Day 22: Greensboro to Durham

This morning, I woke up at 6 AM. I could have slept longer, but I heard Crispin woke up at 4. We went to the dining hall for breakfast, where I ate my last meal with Crispin in Greensboro.

Crispin was a computer programmer at a nuclear power plant company for 40 years and was an EMT for 12 years and volunteered at Habitat for Humanity. He’s currently a volunteer bike mechanic, a volunteer at Greensboro Folk Festival, and a volunteer at a hospital. I admired him a lot for this and he certainly inspired me to do some volunteering in the future.

Back at the house, I took a Covid rapid test to make sure I don’t have Covid. The result was negative, which is good. Then I washed my bike before loading everything in the car. I bid farewell to Margery then Crispin drove me once again, this time to Durham.

We arrived in downtown Durham around 12:15 PM. Crispin and I walked on West Main Street to find a good place to eat lunch. We chose to eat some poke at Pokeworks.

Downtown Durham

When we walked back to the car, I bid farewell to Crispin. It was great seeing him and staying at his house for the past four days. But a guest starts to stink like a staled fish after three days, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, and I didn’t want to stink too much!

I walked my bike around downtown then had a cup of iced tea at Pioneers coffee house before riding less than a mile to my Warmshowers host Kade’s house.

Once I settled in, Kade and I started chatting and the topic of architecture came up when Kade mentioned that he and his wife are building a house in Chapel Hill. I was intrigued since I studied architecture briefly in a summer program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2016. Kade told me about passive architecture by the architect Christopher Alexander, whom I had never heard of. Kade’s house is built using the principles of passive architecture.

When Kade’s wife, Caitlin, came back from work we had a lamb pasta dinner cooked by Kade. The meal was delicious and reminded me of my favorite Mongolian lamb kabob.

Caitlin and Kade

I will go to bed soon since I’m a bit tired. Tomorrow, I will ride to Raleigh on the East Coast Greenway.