Not for the first time, I was reminded that I bloom at the beach.
Much as I appreciate the compliment, I'm not sure it's a trait worthy of praise. After all, who wouldn't thrive when they can see and hear the ocean day and night, gently unwinding the stresses accumulated since the last beach week in May? What's not to love about getting up and putting on a bathing suit as the official attire for the entire day?
And truly, who wouldn't be all aglow when she gets to shower outdoors every afternoon?
Although my favorite guest teased me daily about the focus on food - we were seldom more than an hour past the last meal when someone wanted to know when (and what) the next one would be - it's kind of nice to have nothing more to think about than what you feel like eating next. That all meals are taken on the screened-in porch with a side of ocean breezes doesn't hurt a girl's mood, either.
So when a guest looks over at you while you chew a Tootsie Roll on the beach half an hour after lunch and casually refers to you as "an eating machine," well, I guess I'll just have to live with that.
The weather all week was ideal for blooming: breezy, sunny (but never hotter than 89) and dropping down in the low '70s at night. Just as good was the ocean temperature which started the week at 70 degrees, took a brief nose-dive to 64, then rebounded with 75, 73, 71 and 72, ensuring that we spent time morning and afternoon bathing in the sea like some Victorian prescription for good health.
Wednesday afternoon, our water fun was interrupted when we saw dozens of people congregating further down the beach. Just in case they'd spotted something we hadn't, we dutifully trooped out of the water and made our way toward the onlookers, noticing thousands of tiny fish lying near death on the shore, some of them still twitching futilely yards from the surf. Not far out in the ocean was a feeding frenzy of epic proportions with larger fish jumping in and out of the water as they repeatedly dove for dinner, putting on a show for the entire beach.
I'm not smart enough to know why all the little fish wound up on shore dying, but surely there was a connection to the all-you-can-eat buffet we were witnessing.
In other tragic news, one thing that's become quite clear about my last five beach sojourns going back to May 2018 is that the days of me finishing 3 or 4 books in a week have ended. In fact, let's have a moment of silence for my love of beach reading, which apparently died a quiet death last year despite my resolve to still tote at least four more books than I have any realistic hope of reading.
The only thing that makes it bearable is that reading time has been replaced with conversation time, so I tell myself that's my consolation.
Maybe part of the reason I'm so happy at the beach is the steady diet of bubbly and seafood. Whether it was a dolphin boat with hushpuppies from John's Drive-in, rare tuna sashimi at Ocean Boulevard, local shrimp from Carawan Seafood savored on the porch or a crabcake rolled in coconut flakes and panko enjoyed at Art's Place while live music played, we definitely did our part to support the local fishing economy.
On my walk one morning after breakfast, I spotted a woman sitting on the beach with a bottle of bubbles and a large bubble wand. Without taking her eyes off the ocean, she'd periodically dip the wand in the jar and hold it up, allowing the breeze to push out scores of bubbles with zero effort on her part.
Meanwhile, kids in her vicinity were having a ball running around the sand with bubbles coming at them from one side and the surf pounding the shore on the other, both reasons to scream with delight.
When it comes to showing my happiness level, I'm past the screaming stage. Unlike the kids in the bubble clouds, it's enough for me to just revel in it all: every open window framing the blues and greens of ocean and sky, the constant sound of the surf crashing down onshore, and, best of all, every wave that slapped me full on, leaving behind a mouthful of salt water.
Why, it's enough to make even an eating machine bloom.
Showing posts with label kitty hawk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitty hawk. Show all posts
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Dance Card Filled
Beach vacation over, I have sacrificed two prized possessions to the gods of the ocean.
A towering wave claimed my prescription sunglasses with a smack to the back of my head while my favorite sunhat, that relic of 1998, finally succumbed to years of sun, salt and washings, arriving home a tattered shell of the SPF 100 head covering that has saved my face for two decades. That would be the same chapeau that causes strangers to regularly tell me that they like my hat as I traipse around the streets of Richmond.
