A House, a Creek and a Greenway

A missing link will finally fall into place Sept. 24, when House Creek greenway trail opens to the public.
This news  is especially exciting for me, a born-again bicycle rider and enthusiastic fan of Raleigh's Secret Garden, better known as the city's greenway system.
The House Creek trail runs from the I-440 pedestrian bridge near the N.C. Museum of Art across Blue Ridge Road and on toward Crabtree Valley Mall.
I've eagerly awaited news about this project for the better part of nine years, when I first moved to Raleigh with my family and saw the greenway plans running near my house.
As a newcomer shopping for houses, I had an eye toward walking trails and sidewalks, but we ultimately made our decision based on school zone, affordability, sufficient space to accommodate 11- and 13-year-old boys, and proximity to my husband's workplace in downtown Raleigh.
As a fan of good urban planning, I was not thrilled about living at the end of a cul-de-sac. But privacy of the small backyard deck lured me outside often enough, and from the early days, I noticed a gentle noise like gurgling water.
Was there a stream or brook nearby?  I never saw a bridge, ditch or drainage pipe close to the house. But I could still from time to time pick out those faint yet distinctive watery sounds.
When I first learned that the greenway section near our house was under construction, I was eager to explore the site. That's when I found House creek, which runs across the "bottom" between our property and the beltline.
I am now a big enough fan of our west Raleigh neighborhood and recognize my own cognitive dissonance surrounding the whole experience of a mid-life relocation.
But if I needed another reason to explain why my home in Raleigh is special, now I have it - and it's within earshot of my backyard..
If you are not familiar with the greenway system, please find time to visit. Whether taking a short stroll along Crabtree Creek or peddling up the steep hills of the Art Museum property, you'll discover something wonderful outside.

Traffic calming: Drivers' headache is neighbors respite

For motorists in a hurry, the humps, bumps and other elements of traffic-calming efforts can be frustrating. But for residents of heavily trafficked neighborhoods, these projects can be highly beneficial.

 The city of Raleigh has made traffic-calming a top goal, according to a recent press release from the Public Works Department.

The city has completed four major traffic-calming projects since 2006 and more are on the way. In fact, the budget includes $2.7 million for traffic-calming over the next 10 years that pay for 13 projects per year, according to Thomas Fiorello, Traffic Calming Coordinator.

If you live in a neighborhood that serves as a cut-through or otherwise receives more than its share of high-speed traffic, a traffic calming program is one approach to consider. After getting a go-ahead from city planners, residents in the affected area must be sure they have at least 75 percent of their neighbors before traffic calming can be authorized.

So far, areas completed include Ashe Avenue/Park Avenue in west Raleigh; Eagle Trace Drive in northeast Raleigh; Plaza Place in northwest Raleigh and Morning Dove Drive in north Raleigh. A fifth project, on Anderson Drive, is underway, including removing a merge lane from Six Forks Road southbound to Anderson Drive and the addition of a median islands and a bicycle lane.

The speed limit on Anderson Street Drive also is being reduced to 30 mph. Streets already in the planning stages are: Kaplan Drive from Kent Road to Melbourne Road; Brookside Drive from Watauga Street to Glascock Street; Glascock Street from Norris Street to North Raleigh Boulevard; Rainwater Road from Spring Forest Road to Hunting Ridge Road; and, Milburnie Road from Raleigh Boulevard to Chatham Lane.

The City Council is scheduled to receive an update on traffic-calming projects at its Sept. 18 meeting.

Raleigh Neighborhood Aghast at New Zoning Rules

There's something just so Raleigh about how members of the Glenwood Citizens Advisory Council have chosen to express displeasure over new urban design regulations passed by the city.

The CAC's subtle protest comes in the form of a contest titled "So You Think You Can Build?" in which participants are asked to push the envelope on the new zoning code to preposterous levels -- but only to the extent that the rules will allow.

The council represents several ITB neighborhoods on the west side of downtown, west of Glenwood Avenue and east of I-440, where homes typically sit on lots of a quarter-acre or larger.

"Let’s look now," says the CAC's call for contestants, "before our smaller homes are turned into virtual duplexes or our neighbors build second houses in their backyards to within ten feet of the side and rear property lines."

The code changes that are most concerning involve both attached and detached and attached structures on residential lots.

Information about the contest, complete with prizes, is available on Neighborship.com and the Glenwood CAC Facebook page.

