Let’s put the X in OBX

At the end of a good vacation, you’re a little exhausted and ready for your own bed and day-to-day activities. But once you unpack, do laundry, run errands, and start to settle back in to familiar routines, you’d love just a few more days away from everything. I returned to Austin yesterday afternoon (Sarah flew to Chico, Ca for a biology conference) and was eager to see the cat, reacquaint my fingers with a keyboard, and just be back in the town that keeps it weird. Of course, now all I can think about is how much I’d like to be sitting on our cottage’s deck, sipping a margarita, and watching the waves crash onto the Outer Banks shoreline. Oh well. Sarah and I had a wonderful time at the reunion and we’ll have memories to last a lifetime. Some of these memories would probably be fun to post to the site (such as hitching a ride to our accessible-by-4WD-only cottage with a guy who may or may not have been Jesse Ventura because the folks that were to pick us up were stuck in the sand, praying that the rising tide wouldn’t send them out to sea). I think I will instead share some random thoughts and observations experienced last week…

The nearest airport to the Outer Banks is in Norfolk, Virginia. As we were walking down a corridor on the way to our gate yesterday morning, I was sleepily scanning the framed ads that showcase the region’s major employers, universities, and attractions. One of them caught my attention. It displayed a large image of a maglev train. Maglev (magnetic levitation) is a vaunted high-speed train technology that uses basic electromagnetic principles so that the train can “float” above an elevated guideway. Proponents say that the trains can reach speeds up to 300mph and argue that they should replace short, express jet flights. To my knowledge, maglev has never been fully implemented but is being tinkered with in places like Germany and Japan. The problem with the technology is that is has been way too expensive. But it turns out that the world’s first maglev train is up and running in the United States. Yes, it is in Norfolk, Virginia at Old Dominion University. Why Old Dominion? Why any university for that matter? Can’t the students and faculty be encouraged to ride their bikes if parking is a problem? Seems like this would make more sense connecting an airport to a dense downtown somewhere. A company called American Maglev Technology claims that it can build real maglev systems at a fraction of what was previously needed. Old Dominion partnered with AMT, Lockheed Martin, and Dominion Virginia Power to make the system a reality on OD’s campus.

As we drove past the ritzy beach resorts of Duck, and Corolla, I noticed the letters ‘OBX’ everywhere–license plates, stickers, flags, t-shirts, and store windows. OBX, which stands for “Outer Banks Experience,” is the area’s signature acronym. At first I wondered what was so unique about the experience one has here instead of at another string of beach towns and resorts. By the end of the week, it made a little more sense. For us, the Outer Banks Experience had a lot to do with having a large group of people in one house, about 10 miles from a paved road. There is something fairly extreme about having to look out the window to see if the tide is in or out to know whether you will be able to go to the grocery. And this isn’t Daytona Beach, hard-packed sand here, mind you. I regularly saw huge trucks, engines roaring, trying to get through the deep, loose sand. As weird and frustrating as it could be to have to look both ways before walking to the ocean, it was immensely satisfying to let my inner hessian run free as I blazed down the beach in a borrowed truck.

Any more it seems like instructional text almost always comes in both English and Spanish. The best situation, from a readability standpoint (though not as eco-friendly), is when this text is totally separted, such as a digital camera offering two instructional manuals, one for each language. In most instances, that is probably an unaffordable technique. If I can’t have the English instructions totally separated from the those in Spanish, I would prefer if you first see the English text, in its entirety, and then see the Spanish text. Too often the text is side-by-side, with no visual distinctions to clue the reader as to which is which. For example, I was relaxing on the beach, watching some kids ride boogie boards, and noticed the care instructions for my beach towel. The tag showed a big block of all-black text that read, “100% Cotton 100% Algodon Machine Wash Warm, Tumble Dry Lavar En Lavadora Con Agua Tibia” and so on. Simply having the Spanish text in gray would have made a huge difference. Or better yet, why not just have English and then Spanish? Public Realm, addressing the issues that really matter…

June 21st, 2003