A moment of silence, please, for a hat life well lived and traveled. That hat shaded me in places ranging from South Africa to the Loire Valley with a whole lot of seaside locales - Barbados, Bermuda, Pismo Beach - in between. With any luck, a replacement will be ordered post haste to carry me through the next 20 years.
My sunglasses, which had been chosen not because I thought I could pull off aviator frames (I had serious doubts but eventually decided that anyone who lived through the '70s could) but because they were on sale will also need replacing and now I've just got to decide whether the universe was trying to tell me to step away from the aviator frames or just to wear a leash to keep them attached to my big old head.
Those two incidents aside, my beach week finished out in a blur of sunshine, waves and the best possible company once the girlfriends had returned to RVA. In addition to the flowers that had preceded his arrival, my final guest arrived with yet another gift, this one a contribution to my beach reading: "Women Writers of the Beat Era."
I'd like to say I got around to reading it at the beach, but pretty much non-stop conversation and activity ensured that didn't happen. Fortunately, it'll read just as well now that I'm back to real life and fewer distractions.
Water temperatures hovered between 75 and 79 and most afternoons, the surf was so clear we could easily see our shadows on the ocean floor, right through the water, at least when we weren't being knocked down by waves.
Given my lifelong lack of hand/eye coordination, it should also be noted that when I was put to the "catch a football while in the ocean" test, I made a left-handed catch on the first throw. As the Bo Deans would say, ain't that what dreams are made of? At least to this thrower anyway.
Thursday night we devoted to the full moon, sipping Patron and settling in on the porch swing in time to catch the moonrise. In between dancing on the porch to a mash-up of '70s slow jams and pounding surf, we followed the moon's progress from low, small and red to huge, white and overhead, which is where we left it when we finally abandoned our watch.
At dinner Friday (a gorgeous and refreshing gazpacho with lump crab, a Mediterranean platter of bread and 3 kinds of baby carrots with olive tapendade, tzatziki and curry hummus, a crab-stuffed avocado and a Thai chopped salad with peanut dressing followed by German chocolate cake) on the screened porch of the Salt Box Cafe, we were seated across from N.C. restaurateur/chef/author Vivian Howard and four local women who were discussing work/life balance and other hot button estrogen topics before having Vivian sign copies of her first cookbook "Deep Run Roots."
And while I haven't been to her restaurant The Chef and the Farmer in Kinston, Mac has and we've talked about a pilgrimage back at some point. You just don't expect that kind of literary star power at a little soundside restaurant in Colington, N.C.
Saturday was devoted to last day beach pleasures (loss of glasses aside) and the night to a full fireworks display coming from the Avalon Pier area, a bonus considering it was still June, but a fitting sendoff after four practically perfect beach days with himself.
And that's with only having finished one book, an all-time beach low. Everything else about the trip, though? Glasses and hat be damned, easily an all-time beach high.
I'm also thinking of having that football bronzed as a souvenir. Who am I kidding? Like I'm ever going to forget any of this...
A towering wave claimed my prescription sunglasses with a smack to the back of my head while my favorite sunhat, that relic of 1998, finally succumbed to years of sun, salt and washings, arriving home a tattered shell of the SPF 100 head covering that has saved my face for two decades. That would be the same chapeau that causes strangers to regularly tell me that they like my hat as I traipse around the streets of Richmond.
A moment of silence, please, for a hat life well lived and traveled. That hat shaded me in places ranging from South Africa to the Loire Valley with a whole lot of seaside locales - Barbados, Bermuda, Pismo Beach - in between. With any luck, a replacement will be ordered post haste to carry me through the next 20 years.
My sunglasses, which had been chosen not because I thought I could pull off aviator frames (I had serious doubts but eventually decided that anyone who lived through the '70s could) but because they were on sale will also need replacing and now I've just got to decide whether the universe was trying to tell me to step away from the aviator frames or just to wear a leash to keep them attached to my big old head.
Those two incidents aside, my beach week finished out in a blur of sunshine, waves and the best possible company once the girlfriends had returned to RVA. In addition to the flowers that had preceded his arrival, my final guest arrived with yet another gift, this one a contribution to my beach reading: "Women Writers of the Beat Era."