When we were young

The sleepy, frail dog that lies on our living room floor is an imposter.
He spends his days stretched out across a lambswool pillow that occupies an entire corner of our living room.
He gets up for water, occasionally to eat, and occasionally to go outside or, more often these days, inside if no one is there to open the door.

He smiles at me when I sit down beside him and rub his head and back and chest and tell him what he good boy he is. But his eyes say this mild and mellow fellow is not really with us - not like he was before.

A friend's recent adoption of a wheaten terrier sent my mind reeling back to a time when Micah moved as fast and as erratically as a whirling dervish. He was known as the jumpy dog, the licky dog, and the dog that would chase your children up the swingset and refuse to let them down for an hour or more, barking and flailing his 35-pound body toward the top of the slide.

He was a runner, too. He would escape our-half acre, fully-fenced-in yard and make a run for it any time he could. When that happened, we'd jump in the car or set out on foot to canvass the surrounding blocks. Eventually, someone would spot him sniffing around a garbage pail or stalking a squirrel. A mix of commands, cajoling pleas and sometimes a physical 'gotcha' were required to get him onto his leash and back home where he belonged.

Embarking on his greatest adventure, Micah headed south one day and we never caught up. We didn't see him for more than two weeks. We posted ads and answered ads and even found someone else's wheaten that was lost. (But we gave him back.)

Finally, I got a call. Someone from the neighboring town had seen my newspaper ad and thought they had our dog. The man told me how he spotted Micah high-tailing it alongside the interstate the same afternoon he went missing. By then our dog was tired enough and thirsty enough to climb inside his rescuer's car without a fuss.

I thanked him profusely. Unspoken, though, was how the man obviously had waivered over the question of returning to us our beautiful, silky, well-bred dog. Apparently he had crumbled under the intensity of Micah's insistently manic nature. The harried rescuer handed him back to me with a slightly sheepish look.

Nate, the youngest of our three kids, was only 4 years old when we adopted Micah. Nate will be going off to college next year, and Micah's frail, grandfatherly status signals to me that an era is coming to an end.

I look forward to this new phase of life, as I slow down and follow Micah into the valley of the older and wiser. But I will always remember fondly those last rambunctious years of the previous century when Micah was a wild young thing and our family of five lived in a different, perhaps more innocent kind of world.

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Albert Einstein (courtesy of Linda Bryant)

Nags Head Nirvana

Just returned from my 20-somethingth vacation in Nags Head and I never tire of it. A friend asked me about it and so I thought I'd share my observations/opinions in case others are considering an Outer Banks adventure.

As a Nashvillian, I grew up going to the Gulf, but my husband's family had purchased a house in Nags Head back in 1960, so of course that's where we started going as a family.
It's a looong drive from Nashville - about 700 miles - but now we only need to travel about 200 miles due east from Raleigh on Highway 64.
FYI: Raleigh and Norfolk both have good rates from Nashville on Southwest.

Driving east from Raleigh, one passes through the "inner banks," mostly small villages that have been farming and fishing/crabbing communities for decades. It's a scenic drive, going through some waterfowl preserves that run along the coast before reaching the sound. If you go this way, and if you are a history person, I would recommend a stop at Somerset Plantation - at one time the largest in NC. It has quite a reputation for its interpretation of African American slave life, as well as the economics of large-scale planting in the antebellum era.

To get to the Outer Banks from here, you cross the Alligator River onto Roanoke Island. Once on the island, a slight left turn off the highway puts you in Manteo, a lovely town on the Albemarle Sound (or it may be Pamlico Sound -- they come together somewhere right along here). Manteo is where Andy Griffith lives, and he could live pretty much anywhere. It was the site of the original Lost Colony (as I'm sure you know) and one of NC's several outdoor theater productions tells that story. It's fun to see.
Also, there's also a small aquarium here and a really great independent bookstore, plus a picturesque harbor with sunset cruises available, etc. (We took an early-evening sailboat ride a couple of years ago that turned out to be one of my favorite experiences.)

