I was reminded in Altenberge, and newly refueled I started in on the closing stretch through Nienberge back to Roxel and Muenster.

All told I was on the move for 12 and a half hours. Figuring the kilometers and converting, I made almost 100 miles using only one gear (one didn’t work, the other was too much work).

And there’s been a local heat wave. Mathing 35 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit, I really can’t believe I did that in 95 degree heat on roads that must have been even hotter.

But I really didn’t feel all that bad the next morning. Waking up, I staggered a few steps, got my feet under me…

… and kept on going.

Magnetic Frog Levitation

http://www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html

I really don't make this stuff up....

13,000 emails

As an undergraduate student at UNC I had an email account on their server. When I left I set up a forwarding system to bounce the emails sent to that account to a newer email address, so I'd still see them.

Getting ready to go back to UNC three years later, I checked my old account.

Apparently, though copies of the emails sent to jderrick@email.unc.edu were bounced on along to my AOL account, the first copy of each email stayed on the UNC server....

All 13,000 of them.

Delete.Delete.Delete.Delete.Delete.Delete.Delete....

Found another turtle....