I'd like to say I got around to reading it at the beach, but pretty much non-stop conversation and activity ensured that didn't happen. Fortunately, it'll read just as well now that I'm back to real life and fewer distractions.
Water temperatures hovered between 75 and 79 and most afternoons, the surf was so clear we could easily see our shadows on the ocean floor, right through the water, at least when we weren't being knocked down by waves.
Given my lifelong lack of hand/eye coordination, it should also be noted that when I was put to the "catch a football while in the ocean" test, I made a left-handed catch on the first throw. As the Bo Deans would say, ain't that what dreams are made of? At least to this thrower anyway.
Thursday night we devoted to the full moon, sipping Patron and settling in on the porch swing in time to catch the moonrise. In between dancing on the porch to a mash-up of '70s slow jams and pounding surf, we followed the moon's progress from low, small and red to huge, white and overhead, which is where we left it when we finally abandoned our watch.
At dinner Friday (a gorgeous and refreshing gazpacho with lump crab, a Mediterranean platter of bread and 3 kinds of baby carrots with olive tapendade, tzatziki and curry hummus, a crab-stuffed avocado and a Thai chopped salad with peanut dressing followed by German chocolate cake) on the screened porch of the Salt Box Cafe, we were seated across from N.C. restaurateur/chef/author Vivian Howard and four local women who were discussing work/life balance and other hot button estrogen topics before having Vivian sign copies of her first cookbook "Deep Run Roots."
And while I haven't been to her restaurant The Chef and the Farmer in Kinston, Mac has and we've talked about a pilgrimage back at some point. You just don't expect that kind of literary star power at a little soundside restaurant in Colington, N.C.
Saturday was devoted to last day beach pleasures (loss of glasses aside) and the night to a full fireworks display coming from the Avalon Pier area, a bonus considering it was still June, but a fitting sendoff after four practically perfect beach days with himself.
And that's with only having finished one book, an all-time beach low. Everything else about the trip, though? Glasses and hat be damned, easily an all-time beach high.
I'm also thinking of having that football bronzed as a souvenir. Who am I kidding? Like I'm ever going to forget any of this...
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Surf's Up
One thing we're not doing is working on our tans.
Oh, sure, Mac and I got out after breakfast and walked a few miles up the beach along Southern Shores, but it was under cloudy skies and with a stiff breeze that made keeping my hat on my head challenging. Yet despite the absence of sun, the ocean was obscenely warm - 72 degrees when we walked and up to 76 by mid-afternoon - albeit much rougher than the past few days.
Pru had spent our walking time cooking up butter beans from Morris' Farm Market using butter and a spice blend from Penzey's that had us praising the beans to high heaven. After a couple of taste tests of my own, I insisted Pru provide Mac with a sample and don't you know she finished her first sample and went back for a second? These were not your average butter beans.
Meanwhile, our beach prospects were dimming with every additional cloud that appeared. We decided that the only logical thing to do was amuse ourselves on the screened-in porch for the day, a pastime that involved eating crustaceans, listening to music, drinking wine, Wild Weed ale (Pru was attracted to its juniper berry and cucumber infusions) and root beer and playing board games.
Mac saved the day by venturing down to Whalebone Seafood (where her brother works) to score us a box of crabs and a couple pounds of local shrimp (uncooked so that it wouldn't overcook on the drive back up the beach road) for our mid-afternoon feast of crabs, shrimp, pineapple, cantaloupe and, thank you jeezus, those butter beans.
No surprise, Pru doesn't pick crabs or even particularly like crabmeat, but Mac had long ago proved her worthiness as a crab-eating partner so we tore into the warm, meaty crabs while Pru was steaming her shrimp with Old Bay, celery and onions. She eventually joined us at the long table on the porch - scoring points by bringing a bottle of Prieur et Fils Sancerre Rose and three glasses - to peel shrimp while we picked crabs. Our final guest was Mac's Mom, who came by to join the crab feast and conversation, but also got lucky enough to sample the butter beans.
