newarking

Well, it was a great ride.  As a note…  The Blue Hens lost to Duke in the quarterfinals.  Great roller coaster of a season guys! 

Coach Bob Shillinglaw, in his 29th season at Delaware, has his team working together in a march to the teams first ever NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Final Four appearance.  The scheduled games are all in Annapolis this weekend. 

Semifinals
Saturday, May 26
M&T Bank Stadium, Balitmore, Md.
Johns Hopkins (11-4) vs. Delaware (13-5), noon
Duke (16-2) vs. Cornell (15-0), 2:30 p.m.

Championship
Monday, May 28
M&T Bank Stadium, Balitmore, Md.
Semifinal winners, 1 p.m.

All three games will be broadcast on ESPN2, so catch the fever on Saturday afternoon.  And GO BLUE HENS!

Zofia Smardz of the Washington Post wrote a wonderful piece on Newark in the travel section yesterday.  Obviously visiting for end of school year events, she was mesmerized by the beauty, history and vitality of our home town.  Give it a read, it will make you feel good about yourself.

Newark is developing a reputation for working well with mid sized event organizers.  The City and University are attracting more events every year.  The Bob Carpenter Center and the Clayton Hall Conference Center are abuzz this year.

While Newark lacks a large central convention center it makes up for it by providing coordinating services between the hotels and attractions in the area.  This is a new service and it involves a dozen hotels in Newark.  Between them they can accommodate almost any size gathering.  They can also help groups arrange transportation and even get coupons and discounts to lure attendees to Main Street Restaurants and clubs.  If groups want to make excursions to nearby attractions this group can help with that too.

The Downtown Newark Partnership Hotel Partners encourages planners to contact Polly Weir at 302-831-3714 or by email at pweir@udel.edu.

Bill Sullivan, manager at Courtyard by Marriott UD said the partnership is an attempt to …

share the load and respond as a community of hotels.  We can mobilize the resources of the Downtown Newark Partnership, the State Convention Bureau and other resources.  We have 126 rooms and if we fill up with an event, all the hotels in the area benefit from the unrelated bookings that would have been at our hotel.  So it is a win-win for the hotels in the partnership.

The Courtyard by Marriott UD is a teaching hotel, similar in concept to a teaching hospital, which is 100% owned by the University of Delaware.

One group that is taking advantage of all that Newark has to offer is the American Water Resource Association Mid-Atlantic Conference that is coming to Clayton Hall in September.  They will be using the conference and hotel facilities as well as hosting outings to Brandywine Creek State Park, Russell W. Peterson Urban Wildlife Refuge and other area attractions.

The University of Delaware campus will be the new site for the MS Walk this year.  On May 20th, walkers will begin at the Perkins Student Center and follow a three mile paved walkway.  This site replaces the natural contours of Lums Pond State Park.  The new site offers improved accesability for parking as well.

Courtesy of University of Delaware, Office of Public Relations, photo by Kevin Quinlan

Day of the event registration begins at 8:00 AM but pre-registration is available through the Multiple Sclerosis Society, at (302) 655-5610 or by going online at http://www.msdelaware.org/.   Walkers who raise more than $100 are eligible for prizes and incentives.

The largest fund raising team in the Newark MS Walk is the J&M Jaguars who raised over $13,000 .  The team leader is Dinamarie Borcky who individually raised over $6,000.  In the six years Ms. Borcky has been doing this she and her team have raised almost $40,000!  Ms. Borcky lives off of Paper Mill Road just outside of Newark and works at the Bank of America. 

 “I am excited for this year because Bank of America has a donation match program.  Anyone who donates from Bank of America can have the bank match their donation” 

In fact, there are three walk teams that are headed by Bank of America employees. The new location will help her raise even more money for this good cause. 

“A lot of people who have small kids wanted to come out and bring the kids, but they could not at Lums Pond because of the rough terrain.  At the UD Campus we will have paved paths.” 

The J&M Jaguars get their name from Ms. Borcky’s Mother and Cousin who both have MS and from her Mom’s favorite car.  They will be holding a pre-walk fundraiser event this year at the Red Robin Restaurant in Christiana Town Center on Wednesday, May 16^th between 5 – 8 p.m.  If you bring a copy of the event flyer and present it to the waiter or waitress that night, Red Robin will donate 20% of your bill to the MS Society in the name of the team.  Red Robin has some huge hamburgers so bring your appetite and eat well knowing that 20% goes to help fight MS.

 Free comic book day was a great success at Captain Blue Hen on Main Street. 

I took my three year old Spider Man fan with me and he just loved getting to meet Spidey, Batman and Batwoman.  There was one fella there that scared him a bit though…

Thanks for the heads up to Eric at Evolvor Media.

Well, spring lasted about two weeks here this year so I finally got out on the road with my bike.  I barely made it before May - Delaware Bike Month.  Not having seen my friend Steve in a while, I decided to head over to his house.  After a nice visit and rest I headed up Red Mill Road to Paper Mill Road.  This part of the ride was into the teeth of a stiff wind.  It was a nice ride and I mapped it here.  Here is the elevation map of the ride:

The Bike Month Ride of Silence event will touch Newark.  For more information visit one of our two large bicycle dealers on Main Street.

Bike Line : 212 East Main Street Newark, DE 19711

Wooden Wheels : 301 Newark Shopping Center Newark, DE 19711

Further information about biking in and around Newark is available from the White Clay Bicycle Club.  They are even offering rider information tags for your helmet for free.  They hold a number of rides during the week and on weekends in and around Newark.  If you have never riden in a group, this is a great place to start.

My goal is to once again ride in the MS Society Bike to the Bay event.  My ride report from last year is available here.  I WILL make it this time!

Another snippet from the book Newark, Delaware Past and Present, written by Egbert G. Handy and Jas. L. Vallandigham, Jr. in 1882.

My last Newark History post from the book was on Newark Delaware’s First Charter, and this one looks at some local laws created a few years later establishing some laws for Newark’s official marketplace area. It appears that the marketplace was right by the Newark Academy building, on the side where the Stone Balloon had be located at for the last few years.

In 1772 “An Act for establishing a market in the town of Newark and for regulating the same,” took effect.

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