Category Archives: Fun stuff

Winter as it happens! @ JoeAGoGo!

Everyone in the Triangle is atwitter over the looming winter weather event, which, according to whom you’re listening, could bring rain, a dusting, enough snow to cancel a planned trucking in of snow to Cary’s Bond Park, enough snow to make Vancouver envious. And we’re atwitter as well, meaning you can follow the advance of this storm of the century/decade/year/month/weekend on our Twitter feed, at JoeAGoGo. Every hour or so we’ll tweet live from our back deck on the advance of this highly anticipated winter weather event. It’s the only weather coverage of this storm that you can count on because we’re reporting it live! As it happens! read more

Durham trail a mountain biking gateway for kids

Kids in the Eastlake and Capitol Hill neighborhoods of Seattle didn’t have a lot of fun places to ride bikes. Then the folks from the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance built the city’s first urban mountain bike skills park in the I-5 Colonnade Park. Kids in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan were in a similar situation until a couple of local mountain bike clubs — Concerned Long Island Mountain Bicyclists and the New York City Mountain Bike Association — worked with the city to help resurrect the city’s derelict Highbridge Park with several miles of mountain bike trail and a skills park. And soon, kids in southwest Durham who also have a dearth of places to ride will have some off-road trail and a pump track, thanks to a joint effort between the city and the Triangle Off-Road Cyclists. read more

News from your neighborhood statewide trail

The emailroom here at GGNC gets inundated with enewsletters, and frankly, most are enews in ename only: most are eblabla. The staff is instructed to throw most in the circular efile.

The January 2010 enewsletter from the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail is an exception, chock full of news on several fronts. We’ll get to those fronts in a moment, but for the benefit of those of you not familiar with the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, a quick introduction is in order. The MST is a work-in-progress trail that will one day span the state, running from Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee border to Jockey’s Ridge State Park, where North Carolina gives it up to the Atlantic. The trail is estimated to run about 1,000 miles when done. About half of it is finished, volunteer work crews are adding more monthly, which is enewsnugget No. 1 from this months Friends newsletter: read more

A weather reprieve, a call to action

OK, I’ve heard enough kvetching of late about the weather. Or did I mean to say I’ve done enough kvetching of late about the weather? Either way, the weather of late has been less than inviting.

However, as it is wont to do, the forecast that midweek called for rain and cold throughout the weekend has changed. Today is now supposed to be sunny and seasonal. Based on the tinge of early morning sunlight I see over the treetops, it appears to be illuminating a near-cloudless sky: Bravo to the new forecast. And since the forecast still calls for rain tomorrow, it’s imperative that we make the most of today and get out and move. A suggestion or five: read more

Weekend plans? (Other than freezing?)

Not sure about you, but sometimes when the temperature isn’t supposed to get much above freezing I need a little extra incentive to get out and get going. Like Saturday’s “Kickoff to a Healthy New Year” event planned for  the American Tobacco Trail in southern Wake County. They’ve got all sorts of events planned to keep you warm. Rex UNC Health Care will offer free health screenings, nutrition advice and — this is the part that’ll keep you warm — exercises. Wake County Parks will lead guided nature walks, the Triangle Off Road Cyclists will lead guided bike rides, Harmony Studios in Apex will lead a Yoga demo (alas, not Bikram),  the NC Geocachers will lead a search and discover mission — all kinds of ways to keep … well, from freezing. read more