From Tammy to Tennessee

Rain, rain, go away.

Waking up to torrents of rain changed everything. All of our plans to explore the great outdoors of the eastern shore vanished when we had to wade through ankle-high puddles just to get to breakfast.

One thing I wasn't letting go of was a trip to Tammy and Johnny's for lunch.

A guy from the Virginia Department of Tourism had heard me talking about my plans to visit Chatham vineyards and insisted that Tammy and Johnny's had the best fried chicken on the eastern shore.

Whether he was right or not, I had to know for myself.

Driving rain accompanied us as we headed north, taking diverting jaunts to every small town along the way, and the DJ on the radio warning us," Don't be that guy who drives through a puddle of standing water."

Oh, and PS, flood warning in effect.

Fortunately, the sign for Tammy and Johnny's was enormous and we didn't have to drive through any standing water to get there.

Everyone looked at us like we were from another planet, but I got what I wanted: three pieces of chicken, cole slaw and mustardy potato salad.

The chicken suited me fine with a crust that wasn't too greasy or too crispy and we polished it off, wiped our fingers and headed to lunch just as a line of locals began forming.

Our pourer at Chatham yesterday had not just made recommendations of maritime forests, but also of restaurants, so we were in search of the Island House and Marina in Wachapreague, apparently the closest we were going to get to the Atlantic given all the barrier islands.

Pulling up, my first impression was of how it reminded me of the Fisherman's Wharf restaurant in Wanchese, N.C., weathered and surrounded by boats.

Our server was charming, home-schooled and now with an associate's degree and no real idea what he wanted to do with his life.

In the meantime, he did an exemplary job of waiting on us, bringing even brinier oysters than we'd had the day before.

Pretty soon we were going to be licking the ocean floor to get saltier.

When he got busy with other tables, I went ahead and poured us more of the Chatham Chardonnay we were drinking to help him out.

"But I wanted to give you the full experience!" he lamented hilariously. Consider it done with your humor.

After a salad of spinach, quinoa, craisins and walnuts, I kept it local with ice cream from Chincoteague's Island Creamery, listed as one of the 30 places to eat in Virginia before you die.

Flavor? Marsh Mud, of course, a decadent double chocolate ice cream that had been touted as tasting like chilled brownie batter and named after the boggy area surrounding us.

After our two-stop lunch, we had a decision to make. Should we stay or should we go?

The downpour was going to severely limit what we could do anywhere, so what would be consolation for that?

Aha, the brilliant one suggested, why not go to Virginia Beach and at least have a night sleeping to the sound of the ocean?

Never, and I do mean never, will I turn down an opportunity to be lulled to sleep to that most soothing of sounds, even with winds that had flags standing rigid from the gusts sweeping off the ocean.

We found an old school, two-story beach motel - The Sea Shell - tucked between two high rises (which only added to the wind tunnel effect), the kind of place that only takes cash, has no ice machine and has orange plastic ashtrays in every room.

The front desk was staffed by a woman who'd just moved here in July after a lifetime in Tennessee and had the accent to prove it.

Shortly after we settled in, I saw her out on the deck overlooking the boardwalk, phone in hand, trying to record the majesty of the surf rolling in.

Crazy, isn't it? I asked her from the relative safety of our room's doorway, where I had to hold on to the door jamb to keep from being buffeted by the winds.

"It's beautiful!" she yelled. "My girlfriends in Tennessee won't believe this!"

Much as I wanted to leave the door open, it was impossible, so I settled for the two windows and sat on the bed to enjoy the sights and sounds of some serious weather.

Whitecaps formed out as far as I could see and wind whistled between buildings and around corners.

Now this was what we'd come for: weather as entertainment.

After the requisite beach nap that oceanfront living requires, we headed out to Eat, an American Bistro, also located on Atlantic Avenue right on the beach and another of the 30 places to eat in Virginia before demise.

The door was locked when we arrived, a safety measure because the wind kept blowing it open, the hostess said.

With seats at the darkened bar, I turned to the woman next to me, only to find that she was a Richmonder who lives on Floyd Avenue (my home for 13 years) in the Fan.

Small world, isn't it?

The bar was intimate, the bartender gregarious, and the crowd lively with two TV screens, one set to the Food Channel and the other to Monday Night Football (which I didn't care about but one of us did).

All bottles of wine under $100 were half off, all but necessitating that we order a bottle of sparkling Brut Rose to accompany oysters rock (the dish that puts the rock in Rockefeller, or so the menu claims), a gooey delight of oysters, spinach, heritage bacon, Asiago, Hollandaise, smoked paprika and fennel pollen in the half shell.

When we ordered Ye Old School wedge, our server said that they were out of the avocado (a case had come in but they'd been rotten) the dish called for, so we accepted extra heritage bacon in lieu of missing avocado and everybody was happy.

The meatballs stuffed with fresh Mozzarella arrived in a pool of tomato ragout with a Parmesan crisp, meaning we were three for three at Eat.

Even the music suited me just fine, ranging from Chaka Khan to the XX, or roughly, my listening history, and while the guys around me cared about the sports on the TV, I had pink bubbles and appealing music, so what game?

Besides, I'd now crossed two more places off the list of pre-death eats.

But because this was a day of substituting indoor fun for the great outdoors, we eventually left Eat for the Raven, a pub that's been a fixture on Atlantic Avenue since 1968.

You know the kind of place - a small front area for non-smokers, a long bar and booths for smokers, a ceiling so low I could touch it from my bar stool.

But they had 1800, the game was on and Marshall Crenshaw was belting out "Whenever You're On My Mind," so while the wind howled outside and the parking lot had been a mine field of puddles, all was good inside the Raven.

And for the one who cared about such things, his team won the game.

Of course, the highlight for me was back at the Sea Shell, where we had  front row seat to the churning ocean and ceaseless winds, even if there was no hope of seeing the full moon tonight.

Not that it really mattered.

Sleeping to the sound of the surf, awakening to an absence of wind and a morning walk along the beach (ocean water so warm I waded in up to my skort...and then some when a wave caught me by surprise) were the best possible finish to our eastern shore adventure.

Safe to say I had the full experience.