Let's just say that as the crab and shrimp shells piled up, there was a lot of estrogen and deep Outer Banks roots represented on those picnic benches.
After eating ourselves silly to the sound of the surf, Mac's Mom left and two of us retreated for naps while Pru decided to be the first in the outdoor shower. And although the shower is just outside my open bedroom door, I never so much as heard the shower door open or close while I was out cold a few feet away.
Our consensus had been that eating, drinking and talking at the beach can be exhausting, so there should be no shame in napping, even after a night of 9+ hours sleeping. In fact, that's part of the beauty of beach vacations, which, unlike true vacations, require no sightseeing, day trips or effort of any kind.
Too full to contemplate another meal even post-nap, we did what any self-respecting beach-goers do when the sky is spitting rain and no one is motivated to leave the cottage. We played board games. I hadn't brought any, so we made do with what was in the cottage cupboard: Yahtzee (a personal favorite from childhood) and Sagarian, a MENSA game choice for 1997 which was delightfully dated.
The Concorde? Personal ads? The Netherlands has the highest crime rate? No millennial would recognize half the outdated references contained in the game's questions and answers, but we definitely got some good laughs out of it. As part of the game's directives, Pru sang "On the Good Ship Lollipop" (and rather well, I might add), Mac named all 7 dwarfs and I had to state the colors of the Cat in the Hat's hat.
It's amazing the information you can pull out of the dusty file drawers of your mind after doing nothing much more than listening to and watching waves crash for two days. Multi-tasking has been reduced to eating cheese and crackers while listening to game instructions read aloud. And we still played fast and loose with the rules.
The same goes for the rules of engagement at the beach. No umbrella was raised today, no SPF applied, no bodies bronzed by the sun. Hell, I've only finished one book. At this rate, no one's going to believe I was even at the beach.
As for those lovely pink calla lilies that were delivered to the cottage mid-morning, what beach girl doesn't appreciate flowers when she can't work on her tan lines?
Don't look at me. I'm all in.
Oh, sure, Mac and I got out after breakfast and walked a few miles up the beach along Southern Shores, but it was under cloudy skies and with a stiff breeze that made keeping my hat on my head challenging. Yet despite the absence of sun, the ocean was obscenely warm - 72 degrees when we walked and up to 76 by mid-afternoon - albeit much rougher than the past few days.
Pru had spent our walking time cooking up butter beans from Morris' Farm Market using butter and a spice blend from Penzey's that had us praising the beans to high heaven. After a couple of taste tests of my own, I insisted Pru provide Mac with a sample and don't you know she finished her first sample and went back for a second? These were not your average butter beans.
Meanwhile, our beach prospects were dimming with every additional cloud that appeared. We decided that the only logical thing to do was amuse ourselves on the screened-in porch for the day, a pastime that involved eating crustaceans, listening to music, drinking wine, Wild Weed ale (Pru was attracted to its juniper berry and cucumber infusions) and root beer and playing board games.
Mac saved the day by venturing down to Whalebone Seafood (where her brother works) to score us a box of crabs and a couple pounds of local shrimp (uncooked so that it wouldn't overcook on the drive back up the beach road) for our mid-afternoon feast of crabs, shrimp, pineapple, cantaloupe and, thank you jeezus, those butter beans.
No surprise, Pru doesn't pick crabs or even particularly like crabmeat, but Mac had long ago proved her worthiness as a crab-eating partner so we tore into the warm, meaty crabs while Pru was steaming her shrimp with Old Bay, celery and onions. She eventually joined us at the long table on the porch - scoring points by bringing a bottle of Prieur et Fils Sancerre Rose and three glasses - to peel shrimp while we picked crabs. Our final guest was Mac's Mom, who came by to join the crab feast and conversation, but also got lucky enough to sample the butter beans.
Let's just say that as the crab and shrimp shells piled up, there was a lot of estrogen and deep Outer Banks roots represented on those picnic benches.
After eating ourselves silly to the sound of the surf, Mac's Mom left and two of us retreated for naps while Pru decided to be the first in the outdoor shower. And although the shower is just outside my open bedroom door, I never so much as heard the shower door open or close while I was out cold a few feet away.
