Demand STUDIOS!

I have recently become a freelance writer for Demand Studios. Writers contribute to sites like eHow, livestrong, golflink, and trails.com. So go check out my first article! There will be plenty more to come, and I'll probably be posting side notes about what I learned during my research on this blog.

Three cheers for freelance work!

The Dixie Classic Fair 2009

The Dixie Classic Fair is unique to Winston-Salem, and has been an annual event here since 1882. Back then, the fair gave the town's economy a boost. Not much has changed. This year, 323,000 people came to enjoy the attractions, and in doing so, poured much needed funds into our city's pockets.

The Dixie Classic is a family affair where kids can gorge themselves on sweets galore and go nuts on the rickety rides, while the parents can enjoy wine tasting from North Carolina vineyards and enjoy the history, art, and farming exhibitions as well.

When I was a kid, I used to ride every ride at least twice. My favorites were the Himalaya, the Rainbow (which, sadly, is no longer a part of the fair), the swings, and of course, the Ferris wheel. This year, though, I forwent the rides in order to truly indulge in the unique cuisine that is fair food.

You know you are in the South when most of the foods at the local fair are deep-fried. Here is a mini run down of some of the more interesting foods:

Fried pickles
Fried twinkies
Fried candy-bars
Fried oreos
Fried butter

Of course, there were the usual candied apples, cotton candy, funnel cakes, and elephant ears, too. I tried some fried Reeses cups. It was like eating a candy-coated heart attack. Southerners like our food SWEET and greasy.

After enjoying the food, I took my fair-going buddy to watch the rodeo. Yep. We have our very own rodeo at the fair... complete with bucking broncs, angry bulls, and one crazy clown (whose job it was to distract the animals from their riders once the cowboys got pitched off their saddles).

It was a good time. It was a wholesome time. It threw me back into my childhood. It's something that every Winston kid, no matter how old, looks forward to every year. And it's definitely a tradition that has held strong for over 100 years and counting.

Community Garden Adventure

A few weeks ago, I went to the Second Harvest Food Bank's Community Garden with the BME (Biomedical Engineering) students from Wake Forest University. It was a beautiful day to be outside.

The group parked next to the small but abundant garden, and the volunteers were handed clippers, baskets, and gloves to pick broccoli, tomatoes, greens, and bell peppers.

The head volunteer told them how to collect the vegetables, and then set them loose to play in the dirt.

As the volunteers got to work, they amiably talked about school, robots, and the size of the produce they were harvesting. I mean, the broccoli was huge!

An hour later, the volunteers had accumulated several baskets full of veggies.

This is a great place to be an active part of the community. The Community Garden grows fresh veggies for the Food Bank, which supplies 18 counties with food for the hungry, and relies entirely on volunteers to do the gardening and the harvesting.

According to the Community Garden blog, Jim Holmes Jr. established the Community Garden 11 years ago after he had a discussion with his son about how it was a crying shame that the city didn't cultivate any of the land in its city limits for the hungry. Soon after, the garden was cultivated.

Since then, the volunteer coordinators in charge of the garden have invited all kinds of groups, churches, and organizations to pitch in and help out the Food Bank. It's a great way for families and friends to give back to their community, and it's actually kind of fun. As the volunteers packed up to go home on Sunday, it seemed there was a sense of accomplishment in the air. And who doesn't feel uplifted after volunteering for a good cause?

Winston-Salem, NC AIRSHOW!

There were hundreds of people scattered on the tarmac at Smith Reynolds Airport on Saturday watching pilots from all walks of life show off their wings. The smell of turkey legs and exhaust fumes permeated the field around the runway. Everyone was looking up at the Carolina blue sky where the pilots were performing their aerobatics and poking holes through the clouds. Children cooed at the planes' dips and dives. Fingers pointed at the patterns from the jet exhaust.

It was breathtaking to watch a plane free fall, dance, and right itself in less than 60 seconds.

Sailing on the Charles-- MIT Sailing

Luke Boelitz started sailing when he was eight years old, which, he says, is not unusual for kids who grow up on the Cape.
When he talks about sailing, he talks with his hands. The explanations come in explosions: one sentence right after the other.
I didn’t expect anything but to stand on the deck and watch the kids from MIT day camp hop into the sail boats when I walked into the MIT boathouse one hot, sticky Tuesday afternoon. But after Luke pushed off all the boats out to the open river, he turned around and asked me, “Wanna go sailing?”
Yes, yes I did.
I put on a hunter green life-jacket, tried to gracefully step into the boat, failed, and instead stumbled my way into the vessel. Luke and another MIT sailing employee, Andrew, nimbly joined me.
Once we got situated and out onto the river, with a light wind at our backs and Andrew steering the tiller, Luke started telling me his story.
“I started sailing in Falmouth at the Falmouth Yacht Club which is actually run by the Head of Harvard sailing. I stopped going to Falmouth and started working at the Courageous Sailing Center in Charlestown. It’s free sailing for kids from the city of Boston. They’re not super competitive but they definitely teach kids how to sail, and I was the racing coach there last year. But I decided I didn’t want a coaching job this year because I needed to be able to go and do my own regattas, and so here I am.”
The longer we were out on the water, the stronger the wind got. I subconsciously tried to melt into the side of the boat to keep from being dumped out as the boat tipped and rocked. To keep my mind off of the inevitable drenching and my heart from racing, I asked Luke how he would describe learning how to sail.
“I mean, it’s pretty complex,” he said. “To really understand it and be able to do it takes a lot of time, I think. At MIT we teach people to sail really fast, but they don’t exactly get what’s going on. Learning to steer is most important, and learning the points of sail. You need to know what your relationship to the wind is to make the boat go correctly.”
What I learned in my crash course, one hour sailing lesson is to duck when you hear, “I’m gonna tack.” Luke chuckled at me when I slouched into the bottom of the boat to keep from getting my head whacked by the boom, a bar extending from the mass to hold the sail upright. According to Luke, the kind of boat we were in is called a tech dinghy, which is quite small and forces you to get cozy with your comrades in a hurry. It made it that much more difficult to move around the boat when it tipped or when Andrew tacked.
By the time we got back to the deck, my legs were rubbery and I could feel the adrenaline pumping. But for Luke, it was just another day on the job, another day in the sun, and another day on the water.

Faneuil Hall entertainment

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