Chip's Blog

Slipping Away to Hidden Lake - 2009

2009-09-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

I decided I could break away for maybe a 30 minute swim with
the ducks, fish and turtles at Hidden Lake Family Campground
Saturday. I made it to Hidden Lake this year again just a
couple of days before they close for the season after Labor
Day. The weather was perfect and I couldn't resist. I paid
my $5 and drove in. The water felt nice, the air temperature
was in the high 80s, the sky was a perfect blue, and the sun
was warm. I swam for a while, then climbed up on a dock out
in the lake to soak up some late in the day rays.

I was lightly snoozing when a woman's voice woke me and said
as she climbed the ladder to the dock that she was coming to
borrow some of my planks if that would be OK. I agreed and
then she said in about 30 seconds my quietness would be
gone. Indeed, she had quite a brood of kids, and I'm not
sure how many were hers. They came and went and had a good
old time. One wanted to know my name, but was too shy to ask
so her mom (the woman) touched me on the hand and asked me.
She also asked me if I lived at the campground. She was
pretty and tall, lean, and had a nice collection of blue ink
tattoos. Her 15 year old was not there today she said, but
was back home babysitting. Little Maddie was the youngest
child I think and she was 3. She was a little water bug
wearing a life jacket and loved jumping off the dock into
the water and was having a jolly time. Her mom told me
Maddie (who wanted to be called Mermaid that day) had gone
off the high dive earlier and had been swimming in this lake
since before she could hardly walk.

I enjoyed our chat, but decided to start towards home. As I
was swimming away from the dock, one of the boys said he
sure wished he had some goggles like mine, so I told him he
could use them for a while. He LOVED them and swam around
and had a fine time looking for stuff underwater. Later, I
figured I should really be going, and he really really
didn't want to give them back. But I coaxed him into it.

I swam to shore, and as I lay on the towel in the grass,
drying off in the late afternoon sun, the happy sounds of
kids playing and the pleasant smell of barbeque chicken
cooking was all quite sublime.

Music of note this year was "Achy Breaky Heart", "Sweet Home
Alabama, "Song of the South (Sweet Potato Pie and I Shut My
Mouth)", and Bob Seger's "Turn the Page". Hearty belly
laughter of note came from three rather plump Mexican
looking teen girls all trying to climb up on a huge inner
tube out in the water. My two hour break went by oh so fast,
but it was a beautiful quick trip to another place and a
different state of time.

Back to the 50s at Hidden Lake - 2008

2008-08-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

If you miss the way things were back in maybe the 50s in
North Carolina, I have the place for you to spend a
nostalgic afternoon: Hidden Lake Campground right off of
highway 54 between Chapel Hill and Burlington, NC.

For five bucks you can spend the day at the little lake, and
hang out with people who have for generations been
perfecting the art of summertime, where the living is easy.

At this lake, I dare say that most patrons have yet to
attend their first in a series of political correctness
seminars.

In contrast there was plenty of beer drinking, cigarette
smoking, loud talking, joking around y'all, carrying-on, putting-
down, throwing-down, cussing, cutting-up, duck
feeding, duck chasing, raucous laughing, french fry eating,
Mountain Dew drinking, and Marshall Tucker Band: can't you
see, what that woman Lord, she's been doing to me?

As you can see, it was a fine afternoon and I was glad I
made my annual pilgrimage before the swimming season ends on
Labor Day. And there is one more little item to mention. It
is about one of life's little pleasures for old guys like myself.

First, let me explain that, oddly to some, my fun at the
lake consisted mostly of swimming. I brought my goggles and
swam "laps" from dock to dock out in the deeper part of the
lake for some time, with lots of resting in the sun on the
warm planks in between.

After a while, a young woman (Kelly) came to down to the lake
and I could tell by the change in verbal behavior of the
young men (I couldn't see much without my glasses) that she
was probably nice looking. She did look nice to me too, but
in a very blurry sort of way.

After I was finished with my laps, I swam to shore and
plopped down in a big play sand pile, wiggled my toes in the
warm sand and generally did a great job of looking exhausted
like some sort of 52 year old in training for an Iron Man
competition.