Our consensus had been that eating, drinking and talking at the beach can be exhausting, so there should be no shame in napping, even after a night of 9+ hours sleeping. In fact, that's part of the beauty of beach vacations, which, unlike true vacations, require no sightseeing, day trips or effort of any kind.
Too full to contemplate another meal even post-nap, we did what any self-respecting beach-goers do when the sky is spitting rain and no one is motivated to leave the cottage. We played board games. I hadn't brought any, so we made do with what was in the cottage cupboard: Yahtzee (a personal favorite from childhood) and Sagarian, a MENSA game choice for 1997 which was delightfully dated.
The Concorde? Personal ads? The Netherlands has the highest crime rate? No millennial would recognize half the outdated references contained in the game's questions and answers, but we definitely got some good laughs out of it. As part of the game's directives, Pru sang "On the Good Ship Lollipop" (and rather well, I might add), Mac named all 7 dwarfs and I had to state the colors of the Cat in the Hat's hat.
It's amazing the information you can pull out of the dusty file drawers of your mind after doing nothing much more than listening to and watching waves crash for two days. Multi-tasking has been reduced to eating cheese and crackers while listening to game instructions read aloud. And we still played fast and loose with the rules.
The same goes for the rules of engagement at the beach. No umbrella was raised today, no SPF applied, no bodies bronzed by the sun. Hell, I've only finished one book. At this rate, no one's going to believe I was even at the beach.
As for those lovely pink calla lilies that were delivered to the cottage mid-morning, what beach girl doesn't appreciate flowers when she can't work on her tan lines?
Don't look at me. I'm all in.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
RC Cola and a Pink Moon
Unofficially, Summer has been kicked off.
Friday night's dinner at Flora was winding down when one of the managers overheard me telling Pru and Beau a story involving Jello shooters at the Free Love Nursing Home, spurring her to tell me about the latest thing on their late-night drink menu: Jello shooters. And not your average vodka and fruit variety, but a Pimm's Cup Jello shooter, complete with tiny bits of cucumber on top. A grown-up shooter.
We'll take three, please.
The ample shooters were every bit as refreshing as you'd expect, but given that a Pimm's Cup is Pru's official Summer drink, it seemed only right to toast to my upcoming favorite season as part of the shooting.
Mind you, this was exactly what we womenfolk needed after a lengthy explanation to Beau about why the phrase "the rabbit died" is synonymous with getting pregnant. Pru, incredulous that he'd never made the connection between the two phrases, was gobsmacked when he said it seemed illogical to think that rabbits had ever been sacrificed for the sake of a pregnancy test. What else, she queried, could the phrase have meant?
I've since asked three other men if they understood the phrase's meaning, only to discover they were as unaware as Beau. Mars and Venus, I tell you what.
Pru put it most hilariously by asking Beau, "Oh, you think the doctor's office should have a rabbit hutch out back?" when he mused about the inconvenience of nabbing rabbits for testing.
After seeing Cadence Theatre's production of "Appropriate" about a family so dysfunctional it made all of us feel better, Pru was moved to observe, "Not the play I want to die in." One can only hope to have that choice.
Back at Pru's manse, we met up with Hotdog, an old family friend who'd flown in from Arizona while we were at the play and had been awaiting our arrival. The goal was to add him into our wide-ranging porch conversation - which only concluded shortly before 2 a.m. - while listening to music from 1969, the year he'd graduated high school.
That meant everything from the Beatles to Norman Greenbaum. "I wonder if he'd have had more hits if he'd changed his name?" Pru mused.
That kind of late night meant the morning came quickly, all the more so because I'd promised Hot Dog that he could walk with me after he'd emailed asking if I'd take him on a fun walk. The "fun" part was undoubtedly meant to convey that he wasn't up to another serious walk like the one I'd taken him on during a previous visit when I'd led him all over Manchester and back, to the tune of 6+ miles and a man who needed a nap afterward.
Today's was far more circumspect in length, less because of his request than that I needed to get back to pack my car and head out to the Outer Banks. That's right, it was another chance to set Summer in motion by returning to the little cottage I rent every year.
