Three weeks in the Triangle

October 30, 2007

Three weeks. As I sit here this Tuesday, in a rotating chair in Duke’s Bryan Center, which makes me a bit dizzy, I have now been a resident of Durham, N.C., for just about three weeks, 21 days, 504 hours, 30, 240 minutes, 1,814,400 seconds.

I have assembled my bedroom (which is now, appropriately, as messy as can be). I have bought a map, which hopefully I won’t have to use for too much longer (although this place can be downright confusing). I have found two football stadiums where I can run steps (that’s a good thing).

I have attended three basketball media days and a Duke scrimmage. I have not found a job (yet). I have beaten J-bo, my cousin and roommate, several times in both tennis and chess — the best way to boost my self-esteem after a tough day of biking around aimlessly (but now, I must admit, J-bo is gaining on me in both competitions).

Yes, I have been somewhat active since my relocation from Ann Arbor. But yet, at times, I still feel lost. I miss Ann Arbor, my hometown my entire life. I miss the fall leaves. I miss being able to bike anywhere in the city on residential roads. Here, by contrast, I have to deal with highways just about everywhere I go.

Of course my longing for Ann Arbor, I believe, is understandable. After all, it was my home for a whopping 23 years. And it was — basically — perfect. It spoiled me.

Things are different here. The Wal-Marts are red (yes, I had to shop there once to buy recycling bins, and they charged me for an extra bin). So are the Best Buys. Our area is dominated by shopping centers. I’m not exaggerating when I say there are at least 12 shopping outlets within three miles of our home in Alexan Farms apartments. If the rest of the world outside of the Triangle was destroyed by aliens/terrorists, we’d have enough supplies to last for at least a few years.

Which, of course, I hate. I can’t stand shopping centers. A “Target” is about as appealing to me as target practice (and you’ll never catch me clutching a gun in this lifetime). Not only that, but the stores all around give us an excuse to go buy things (such as an ice cream scooper, J-bo) even if we don’t need ‘em. I’d rather be 20 miles from the nearest store and have to survive on our supplies.

Oh, and let me mention the highways. Our apartment is off Garrett Road, which intersects with 15-501, a three-lane highway between Durham and Chapel Hill, just en eighth of a mile from our apartment. So in order to go anywhere (downtown Durham, downtown Chapel Hill, those shopping centers, the Boreykos house) we have to turn onto 15-501 or at least cross it. This is usually a time-consuming ordeal (especially during rush hour).

And then there’s the issue of biking places (which has to be a part of my daily routine). In order to bike to UNC’s campus, I have to cross 15-501 twice and climb the longest hill in the Western Hemisphere on Franklin Street (yeah, it’s, uh, a great workout). Overall, it’s about a 10-mile ride to the center of campus. Today I rode to Duke’s campus — where I am now — for the first time. While I was able to take a back way that didn’t involve crossing 15-501, it was one heck of a ride. I think it took close to an hour.

So I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting daily workouts on my Trek. On a pleasant side note, the odometer on the bike eclipsed 2,000 miles yesterday. I am so proud of my bike. I’ve had it now for at least seven or eight years, and it’s never given me a problem (including during the 650-mile ride around half of Lake Michigan).

Life with J-bo is interesting. We get along just fine. We disagree on things, but they’re all minor (“Why the $&#$*^% did you buy an ice cream scoop?”; “Take out the #$%$%^* trash”). Recapturing the magic of New Hampshire has been difficult, what with J-bo doing that graduate school thing every day and church thing on the weekends and me blogging, eating and reading — but we’ve persevered by playing tennis and chess on a regular basis.

Additionally, I’ve taught J-bo about the nuances of sports (the art of the onside kick) and he’s taught me how to play that guitar Playstation2 game.

Life with J-bo is fun, but I’ve come to the realization that if I want to have a nighttime social life, I’m gonna have to make some, um, friends. J-bo likes to hit the sack early — especially on the weekends — which isn’t exactly my style. I’ve never gone to bed at 10:30 p.m. on a Friday night except when I did paper routes, and although I could get a route here, the idea of waking at 5 a.m. every morning of the week to deliver papers is about as appetizing as six-month-old lasagna.

I have yet to experience the surrounding nightlife, but I figure to get my first taste of it tomorrow night at the Halloween extravaganza on Franklin Street, Chapel Hill’s main street. According to trusted sources (the Boreykos), some 60,000 raging lunatics crowd Franklin St. late into the night each Oct. 31, scaring each other and destroying anything in sight (OK, I made up that last part, but I wouldn’t be that surprised).

