I started coming to Duke for summers when I was fourteen years old, and my visits to Durham still evoke memories of some of my first intellectual challenges and excitations. Some of my closest friendships were made there, and some of those friends still live in Durham or still come back. I love cycling through Duke Forest or walking along the Eno River, I like some of Durham's close neighbourhoods, and I enjoy Ninth Street's few crucial blocks of bohemia. The warm weather, cheap living, and pulled pork barbecue also are huge pluses! Most of all I enjoy Durham's juxtapositions of the intellectual and the practical: there aren't many other places where PhD's and automobile mechanics turn up at the same parties.