Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s in the sun. Or in today’s case, at least outside.
Could a TIGER save Durham’s American Tobacco Trail bridge?
While Durham officials circle their wagons and privately mull how to come up with another $2 million to build a pivotal pedestrian bridge over I-40, thereby completing the 22-mile American Tobacco Trail, others outside the city are more candid with possible solutions.
Yes, Virginia, there is a cool weekend ahead
Fly like an eagle, run like an alligator’s nipping at your heels, go somewhere where you might need a — be still my heart — jacket! It’s all on North Carolina’s busy agenda this weekend.
Coast
Flying like a bird: it should be on your life’s to-do list, and since it’s there, why not knock it off this weekend? Kitty Hawk Kites has taught more than 300,000 people to hang glide off the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, and as far as we know they’ve all landed (though we know of at least one — ahem — who didn’t necessarily land on his feet). It’s surprisingly easy and even more fun than the birds make it look. An hour of classroom instruction, then two on the dunes soaring up to 100 yards and getting as high as 15 feet (it doesn’t sound high until you’re up there). The laws of aerodynamics dictate that you must weigh no less than 75 pounds, no more than 225. $99
ATT I-40 span a bridge over troubled water
The long-awaited pedestrian bridge over I-40 in Durham that represents the last link in the 22-mile American Tobacco Trail — the link that was supposed to begin construction later this summer and open next year — has been derailed.
Turns out the project will cost about $2 million more than Durham anticipated, $2 million that the city must now try to come up with in a period of extreme cutbacks in across-the-board government spending.
Resistance … isn’t a bad idea
I wrote the following story originally for the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer in Raleigh. It runs here with links.
They don’t require a monthly payment plan and their own room in your house. In fact, you can get ‘em for about $20, and when you’re not using them, they tuck away in a drawer or under your bed.