Lo and behold a vision appeared, and it was Kelly standing
over me. She was about the cutest 16 year old I've seen in
decades. She said that she and her friends wanted to know
how many times a week I swam and how far. Gosh, I had no
idea my swimming form was so impressive. I explained that I
was just swimming for general exercise and that I wasn't
preparing for anything special. She thanked me politely and
headed off to report back to her friends.

I laid in the sand for a while enjoying my new found
(and clearly transient) athletic glory, then rinsed myself off,
swam a victory lap just for the heck of it, and headed home.

Merlefest - 2007

2007-05-19T04:23:00.001-07:00

Doc Watson and the Nashville Bluegrass Band

Doc Watson and friends.

Crooked Still

Donna the Buffalo

Geese, Baby Geese, and Snakes at the Nortel Pond

2007-05-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

The above snakes live at the Nortel pond.
The snakes below are examples of some other snakes.

There is virtually no chance that a Cottonmouth like
the one above would be found in Durham County. A
Cottonmouth is poisonous. You can see the distribution
map of the Cottonmouth in each county on the NC Museum of
Natural Science web page:

http://www.naturalsciences.org/research/
herpetology/Venomous_Snakes_of_NC.pdf

The above snake is a Brown Water Snake.
It is not poisionous.

The above Northern Water Snake is the kind of snake that I think
lives at our pond. It is not poisonous.

Brian's 40th Birthday Bash

2007-02-25T01:59:00.000-08:00

Look at that!

Wow, an amazing resemblance.

Dan and Tracy.

It took about an hour to open all the gifts. Brian had to go into 'hat on backwards mode'.

Floyd, Betty, Amanda, and Brian.

Tracy and Paul. Paul was a good sport all evening.

The Lunch Bunch: Dan, Chip, Tracy, and Brian. We had veritable platefulls of interesting conversations over the years.

Brian and Amanda. Her lasagna was amazing, and as usual she was the hostess with the mostess.

Floyd, Betty, and Brian.

Proud parents with their fine young man.

Please Don't Eat The Scrubby!

2006-12-31T08:07:00.000-08:00

For a long while, someone was taking away our scrubbies. I would bring them to work to clean dishes in our common area sink. Usually the scrubby would be fine for about two weeks, and then it would disappear. I decided that maybe someone thought it was "used" and needed to be thrown away. And just maybe, that someone might speak Spanish as a primary language. So with the help of one of my very good Spanish speaking friends, I created a little sign regarding the scrubbies. The sign worked like magic. The red scrubby has remained at the sink for months and months now. Maybe someone should at this point throw it away, but I think it is doing just fine. So I was quite amused when someone added a sign to mine. As you can see in the fotografía (or if you prefer en français, photographies), our sink is quite the lively multi-lingual gathering spot now.

I am told on good authority that what our wry French speaking friend actually said here was, "Please don't eat the scrubby."

Haw River and NC Botanical Gardens

2006-11-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

Kayakers on the Haw River.

Michelle

Chip

Friendly cat at the NC Botanical Gardens.

Venus Flytrap, native to NC.

Palmetto, SC state tree.

Pac-Man water plant.

Paul Green cabin.

Does anyone know what kind of flower this is???

The Old Reliable Run - 2006

2006-11-13T05:10:00.000-08:00

Sunday, I ran in The Old Reliable Run, a 10K event in downtown Raleigh. I wanted to do something challenging at age 50, so this was it. There were lots of athletic young people there, but a surprising number of grey haired warriors as well. I chatted with a former co-worker of mine (Paul Greene) from the old Operator Services group at Nortel as we were waiting in line to pick up our "packets". (Paul did a great job in this race, and came in 27th overall.)

It was a cool blustery day, and I told another participant as we were waiting to start that my goal was to run hard enough to keep warm. My other goal was of course to finish the run, and I did in fact achieve both my goals. However, I need to work on my race-time water drinking skills. At the 1.5 mile marker, there was a water station. Someone handed me a cup of water as I jogged by. I took a few gulps as I jogged along. Most people toss their cup on the street, and the volunteers pick them up later. But then before I expected anything, there was someone standing there with an large open plastic trash bag for cups. I didn't want to throw the rest of the water in my cup into the bag too, so I tossed the water out on the street. Unfortunately, I was too close to the volunteer holding the trash bag, and I may have splashed his leg a little. Not too bad, but then to make things worse, as I was jogging by, I threw the cup and missed the bag. Oh well, I'm sure they understand how things go in the heat of competition, even when you are maybe 800th in the race.

