Food on a dime.

Tuscaloosa has an abundance of restaurants for students tired of regular, boring Dining Hall food to enjoy. Here are my favorites of the year:

• Jimmy Johns: Great cold-cuts delivered as late as 3:00 AM. A sandwich and tip will run you about $6.00.

• Tut's: I've only been here once (which is surprising due to the fact that I love Greek food). They do deliver, but I haven't used their service. A gyro (pronounced 'hero') runs for about $7.00.

• Lai Lai: I've yet to find a great Chinese restaurant near campus, but Lai Lai is by far the best. It's your typical Chinese restaurant, and dishes top out around $10.00.

• Subway: Nothing unique or exciting, but you know what you're getting. Eat for as little as $5.00.

Triathlon!!

The US Olympic Trials for Triathlon for men and women will be held here in Tuscaloosa. Here's some info from their website (www.usatriathlon.org):

Swim: 1500 meter swim course heads east in the Black Warrior River with a downstream cross and upstream swim forming a figure nine and is similar to the Beijing Olympic course. Water temperature is usually borderline wetsuit under ITU elite rules. However, as USAT controls the rules for this race, it will be a non-wetsuit swim unless safety requires the use of wetsuits. The run from the river to the transition area will be carpeted and is approximately 100 meters. There are a short set of stairs to negotiate. Please see the video on the USAT website.

Bike: The bike course starts with a short steep climb up Hackberry Lane immediately out of transition with an 180 degree turn at the top leading to a fast descent back down to Jack Warner Parkway, flat sections along the river, a challenging
switchback climb up Queen City Avenue for approximately ¼ mile and a fast descent back to Jack Warner Parkway on 21st Avenue. Bike course will continue east on Jack Warner Parkway with a right turn back onto Hackberry Lane to start next lap or
continue straight to transition area after 8 laps are completed. Total amount of climbing will be approximately 80% of the vertical feet in Beijing with similar grades.

Run: The run is flat and heads west out of the transition area along Jack Warner Parkway and returns to River Road Park East along the River Road Park scenic path. The run course will be 4 laps plus a short run from transition to the loop and from the
loop to the finish line for a 6.2 mile (10k) course. The finish line will be located along the path overlooking the Black Warrior River

A Little Walk, Part Two

After walking around Riverfront Park, I got the grand idea to go explore the cemetery next to Bryce Hospital. I've heard it dubbed "Old Bryce Cemetery"; I'm not sure if that's its official name, but it seems to be an accepted name for it on campus. For some reason, I enjoy walking through old cemeteries. Maybe I'm really, really weird, but they're always peaceful and offers a chance for introspection.

Colby and I walked toward the Student Rec Center, and turned onto a dirt road with a road barrier. At the very least, they don't want vehicles entering the cemetery. Hopefully they wouldn't mind a couple of curious, though harmless, college kids exploring the premises. After walking for about a quarter of a mile, we came upon a large gate. It was locked. This posed no problem for us, however, as we easily squeezed between the bars of the gate.



This field of approximately one and a half acres actually held a few hundred graves. The majority of them were simply numbered, as shown.




We assume, from the positioning of the markers, and from common sense (what little we have), that the first grave was numbered one, and from the early to mid 1800s until today have buried over 2000 bodies. After some hunting, we did, in fact, find "lucky" #1. It was in a lot of overgrowth and surrounded by trees. It was obvious upkeep was a distant thought.

At first, I didn't think much of it, but then it hit me. About 95% of the graves were nameless. Even some of the newer ones (as in within the past five years) did not have names or dates. Are there really that many people without names in Bryce? Why do some people have names on their headstones, rather than others? In my "copious free time", I'm going to try to find out some answers...

A Little Walk, Part One

Friday (April 11) offered clear skies and comfortable temperatures, so my girlfriend, Colby, and I decided to take a walk. We decided to walk by the river, a favorite spot for the two of us. While at Riverfront Park, we saw a barge pushing what seemed to be coal. For this post, I'll talk a little bit about the Black Warrior River...

According to the source of all sources (Wikipedia), the Black Warrior River "is a tributary of the Tombigbee River, approximately 178 miles long " and drains an area of 6,275 square miles.

To develop the coal industries of Central Alabama the Federal Government in the 1880s began building a system of dressed rock lock and dams that concluded in 17 locks and dams. The first 16 locks and dams were constructed of sandstone quarried from the banks of the river and the river bed itself. Huge blocks of stone were hand shaped with hammer and chisel to construct the locks and dams, and a few of these dams were in service until the 1960s. One example of the craftsmanship of the stone locks is at University Park on Jack Warner Parkway in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The bank side wall of Lock 3 (Later renumbered Lock 12 and today largely disassembled) is the last remnant of the locks and dams made of this dressed rock from the 1880s-90s. A concrete dam completed in 1915, Lock 17 (John Hollis Bankhead Lock and Dam) is the last and only existing of the original dams, and has been modernized over the years with the addition of spillway gates, and a larger single lift lock. Lock 17 and Holt Lock and Dam also have hydro generating plants owned by Alabama Power suppling electricity for the Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Alabama areas. This lock and dam system made the Black Warrior River navigable along its entire course and one of the longest channelized waterways in the United States, forming part of the extended system that link the Gulf of Mexico to Birmingham. Birmingham became the "Pittsburgh of the South", shipping iron and steel products via the Black Warrior River through the Panama Canal to the West Coast and the world. Coal is barged to Mobile and is shipped throughout the world today making Mobile the largest coal port in the South.