Hot Dog was good enough to help me load my car up after the walk and then Uber whisked him away and I headed to the ocean, stopping only at Adam's Country Store for an RC Cola (which the owner was kind enough to open for me) and a bag of local peanuts.
I enjoyed both as a I drove, following an older Jeep with faded OBX license plates, a bumper sticker that read, "Local as it gets" and another sticker that said "Tunnel Pass."
When I got to the bridge in Currituck, it turned out to be a throwback crossing because the old span is being renovated, meaning both directions are traveling on the same bridge, which is how I remember getting to the Outer Banks as a kid, but not in recent decades.
Then I got to the cottage, the same one I've been staying at since the early '90s and, yet again, time has marched on. Every year, the real world (the 21st century one) encroaches a little more on my favorite cottage, this year evidenced by a keyless entry (no more going to the realty office to pick up keys) and a new window a/c unit in the living room (bedroom units were put in 4 years ago, much to my dismay).
Clearly I'm the last person on earth who wants a true old school beach experience sans TV, conditioned air and phone.
Today was cool, but the ocean breeze was stellar - briny and brisk - and the sky so dark blue it almost hurt your eyes to stare at it. The cottage next door is occupied, but most of the ones around here are not, making for an especially low-key start to Summer at the beach with my usual crew.
After a late dinner, everyone headed outside to admire the full moon aka the pink moon that signals the start of a new season, one I've been eagerly awaiting. Some might say that the only thing missing was Pimm's Cup Jello shooters with which to toast such a gorgeous night sky.
Personally, I'm not wishing for a single thing with my best Summer ever beginning. My invisible bumper sticker reads, "Happy as it gets."
Friday night's dinner at Flora was winding down when one of the managers overheard me telling Pru and Beau a story involving Jello shooters at the Free Love Nursing Home, spurring her to tell me about the latest thing on their late-night drink menu: Jello shooters. And not your average vodka and fruit variety, but a Pimm's Cup Jello shooter, complete with tiny bits of cucumber on top. A grown-up shooter.
We'll take three, please.
The ample shooters were every bit as refreshing as you'd expect, but given that a Pimm's Cup is Pru's official Summer drink, it seemed only right to toast to my upcoming favorite season as part of the shooting.
Mind you, this was exactly what we womenfolk needed after a lengthy explanation to Beau about why the phrase "the rabbit died" is synonymous with getting pregnant. Pru, incredulous that he'd never made the connection between the two phrases, was gobsmacked when he said it seemed illogical to think that rabbits had ever been sacrificed for the sake of a pregnancy test. What else, she queried, could the phrase have meant?
I've since asked three other men if they understood the phrase's meaning, only to discover they were as unaware as Beau. Mars and Venus, I tell you what.
Pru put it most hilariously by asking Beau, "Oh, you think the doctor's office should have a rabbit hutch out back?" when he mused about the inconvenience of nabbing rabbits for testing.
After seeing Cadence Theatre's production of "Appropriate" about a family so dysfunctional it made all of us feel better, Pru was moved to observe, "Not the play I want to die in." One can only hope to have that choice.
Back at Pru's manse, we met up with Hotdog, an old family friend who'd flown in from Arizona while we were at the play and had been awaiting our arrival. The goal was to add him into our wide-ranging porch conversation - which only concluded shortly before 2 a.m. - while listening to music from 1969, the year he'd graduated high school.
That meant everything from the Beatles to Norman Greenbaum. "I wonder if he'd have had more hits if he'd changed his name?" Pru mused.
That kind of late night meant the morning came quickly, all the more so because I'd promised Hot Dog that he could walk with me after he'd emailed asking if I'd take him on a fun walk. The "fun" part was undoubtedly meant to convey that he wasn't up to another serious walk like the one I'd taken him on during a previous visit when I'd led him all over Manchester and back, to the tune of 6+ miles and a man who needed a nap afterward.