It is always easier to run a distance race with someone else. In other races I have always found various people running at about my same pace and stride to run with. This race was no exception. I'd ran with several people in this race for varying distances and you feel a small sense of partnership with them, albeit temporary. Just after we looped around the NCSU bell tower and headed back on Hillsboro Street for the State Capital, a pretty young blonde woman beside me said, "Its all downhill from here!" and I managed to say, "I hope so." We ran together for the rest of the race, at exactly the same pace and cadence, and to tell you the truth, it was a little faster than I would have preferred. As we crossed the finish line simultaneously, she stuck out her hand and said, "Hi, I'm Dawn!". I said "I"m Chip...thanks...you helped...I ran a better race... because of you..." and she said, "Thank-you, I ran better because of you!"

I didn't care about an official time, so I didn't pick up a time chip, but since I finished with Dawn and we crossed the line at the same time, I'm borrowing her official time for me!

27 PAUL GREENE M 40 APEX NC 39:41 39:43 6:24
598 DAWN TOOKE F 28 RALEIGH NC 58:36 59:14 9:32
599 CHIP GENTRY M 50 CHAPEL HILL NC 58:36 59:14 9:32

We Really Used Our Geocaching Skills Yesterday!

2006-11-12T01:57:00.000-08:00

The little blue pin is where the first stage of our geocaching adventure began. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching http://www.geocaching.com/

Zach, Miles, Phil, and I went geocaching down by Jordan Lake and the Haw River yesterday. It was a gorgeous November day in the high 70s and blue skies.

We encountered this very small snake. I'm pretty sure he or she was a Northern Water Snake, which is often confused with a Cottonmouth.

We also encountered this gigantic "tree wart". I took a few pictures of it, then we headed on our way. After a while, I noticed my cell phone was missing. We kept going and found the cache we were looking for and the old well right beside it. Miles has a "bread crumb" feature on his GPS that allows you to retrace your steps. This of course was just what we needed to try and find my cell phone. We went all the way back to the place where we saw the little snake. We didn't see the cell phone or the snake anywhere. So Phil hiked back to the car to get Miles' cell phone and we stayed behind in hopes that when Phil called my number, we would hear it ring. We didn't hear any ringing, and shortly later Phil arrived back where we were searching. We decided to follow our trail again with the "bread crumb" feature, but this time calling my cell phone every little while in hopes that we would hear it. As we got to the bottom of a hill in an almost dry creek bed, we thought we might have heard something. We looked up the hill and saw the same tree with the giant wart. Miles called my phone again. This time I could hear it clearly off in the distance somewhere in the woods. We realized then that my cell phone might have been knocked off my belt when I was taking my camera out of my bag to take pictures of the amazing tree wart. Zach led the charge up the steep hill and sure enough, there was my cell phone laying on the ground near the finest tree wart I've ever seen. It had taken 14 calls for us to finally track it down, but it was really cool to have managed to find it among all the freshly fallen autumn leaves.

Zach celebrated at the S and T Soda Shoppe in Pittsboro with two scoops of ice cream, that was actually about the size of four to six. Zach reported that the pumpkin flavor in the right was definitely the best.

NC State Fair - 2006

2006-10-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the NC State Fair. It was a perfect day with the temperature in the low 60s and a cobalt blue sky. There are always friendly people to be found at the Cary United Methodist Church fair booth, a favorite destination for Ircil and Laurie Gentry (who were there the day before.)

This is the place with Fried Coke. The owner is clearly a marketing genius.

There was a wall of people waiting to try some Fried Coke.

This is what Fried Coke actually looks like. It is a funnel cake with a Coke coating.

I'm a big fan of waterfalls.

I wish I had a Fried Coke too...

It was a big day at the fair.

Nice ride.

I really liked this nifty design.

Cookin' corn.

Eatin' corn.

I had no idea you could safely feed a camel.

This sheep looks very strange, but that is the way his 4 horns normally grow.

Buttin' heads is fun!

A good place to watch "All Creatures Great and Small".

Check out the little girl in the lower left hand corner.