When in Roam
November 1–11, 2020: Raleigh and the rest of Research Triangle Park (RTP)
This last post from the vault closes out our first stop on the trip. It seems like a lifetime ago, in some ways it was…
I’d heard a lot about the awesome trails in RTP. There was a cornucopia of choices, regardless of whether you wanted to hike, run, walk, or bike. Thanks to my friend, Mark Friedberg’s, recommendation of TrailLink.com, we were able to sort through the myriad of options. It was Friday, October 30, and we chose the House Creek Greenway. We found the parking lot, but not the greenway itself, so it turned into a nice walk on Ridge Road through the Oak Valley neighborhood of Raleigh. We’d figure this out though…
What’s a greenway you ask? I’m not sure it’s anything other than a trail. However, as it was explained to me by Spencer’s friend, Tim Baisley, of Georgetown fame (we’ll get to him shortly) these paths run:
- North/South: the length of RTP, from the top of Raleigh through the town of Apex — about 22+ miles via the American Tobacco Trail (ATT)
- East/West: intersecting at multiple points throughout the ATT
So, you can get anywhere in RTP by foot or bike via greenways. How cool is that?!
After the hike, we brought the Outback in for its first service. We’d driven, 3.5k miles in two months. I walked some of the Crabtree Creek Trail while we waited. We started the weekend outdoors at Tupelo Honey. Before ordering our tapas and wine, we assumed it was a local establishment. Afterward, we found out that it was a chain of 20 franchised restaurants — none in the New York metro area — that “revives Southern food and traditions rooted in the Carolina Mountains they call home.” We took a tour of the neighborhood and it turned out we were around the corner from NC State University (think Lorenzo Charles and Jimmy V April 4, 1983). It was a city campus, inside the 440 Beltway in west Raleigh. We drove east to the center of town on McDowell St. to the statehouse. Many buildings boarded up on their first-floor windows in advance of Election Day that coming Tuesday, just in case any protests jumped ugly. That was enough ground to cover for one day.
On Saturday morning, our cross-country tour of connecting with Spence’s friends continued as the aforementioned Tim, Rachel, and Brooks Baisley (how’s THAT for a name 😉) invited us to meet for brunch at SOLA, a great joint in the heart of north Raleigh. We sat outside on October 31 in 60-degree weather for what seemed like an hour and 45 minutes but in actuality was three hours — now that’s the sign of a great conversation!
Tim works for Wells Fargo in transformation and change. Rachel’s a nurse at Duke Health, a great healthcare facility (we thanked her for her service). And Brooks was six months old that day!
It was great to catch up with Tim and get to know Rachel and Brooksie, and they certainly helped us put meat on the bone regarding our understanding of the area in terms of neighborhoods, and the greenway system!
One of their recommendations was William B. Umstead State Park, which was ten minutes from where we were staying. I went for a short hike there after we got home. It was huge and offered biking, boating, and camping. It was like having New York’s Fahnestock State Park where Cunningham Park or Alley Pond Park are located (for those with Queens roots who are keeping score.
Note: Fahnestock holds a special place in my heart as it’s where my brothas, Tom “Aff” Afflerbach, Pete “The Captain” Marchelos, and Howard “Hesh” Hoffman (all previously mentioned in these posts), and I spent many a formative weekend once the Captain obtained his driver’s license and his Electra 225. RRROOOOAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!
We spent Halloween night dining in the heart of downtown Raleigh in what seemed like the warehouse district at Humble Pie. Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton were nowhere to be found. Great vibe, not crowded. A witch sat us where we could see a couple of young families with their dinosaur, and princess, respectively. And, there was a couple with a great old mutt that only peed once during the meal! I played my bi-weekly get-outta-jail-free card for some GREAT pork sliders and a local Crank Arm IPA, and we dined in an appropriately mellow, yet festive, Halloween atmosphere.
The next morning was kinda rainy, so I spent most of it editing the first couple of Roam posts, and diving into the world of Medium, which is where Spence posted his hilarious escapades post-Uber and pre-HBS. In retrospect, reading those posts provided much of my inspiration for When in Roam. If he hadn’t written those, I don’t know if I’d be doing this. Thanks, my son! There’s more to getting these online than I thought, so this would require a little more effort to get ready for prime time.
Sunday, November 1 marked one week on the road, and it felt like we started to develop a little choreography for this travel dance. We spent the morning doing enough work/career-related things so that we weren’t preoccupied with it while exploring during the afternoon.
