RUN FOR THE HILLS

[Andrew Robinson]

Ha sorry for the deceptively intriguing title. Thought I would share this becuase it's just too damn funny!

I frequent a restaurant/bar pretty much weekly with several of my other engineering buds. For those of you familiar with Raleigh, especially NCSU students, you most likely know the place (Mitch's Tavern). To those of you not familiar, it's basically the "Cheers" of Raleigh and a very popular hangout for NCSU students. Mitch's also has quite a bit of history. Scenes from Bull Durham with Kevin Costner were filmed there. Anyways... to the point. After dinner tonight we decided to take a quick stroll around the NCSU campus since the weather was so nice. Mitch's is situated on Hillsborough Street right across from campus. It's also technically right across from the NCSU reactor lab. They have a pretty sweet 1MW PULSTAR that you should read up on if you're not familiar with it (http://www.ne.ncsu.edu/nrp/pulstar.html). We ended up just taking a short stroll around the reactor building and back. For those of you familiar with the NC State campus, you probably also know about the natural area/garden directly behind the reactor building. While strolling back through the garden we came across this... hahaha

Picture 1

For those of you that have not met me in person, it should be noted (for comparison) that I am a BIG guy (275lbs). We thought it was a weed at first, but it's actually an offshoot from the root of the tree that can be seen above in the second picture. The weird thing is how this offshoot is growing. It doesn't appear to be a new trunk. It's just like a gigantic set of twigs, stems, and leaves. It should also be noted that the leaves on the main tree are actually only about 5 inches across and about 6 inches long. I'm not a botanist, so I have no idea why the tree behaved this way. It was very funny though considering it's locale hahahaha. You can just barely make out the top of the stack for the reactor building in the background of picture two (boxed in red).

Picture 2

I am crossing my fingers for GIGANTIC radioactive ants to destroy Raleigh sometime in the near future

Just for fun :)

[Doug Browning]

Got any Japanese Knotweed or Kudzu growing around there? You might get your nightmare.

[Richard Hull]

Balsa trees have giant leaves like the one you show, but they normally grow much farther south. (Central America.)

Richard Hull

[Andrew Robinson]

Yeah I don't have a clue why it did that. I should have taken a picture of a regular leaf from exact same tree vs the giant version. I'm still going with the funnier explanation of radioactive shenanigans haha.