North Carolina

ONC. Old North Carolina. I say this as a method of agreement, similar to OK. I do this because OK is actually the abbreviation of Old Kentucky. So, whenever you say OK, you're really just referring to Kentucky. Which would be fine with me if I were IN Kentucky. But, right now I'm in North Carolina. Hence my ONC. Though, when I say it as a word I end up sounding like a large goose.

Anywho, as I said we are currently parked in North Carolina. As it turns out, there are a lot of cool things to see here. Kitty Hawk, Lighthouses (not to mention the Atlantic Ocean) are among these.

First we went to Kitty Hawk (for those who flunked out of Fourth Grade history, or those who just forgot, Kitty Hawk was where the Wright Brothers performed the first motorized, non-glider flight in 1903). The first thing you see upon arrival is the aviation monument on top of Kill Devil Hill. We missed the show by about 2 minutes, so we looked around the museum for a little while. They had all kinds of exhibits on the experiments and calculations conducted by the Wright Brothers. The Wright Brothers were originally bike repairmen. I found it amazing that you can go from bike repairer to aviator in thre years. As a matter of fact, their experience with bikes was evident in the motor that they invented for their plane (a chain drive). Those men had to have been brilliant. They had to read and memorize al the formulas (no calculators, computers) from books that they could find in their parent's library. The museum also had exhibits about the progression of aviation after the first flight. I found it remarkable that we went from no aviation to breaking the sound barrier in a little over 40 years.

After the museum, we headed to the actual flight sights. The Wright Brothers made four runs, the last one being the farthest (852 feet). There was a rock embedded in the ground for each landing, one at 120, another at 175 feet, and the third at 200 feet. They had also reconstructed the cabins which Orville and Wilbur lived while conducting their experiments. Then we hiked up the hill (puff, wheeze, gasp) and reached the top. The view was amazing. I wanted to take a shortcut down the hill, but apparently they don't want you on their dead grass (FYI you can't plant grass in sand). When we arrived back at the museum, we were just in time for the informative show. The park ranger came up and talked about the Wright Brothers lives and about the times they lived in. Then, he asked for a volunteer. I raised my hand because, hey, you might as well, right? Well, I got picked because I was the tallest kid in the room (which almost never happens unless I go to a kindergarten). I was handed a little white glove that looked almost exactly like the Hamburger Helper. The ranger then led me to the Flyer. He told me to grab a lever and pull, and not to worry, the guy who owned this plane only paid a million dollars for it. I gulped and pulled. The front elevators of the plane moved up and down. This demonstrated the ability of the Flyer to change pitch. Then he took me to the side of the plane and told me to push one of the fuselages up and down. The wings moved up and down with rod. This was to generate lift. The back rudder was also used to adjust yaw (moving left and right).

fter the show, we headed to the other museum building. Inside they had a flying model of the Wright Brothers plane, and videos of recreations of the first flight at the 100th aniversary in 2003. One of which was a failure.

As we left, I started to think. Man has always considered things that are beyond their own knowledge to be impossible. Flight, space travel, and and even the automobile are examples of this. What else could we acheive when we try to attain the impossible?