We headed out to the Raleigh Farmers Market, which apparently was a big thing here as highway signage directed us to it. It was large, situated under and in numerous concrete pavilions. The produce was great, and I was just as interested in the vendors. Farmers from rural surroundings who I perceived were pretty right-leaning politically, were selling into a mix of consumers, which included many who seemed to be leaning left, based on the percentage of front-yard election signage in and around the RTP area. My gut said 65% blue, 35% red — not quantitative by any means. The vendors were all wearing masks, and the vast majority of the customers were too. Everyone was polite and getting along, and we didn’t feel any dissonant vibe 48 hours before Election Day, which was refreshing! We came back to our Airbnb in Brier Creek and my Vikes finished taking care of the Pac — in Green Bay — another surprise!
I went to work as Carol’s sous chef, taskmaster that she was, for evening chow. Chicken Marsala (her) with squash, cucumbers, and roasted potatoes (me). I was very compliant and coachable in the kitchen. Could probs be responsible for those sides going forward. Still learning (and crazy) after all these years!
We dined watching episode 1 of Queen’s Gambit, which was recommended by Lonnie and Jackie Helfand — and Rotten Tomatoes. One season, seven episodes — we were all in.
Not every day included an outdoor adventure. Sometimes the action was indoors (get your mind outta the gutter), tweaking day-to-day habits and routines. It felt much easier to do in a new environment and without the same frames of reference that surrounded me for the last 20+ years. Not that those times were bad, most of it was terrific. It was just time to keep growing. Maybe some enhancements will occur in large increments — like the two or more hours I’ve spent each day writing and/or editing Roam. But, I perceived that most of it would probably be in smaller, more subtle, increments. Those little things could add up though, as Father Guido Sarducci can attest to here in this link (3:20 mark). It was the best illustration of how cumulative, subtle changes could have a larger impact. Plus, no one can touch his delivery 😉.
Then another first for the Fertigs. That Tuesday, we visited our first Wegmans to fill in on some provisions. It was another test of how we’d react when dealing with the unknown. We (and by we, I mean Carol) were used to going to a supermarket, knowing exactly where everything was, and getting in and out in a timely fashion. Now, imagine Supermarket Sweep home edition where you time yourself vs. your personal best for food shopping. Well, this was a big friggin’ store and it took longer than expected. When we couldn’t find any rotisserie chicken, I heard that 60 Minutes ticking going off in my head, and I had to take a little walk down a refrigerated aisle to cool off. Sometimes, it was the little things, you know? Eventually, we persevered, none the worse for wear.
We arrived back at the Airbnb around four-ish, and, as it was November 3, we turned on the telly (finally got YouTubeTV cranking) and let the presidential election proceedings commence. Took a break around 7pm for Queens Gambit episode 4, then came back to watch the results come in. Had a couple of FaceTimes with family and friends and turned in around midnight.
I’d been waiting for the next day for a while. Imagine there was someone who changed the trajectory of your life most positively in your mid/late-twenties. Then, fast-forward thirty years to this day. Carol and I prepped for it by walking the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA)’s wonderful sculpture garden and meadow on a gorgeous fall afternoon. It was a large, hilly expanse. The kind of hill you see in that famous Andrew Wyeth painting, Christina’s World. Only instead of a farmhouse on top, it was a few large sculptures interplaying with the field and silhouetted against a sparkling blue sky.
We met former social worker turned friend, Elizabeth, at shaded seating by outdoor fountains. I had weekly sessions with her for seven years after my dad was killed. She’s retired now, but if memory serves, I hadn’t seen her since she attended our wedding. We all had our big reveals, aka taking off our Covid masks from a safe distance, and she looked great, not like thirty years had passed. How could that be? It was the Raleigh Durham/RTP lifestyle. Great weather, a lot of culture, and no traffic. She didn’t have to spend an hour to get everywhere, life was just easier, with no hassles. She didn’t have to put up with anything to make it through the day. And, it showed, she didn’t have an ounce of stress. Well, maybe an ounce, but that was related to the election. Now she was the salesperson — selling Raleigh Durham/RTP!
We spoke like old friends, just catching up. I’ve called her fairly annually near year-end to thank her for saving my life (figuratively), so she was pretty much up-to-speed on the big stuff. However, this was the first time we’d seen each other, and the first time she and Carol met. Certainly, they heard a lot about each other over the years, so it was great to close that loop and we left with the thought that if we do settle into this area, we’d certainly see more of each other. Good stuff! No GREAT stuff!