So that should be interesting. I still need to find a costume, however. Any ideas? I need to know soon.

Now I know I’ve been pretty negative to this point about my new home, so let me change gears a bit. There are some great things about the area, such as the passion for college basketball. OK, that was an understatement. People around here are nuts about college hoops.

Let me explain…

First, on my initial Friday in town, I attended “Late Night with Roy,” North Carolina’s version of “Midnight Madness.” It was such a big deal in Chapel Hill, the university brought in ESPN’s Stuart Scott to emcee. And 19,000 people showed up to watch members of the two UNC hoops teams perform skits and then — finally — scrimmage.

While many of the UNC fans should be ashamed of themselves for leaving during the actual scrimmage — isn’t the basketball supposed to be the night’s highlight? — it remained to me pretty remarkable that so many people attended the event. A student I ran into later said she stood in line for three hours to grab a good seat.

But “Late Night with Roy” was just prepping me for Duke’s Blue-White scrimmage, which I covered — as a stringer — for the television station WRAL’s website. It was nuts. If I wasn’t aware that it was Oct. 27 and that the regular season doesn’t commence until the second week of November, I would have thought it was a February ACC game.

The Cameron Crazies are, indeed, crazy, and the Blue Devils played with an intensity and furry that completely belied the non-importance of the 30-minute game. Afterward, members of the White team, which lost, were actually disappointed about the game’s outcome.

Covering a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium is a one-of-a-kind experience, let me tell you. In order to claim your spot on press row, you have to slide over the press table because the students are so close to the press chairs, there’s no room to walk in front of them. During the entire game, the students are literally breathing down your neck, screaming their guts out, chanting players' names after a big play, booing the refs…

Yeah, I hope I get the opportunity to cover more games inside the tiny arena (and it really is miniscule — I am surprised they fit 9,000-plus fans in there each game). There’s not a bad seat in the house. Cameron is easily the best basketball arena I’ve ever been inside. Experiencing a game there is like nothing else (yes, I agree with Dick Vitale on that one).

So as basketball season nears, excitement builds here in The Triangle. UNC is projected to be one of the top three teams in the country and win the ACC. Duke is expected to finish second in the league, and NC State has high hopes as well. Basketball season here should keep the blood pressure high until sometime in March.

Even as a Michigan football fan, I must admit basketball here seems to be a little bigger than football in Ann Arbor. Just by a little.

Another positive I can (kind of) point to is the weather. I can’t completely endorse it because we just experienced a terrible drought, which prevented me from washing my dirty Honda Civic. Water restrictions were put in place — people could only water their plants a certain number of times per week. There was a story about a family using dirty bath water to nourish the plants. Yeah, it got that bad.

And despite two full days of rain last week, we’re not out of the water yet (hah hah). The drought might have taken a two-day vacation, but don’t expect it to disappear forever. Well, at least my car’s now clean.

The temperatures have been excellent. No complaints from me. After two or three days of nasty 90-degree weather, global warming headed elsewhere, and we’ve been visited by temperatures in the 60s — and even 50s recently (I could actually see my breaths last night during a spirited tennis match).

Autumns here, though, are far from beautiful. Not compared to Michigan falls at least. Leaves remain on the trees. There are no pretty colors. Just massive Home Depots and Harris Teeters to look at.

But I am looking forward to winter, when it will be 50 here and 20 in Ann Arbor. Or so I hope. I want to be playing tennis here while hearing about massive snow shoveling missions taking place in Michigan.

That might boost my spirits a bit. Only time will tell.

In boring news, I’m still looking for part-time work to start rebuilding my bank account after the massive hit I’ve taken here in October (to the tune of $2,500). I opened an account at Wachovia Bank. Now there’s the issue of filling it with currency. I’m also looking for stringing work at the local newspapers. So far, not much luck, although WRAL might have some more Duke events for me to cover.

Again, only time will tell.

In the near future, I’d like to take trips out to the coast (about two and a half hours away) and to the beautiful Smoky Mountains (more like four hours to the west). Body surfing in the Atlantic and hiking in the Smokys are two options I didn’t have in Michigan. I’d be a fool to not take advantage of them. Don’t let me forget.

But for now it’s back to biking on back roads, driving on highways, playing lots of chess and tennis, and looking for work.

Oh, and I’ve been sleeping in lately.

There are everyday certainties (seeing shopping centers) and questions to consider every day when I wake up (what kind of work will I find?).

It’s been three quick weeks and much remains up in the air. Check back with me in another 21 days and the landscape could be different.

Only time will tell.