Wright Brothers

Kill Devil Hill on the Outer Banks in North Carolina is the location were the Wright Brothers labored for a couple of years for months at a time to finally realize the first human flight in 1903. 

The story of these brothers warms up every engineers hart. The two men originally owned a bicycle shop and used their bicycle knowledge and some plain and simple engineering manuals and a lot of fidget-ting & trying to finally develop the first working airplane. As the nickname in Holland for Delft University students is 'fietsenmakers' (Bike - fixers) we especially felt very pleased to realize this is actually a compliment! Hence a good place to start educating our kids in the magnificence of the Engineering Discipline.

The fourth marker in the background marks the longest / best attempt that day. Does not look like much but since many have tried to do the same with all sorts of replica's of the original gliders and it actually requires some pretty decent flying / pilot skills to get that far as nobody has achieved it again after.

 The glider has many bike elements in it actually and looks pretty basic. Only 8 years later in September 1911 the Italian Army (who would have guessed that?!?) where the first to use planes in warfare and by 1929 it was possible to 'book a flight' as a passenger across the Atlantic.

 To Rick flying is a very very normal thing.

 And Kaatje? Well she cleary picked up some fashion ideas....

Houston Lifestyle: Cars & Heat

Yesterday was one of those days it is hard to understand why there is no alternative to cars in Houston considering the climate. I had to park at the visitor lot at the office which has no shade and temperatures during the day reached the high 30's / 90's. So when I got in the car I burned my legs on the leather seats, my hands on the wheel and my mouth on the water from the water bottle that had been in the car all day. Fortunately it takes me 15 min to get from the office to the daycare so by the time I had to load the kids in the car the AC had done its job...I probably could have made a decent cup of tea with that water in the car. It all of the sudden makes a lot of sense that it is  a crime to leave your kid or pet in the car unattended - even if it is for less than a minute, you can see the car from the shop window and the engine is running. In this heat death from heatstroke is very very possible in a vehicle!

Today back in the regular parking lot I picked the most shady spot I could find.....

Of course life here is structured such that you barely need to leave your car and if you do it is only 3ft away (close anyway) from the nearest door to an air conditioned space (the mall, home, office). Here in Houston you have drive through restaurants at all sorts of price, quality & health ranges, drive through banks (ATM and most counter services can be done from your car), drive through pharmacies, coffee places, dry-cleaners and even the post boxes to mail your cards & letters are designed such that you can drive past and mail anything from your car window. In North Carlina we also saw a Bru-Thru - a drive trhough beer store.

If it doesn't have a drive through then many places offer valet services as an alternative - meaning that either the valet service will park your car for you or brings whatever you need to your car for you. The big malls, allmost all restaurants and many places for entertainment offer such. Also some of the day cares offer a service called 'curbside' effectively meaning that you drive up to the entrance and they will fetch your kid + their belomngings for you and then put them in their seat in the back of the car for you so no need for mom or pop to get out. At the fanciest day care in town you can even call them in advance to let them know you are 'on approach' to leave waiting time to a minimum.

At first it sounds all a little over the top. However once you are either pregnant and/or have small kids and realize that walking from one shop to the next is virtually impossible this arrangement becomes actually key in getting your errands done as it safes a whole lot of hassle regarding getting kids in and out of seats, strollers in and out of the car and a lot of physical discomfort. Every time the engine has been off for even only 5 min temperatures sky-rocket to uncomfortable heights and it takes a while to come back down again and the blowers mess up your hairdo in the process -;).

Out of Office

Flying Kites @ Jockey's Ridge

Jockey's Ridge is a local State Park which has the largest sand dunes on the US East Coast. For most people also an ideal place to learn to hang-glide but as we did not quite meet the criteria to do that we stuck to flying our Kites. It was very hot sticky & hazy that morning so being on the dunes was actually nice as we were above it all.

Wild Fire

There is a huge wild fire burning about 40 Miles South from here on the North Carolina coast. The fire has been burning since May 5th and is still going strong almost a month later! Especially due to the inaccessibility of the area and due to the fact that the area is a peat bottom the fire proves very very hard to fight. By now the cause has been established as lightning. Pretty scary that something like this could happen anytime there is a thunderstorm. The effects are very widespread as the affected area is almost 120 Km2. 

Having a beach house here we try to sleep with the windows open to hear the sound of the sea in our dreams. Unfortunately we realized after the first night that means waking up with teary eyes from the smoke and the whole room smelling as if we are waking up on a Sakhalin camping trip! The smoke is pretty dense and visible from far away. No problem during the hot days but during the nights the wind comes from the 'wrong' direction and then the air cools down and lays the smoke as a dense fog over all the beach houses here.

I want to work for the US Postal Service

...a little over a century ago that is. We are currently in the OBX (the Outer Banks) in North Carolina. The Outer Banks is a strip of barrier islands in the Atlantic a couple of hours south of Washington DC. The Islands have a rich (maritime) History with Indian settlers, colonist, Pirates (Blackbeard was based here for a while) and as a fought over area in the 2 wars. With a history like that the places, beaches, capes and passages around here all ended up with some quite interesting names. As an example we are staying in Nags Head which could have been named after an English place or, as rumor has it, after the assumed pirate ritual to have a horse (Nag) with a light around its neck parade de beaches to get Ships to strand on the shallows. (The story does not clarify how that practically works with a hot fuming oil burning light....)

However when Post offices were established here most of the place names were decided to be too exotic, strange or difficult and so the Post offices got their own new names. Over time the settlements close to the post office would be referred to by the post office name and many of the historic names have been lost. Kinnekeet is now called Avon and Chicanacomico is now Rodanthe. Only Nags Head managed to keep its original name.

Would it not have been a lovely job to sit somewhere in a USPS office and dream up names for the thousands and thousands of post offices opened nation wide?

Kaatje's 1st Swim

The Pool here in Nags Head, NC is warm enough for Kaatje's standards so she finally made it into the pool for her first ever swim.

 Kaatje assumes some Yoga poses as soon as she is in the water with her feet together.

 And after when the rest of us moved on the somewhat (a lot!) colder Atlantic on the other side of the dunes, Kaatje took a kip in a makeshift tent.