We drove southwest to Apex, NC. It had a nice small-town Main Street feel, and Carol had her first slice of acceptable pizza at Anna’s Pizzeria. That was it though. There wasn’t much else around these two blocks. Real nice, but too rural for us. We also checked out two 55+ neighborhoods, but they didn’t sing to us either. Felt good to start to make sense of the area and see what mattered to us.
We moseyed back to check in on the elections and the slog continued. We watched Queens Gambit, episodes 5 & 6, to take our minds off of it. The production quality, storyline, and acting continued to be superb.
Physically, it started to feel as if the dust kicked up by all that had transpired over the last two months had cleared. We’d gone from offer accepted, closing, and moving from our home in Wayne, NJ, to storing our remaining items, and closing our recently-purchased and renovated summer bungalow. We figured out how to handle forwarding our mail (thanks Rinda and Michael!), transferred all billing online, all subscriptions to digital, and we filled in on all the vitamins, batteries, and food-related items we forgot or didn’t have room to pack before we started on our excursion.
Now that we had wrapped our heads around all of that and started to establish our new daily rhythm, we were able to focus on the present, savor our new lifestyle, and deal with whatever surprises came our way.
I’m like a dog. You gotta run me or I get a little cranky. I hadn’t gone for a jog in over a week. Why? I spent my mornings focused on staying ahead of this journal, trying to turn it into a habit, which would take about a month. We spent afternoons checking out RTP. But, based on the frustration I felt due to a combination of COVID fatigue, election result fatigue, and career change fatigue, I felt — FATIGUED. So, that morning, I broke out for a little bit and went for an early run around our neighborhood. No greenway, just long-term hotel stay row, which included an Elevate, Hyatt House, Aloft, and Fairfield Inn & Suites.
Later, we went out to Wake Forest, supposedly a 35-minute drive from downtown Raleigh. That area felt like a larger Apex, a larger small town. Downtown was a few streets, not just one, but with a similar small-town vibe. The shops included a pizza joint, ice cream parlor, upscale dining, antique shop, and local service businesses: insurance, brokerage, tax, etc. They all had the same brickwork and white trim and seemed to have been recently renovated.
Turns out, there was a lot of traffic on the roads, and it actually took 45–50 minutes to get there, and that was during COVID, so this is probably a little further than we’d want to be from Raleigh and Durham. Also, the population seemed to consist of native North Carolinians who moved to these burbs, as opposed to Cary, which is actually an acronym that stands for Containment Area for Relocating Yankees, which is what we’d be. So, if we choose this area, I think that’s the spot we’d settle in.
The 55+ developments we saw in the area represented the same builders and their signature styles that we saw in other towns. You had your:
- Del Webb: large developments with commensurate clubhouses and amenities
- Epcon: midsize developments where all the homes had an identical modern brick face
- Builder whose name escapes me: There were four units attached, with light-colored brickwork. Small pool, clubhouse could fit a pinochle game. That’s all.
So, there was a Goldilocks/Three Bears pattern going on. It was like searching for colleges all over again. Did we want small, medium, or large? Did we want suburban or rural? As of now, we would probs large/suburban folks.
Next morning, I was able to get out early again for a run, this time on Hare Snipe Creek Trail (classic North Carolina name, right?) on Lynn Lake, about five miles from where we were staying. Just a 26-minute jog listening to my Roam playlist on Spotify. Enough to break a decent sweat and get those endorphins going. It was all about the endorphins. Then, I was King of the World again — as far as I know.
By the time I got back, Carol had found an online self-guided walking tour app, GPSmyCity. We went with the Raleigh Downtown Introduction Walk, which gave us a taste of the iconic buildings that formed the city in the mid-1800s — early-1900s and continued to shape it presently, including, but not limited to, the:
- Shimmer Wall at the Convention Center
- Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts
- Estey Hall: built in 1873, it was the first building constructed for the higher education of African-American women in the U.S.
We kicked off the weekend at a nearby joint, The Station on Person Street. Covid-friendly, think outdoor Cheers — with dawgs, followed by dinner at Plates Neighborhood Kitchen on Glenwood Ave. Spence’s friends Rachel and Tim got us hip to Glenwood the past weekend, but we hadn’t come across that part of the avenue in South Glenwood until that night. This was where all the action was.
