It’s been awhile, so here goes nuthin’:
The Dupont Forest 12K is looking for sponsors: Here’s the latest: Black Dome of Asheville is now a sponsor of Dupont 12k along with Earth School, Organic Mechanic (Green Team Sponsor), Doc Chey’s Noodles, Boone Bar, Liberty Bicycles, Sweet Peas Hostel, Asheville Pain & Wellness Center, & Alpha Army Navy Store. To support the 10th annual Dupont 12k Trail Race, a Jus Running hosted benefit for Dupont Forest, email Jonathan Poston, staff@gatherlogic.com.
This trail race sounds like a lot of fun. Speaking of running races coming up, lots of people are looking ahead to the Isaac Dickson Hot Chocolate 10K. Better sign up, and get to training. “Asheville’s flattest 10K” will be here before you know it.
Grand wedding: Check out a Grand Bohemian wedding. Swank.
Leicester Highway development update: I’ve got a couple of questions I’m hoping someone can help me with. First, when is the new Leicester Highway shopping center going to open. It’s called Leicester Crossing or something, and it’s supposed to house an Atlanta Bread Co. and some other shops. It looks ready to be occupied.
Second, there’s some grading work that has started on Leicester Highway frontage property right next to the Enmark about a mile or so down the road. The property is actually between the road and the old location of the Land of Sky Regional Council offices. Yet another shopping center?
Westgate construction: I also have questions about construction happening in the giant parking area in front of Westgate Shopping Center. A bank that sat on one end of the lot next to the highway is totally gone, and there’s a bunch of grading work starting. I vaguely remember some plan to build condos or something on the Westgate property. Could this be the start of that?
Touch-and-go: If you saw a big military plane circling the Asheville Regional Airport all day today, I hear tell that it was just touch-and-go landing practice. Sources tell me it looked like a C-130.
What happened to Liberty Bikes Motorcycles? The shop, which sold motorcycles and ATVS out of its shopping center location on Patton Avenue near the intersection with Leicester Highway, has vanished. Gone.
6 Comments
Liberty Bikes is on Hendersonville Rd – they are alive and well. Liberty Motorcycles was on Patton – I have no idea what happened to them.
Touch-and-go: Yes it is a C130. And yes it flies very low over South Asheville. So low over Arden that at times it vibrates the windows and knocks things off shelves.
That is just before they nose up and make it over the mountain on Ledbetter Road. I just feel sorry for the folks within a few miles of the airport. It is just unsafe when the C130 buzzes there house and the animals run for cover.
Spending over 20 years on a Airforce base we never allowed our pilots to buzz residential areas. This is just plain rude, unsafe, and disrespectful to retired military officers in the area.
They’re buidling you a namesake deli in the Westgate parking lot. Jason’s Deli is a national salad bar/ deli restaurant. It’s actually really good…
Thank you Ashvegas for mentioning the Sponsor Drive for the coming 2010 Dupont 12k Benefit for the Forest!
Military pilots are required to practice at higher elevation airports to train in case of deployment to locations that are similar in height above sea level. Simply, aircraft perform differently ( and handle differently) when taking off and landing at higher elevations.
For example, their takeoff weight is usually lower. Asheville is 2000 feet above sea level. Also the ability to fly throughout the Pisgah National Forest, where they need not worry about the normal flight restrictions that occur above populated areas, is a chance to practice things such as nap of the earth flying (flying very low, following the contour of the ground). The first time I saw a P-3 Orion flying out of Asheville, I got a call from a really dumb editor of a local paper. He wanted to know what they where doing. I said the P-3 is U.S. Navy aircraft that is designed to hunt submarines. (The P-3 is easy to ID: four propellers, and a large bee-like stinger tail sticking from the aft of the aircraft. The tail is a MAD or magnetic anomoly detector. It can signal when the aircraft crosses over a large metal object that disrupts the earth’s magnetic field, i.e. a submarine)
He asked if they where hunting subs in the French Broad. Oy Vey!
C130s using the runway for touch-and-goes are pretty common at AVL. Actually, the airport sees quite a bit of military aircraft in and out of it.
Liberty Bikes has a store on Hendersonville Rd. in south Asheville – it’s in the same shopping center as Harris Teeter.