Cross one more bridge and you're in Nags Head, which used to be accesible only by boat (which I guess is true of all the Outer Banks). Nag's Head is a family-vacation sort of place with everything from the obligatory putt-putt to the highest sand dune on the east coast, which you can climb at Jockey's Ridge State Park. The First Flight/Wright Bros. Museum is just a couple of miles away in Kill Devil Hills. A few miles south is Bodie Island Lighthouse (can't climb, but it is in a beautiful setting between the ocean and sound, with boardwalks across the wetland grasses), and Coquina Beach, a scenic natural beach (open to the public for swimming etc.) with remains of a wrecked ship from early last century.
Our favorite places to eat include Tortuga's Lie on the beach road (small, quaint really good seafood), Mama Kwan's (Asian influenced, casual) and Sam and Omie's (a local hangout that has great soft-shell crab and fried vegetables and other regional dishes).

In case you're interested, the rental company we use is NagsHeadRealty.com. You can check out the website to see the available properties, prices, amenities, etc. They range from small historic cottages like ours (built in the teens) to modern manses with palladian windows and the like. There's a very specific type of cottage that is known as the Nags Head cottage, and it has a big wrap-around porch with overhanging roof, usually two stories or a story-and-a-half with a long rear ell, shingled in cedar shake. You can see several that are part of a historic district along Virginia Dare Trail (the beach road) between about the 12-14 mile markers.

To the north of Nags Head is Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Southern Shores, Corolla and Duck. There's another lighthouse in Corolla, which visitors can climb - it's quite a hoot - and also a hunting club founded by the railroad tycoons back around 1900 or so. Its pretty cool and they do give tours.
Duck is quite upscale, with fancy cottages and resorts -- and some nice shops.

The weather can be a little hard to predict on the banks. This week, we had two days of 95-degree weather, a rainly 68-degree day and then two perfectly sunny 78-80 degree days. The water is usually warmer later in the summer, but it was quite nice this week, as well.

That's my pitch for Nags Head. A lot of folks from Raleigh like to go further south to Hatteras and Ocracoke (more lighthouses) or further, to what is called the "Crystal Coast" - Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, Cape Lookout, etc. I'm sure those places are wonderful, too, but I haven't had the experience since we always go back to Nags Head.

If you're interested in seeing all of the the banks - about 200 miles or so - Highway 12 runs the length and requires two ferry rides. Lots of interesting small seaside towns and other sites to visit along the way.

The Not So Big Wedding

I am a procrastinator, including and to the extent of not putting my wedding pictures in an album for more than two decades. This deficit came into high relief a couple of summers ago when my daugther, the photographer, got married.
Again, I was somewhat tardy, but only weeks, -- well, maybe a very few months -- went by before I got to the photo-album stage and dutifully recorded this charming and well-thought-out ceremony in a by-god picture album. (By that I mean the kind you can hold and flip through, not the kind on-line.)
Now, more than a year later, with a hefty album that is only one-third full of my daughter's wedding photos, and, more recently, another third full of my new grandson's first Christmas, etc., I decided to put in my own wedding photos where they could be protected and admired.
There are 60-plus photos, snapshots, really, that were captured during my 1987 wedding to Tommy.
While I see us as much the same, intrinsically, it's hard to recognize the perky and determined couple walking down the aisle. Younger, thinner versions of ourselves, of course. But also an apparent lift in our step that says 'this is just the beginning of a wonderful, eventful life.' And so it has been, so far.
Moving on to the larger family shot, my mom, in an uncharacteristic tea-length dress, smiles knowingly. Pleasant, but exuding an of-the-world attitude, as if she can predict what's in store but still seems happy to see two people whom she loves beginning their life together.
Then my dad, standing in the background, quietly smiling. On the exterior, a jolly hail-fellow sort, he remained emotionally distant most of my life -- yet in so many other ways was a steadfast presence, always there to back me up. It will be another two decades before the smoking catches up with him. My dad, Ed, died of lung cancer in 2008.
But the hardest one to look at is little Kelsey. A heart-breaker at her core, in these photos she is 4 years old and beautifully outfitted in a fancy pink dress. Her swingy blonde bob exudes cheerfulness belied by her expression -- not unpleasant but not at ease, a wary child who learned or was simply born knowing to watch out for herself. Now she seems so happy watching out for own son, Silas, who is almost 9 months old, like she was practicing for motherhood all along.
These photos are a crystal ball in reverse -- showing us the people we were before we followed the trajectory that brought us where we are today.
Those of us still on this earth are mostly still together. And good things are happening. Just maybe not the ones we had in mind as we strode so purposefully down the aisle.