The next morning, Saturday, November 7, around 11:30 am as Carol was doing her exercises, she yelled out from the bedroom, “That’s It!” I came in thinking, ok, what did I do now? Then, I saw Biden’s pic with a President-Elect banner beneath it. They’d just called Pennsylvania after the incessant drip of Philly and Allegheny County/Pittsburgh ballots provided the network decision desks with the spread they needed to make the call. The rest of the day seemed like V-Day in ’45. I went outside on the patio of the Airbnb and heard someone screaming from above “Oh Shit! Oh Shit!” with a smile in their yell. Then, I started to receive texts with videos that contained spontaneous dancing and horn-honking during celebrations in NYC and Brooklyn.
We headed outside to enjoy the high 70s weather and check out the scene. Went to La Farm Bakery in downtown Cary and picked up some fresh bread sandwiches, then headed to Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, and had lunch in the small dog section of Dog Park. There were no size or weight parameters to define dog size, like you’d see for suitcases at airline gates, so it seemed kinda subjective to me, no? A couple of cute twin pugs were nice to us, even though we didn’t share our chicken salad on brioche.
We crossed the street to lay out on the lawn and digest. You know, nap. I read a profile on Ethan Hawke in advance of his miniseries The Good Lord Bird where he played John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Turns out he lives in Spence & Will’s neighborhood on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn!
We cruised around looking for spontaneous election parties and arrived unfashionably late for the only one we spotted. It was at Halifax Mall. We winded our way back to downtown Cary as that was the most appealing section to us in the area thus far. We walked the town and got take out from Kababish Café to get back in time to watch the Biden/Harris victory speeches.
We had two hours to kill if we were going to make it the SNL cold open, so we started Game Change with Julianne Moore doing a great Sarah Palin, Ed Harris as McCain, and Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt.
We closed out the weekend and our stay spending the morning with Carol doing freelance and me prepping to deliver:
- A Moms Demand Action training on Applying Trauma-Informed Best Practices at Chapter Events
- Resume reviews to five Year Up students on how to enhance their resumes prior to submitting them to corporations for entry-level customer service and software development roles
- A 1:1 mentoring sesh with another student
I’ve found all of these engagements to be extremely fulfilling and rewarding, and they’re informing the type of work I’ll be looking for as I write the next chapter of my professional career.
Speaking of fulfillment…while playing Codenames with Spence and Will earlier that week, Spence recommended Ted Lasso on Apple+. It starred Jason Sudeikis as Lasso, a D2 college football coach who’d been hired by a Premier League football team to turn them around. As he said in episode 3, he’s “not as concerned about winning and losing as he is about molding the lives of the young men he’s engaged with.” I loved it. Fav series of 2020. Found it to be incredibly inspiring! Watch it Roam-eos!
Looking back on this, our first Roam stay, the net-net regarding Research Triangle Park was that it seemed to be to the southeast what Silicon Valley was to northern California 15 years ago. Lots of tech coming here, lots of jobs coming here, great college scene, moderate weather, good peeps. Who knows if we’d end up here, but if this is the worst-case scenario, we’re already playing with house money!
This post catches us up to the present. As I write this, I’m sitting in a Residence Inn in Boulder, CO, looking out my window at the Rockies in 19-degree weather and 6” of powder.
Since this entry was written three months ago, a lot has transpired. In addition to new leadership in the executive branch, our country has endured an additional 245k deaths due to COVID, and we’re at our 23rd location since we left Hopewell Junction. We’ve changed routes two times due to COVID and weather conditions, spent an overnight in the ER, which we’ll get to in our next post Roam: Denver/Boulder — Part I, and we’ve gotten to hang with fifteen friends and colleagues. We’ve learned a lot about the places we’ve been at, and about ourselves, and have tried to share the process of defining our next happy place. Not happy meal — happy place, with you Roam-eos.
And there’s more to come. Currently, it’s looking like St. Lou, Mad City, Chi-town, and Cleveland Rocks, before heading back to the Apple for COVID shots on April 3rd. But who knows what can happen between now and then — or afterwards?
As always, thanks to those of you who provide feedback, questions, and suggestions. Please keep ’em coming. I can’t tell you how much it means to me!
And if you know of anyone who would enjoy living vicariously — please feel free to forward these.
Most importantly though, I’d like to give a special shout-out to my bride. You wouldn’t be reading these if it wasn’t for her. She’s my very patient editor as she’s teaching me grammar along the way, and applying her artistic prowess to all the pics that are posted-as only she can.
See you further down the road in Denver/Boulder — Part 1!