Today's was far more circumspect in length, less because of his request than that I needed to get back to pack my car and head out to the Outer Banks. That's right, it was another chance to set Summer in motion by returning to the little cottage I rent every year.
Hot Dog was good enough to help me load my car up after the walk and then Uber whisked him away and I headed to the ocean, stopping only at Adam's Country Store for an RC Cola (which the owner was kind enough to open for me) and a bag of local peanuts.
I enjoyed both as a I drove, following an older Jeep with faded OBX license plates, a bumper sticker that read, "Local as it gets" and another sticker that said "Tunnel Pass."
When I got to the bridge in Currituck, it turned out to be a throwback crossing because the old span is being renovated, meaning both directions are traveling on the same bridge, which is how I remember getting to the Outer Banks as a kid, but not in recent decades.
Then I got to the cottage, the same one I've been staying at since the early '90s and, yet again, time has marched on. Every year, the real world (the 21st century one) encroaches a little more on my favorite cottage, this year evidenced by a keyless entry (no more going to the realty office to pick up keys) and a new window a/c unit in the living room (bedroom units were put in 4 years ago, much to my dismay).
Clearly I'm the last person on earth who wants a true old school beach experience sans TV, conditioned air and phone.
Today was cool, but the ocean breeze was stellar - briny and brisk - and the sky so dark blue it almost hurt your eyes to stare at it. The cottage next door is occupied, but most of the ones around here are not, making for an especially low-key start to Summer at the beach with my usual crew.
After a late dinner, everyone headed outside to admire the full moon aka the pink moon that signals the start of a new season, one I've been eagerly awaiting. Some might say that the only thing missing was Pimm's Cup Jello shooters with which to toast such a gorgeous night sky.
Personally, I'm not wishing for a single thing with my best Summer ever beginning. My invisible bumper sticker reads, "Happy as it gets."
Friday, August 4, 2017
Getting Out of the City
And so it ends, as all truly great beach trips must, in an epic manner.
Unless, that is, you don't consider a two-mile trudge through driving rain on a mostly deserted beach epic.
The ocean was warmer than the rain. On the way up the beach - pre-deluge - I chatted with a guy reeling in a string of croakers and on the slog back - soaked through my shirt and bathing suit to the skin - a guy gave me a high-five from the dry security of his deck. By halfway home from the pier, the rain had so saturated my new orange hat that drips from my hair ran down my face despite the straw brim.
It was glorious. It was elemental. It was so much better than not risking a walk at all because of the intimidating look of the clouds. Any seasoned beach-goer would have done the same.
I'd driven down, windows open, Tuesday morning, much of the way behind a rattletrap delivery truck that smelled like sour milk when I was downwind of it.
My soundtrack was all beach mixtapes made for me by fellow beach-goers, so reflecting their states of mind. From 2003 came a giddy paean to love, heavy on female voices, and the other from 2008, all about heartbreak and mostly sung by men. Both have beach associations for me beyond the givers' intents.
My stellar beach read was a birthday gift, Sherman Alexie's memoir/poetry pastiche, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and while I finished it, it's a little worse for the wear after this week.
Sand clings to a circle where a sticker once read "Autographed copy" and the book jacket is inexplicably stained brown in places. It's also mildly waterlogged along the edges, as if a particularly bold wave lapped it at high tide.
I can't be watching my book every minute, you know?
In what is surely a first for at least the last decade, the cottage where we stayed had no wifi. Not even any available wifi to steal from a neighboring house. And while my online needs are minimal when I'm at the beach, technically, I'd be a fool not to check given that I work for myself.
My solution was to drive to the closest wifi hot spot, check my email quickly, respond only when absolutely necessary and return to the cocoon of non-digital access.
It only made this beach trip sweeter.
The big news was all the progress made on the beach replenishment since I was in Kitty Hawk in late June. Then we'd seen the dredging boats far out in the ocean, even at night, but no activity onshore.
Now it's full-steam ahead, pipes have been laid and sand is already widening the beach in places I've been walking for decades. An enormous - four story? - contraption glides in and out of the water, looking like a gargantuan metal spider, while measuring the ratio of water and sand with its sensitive feet.
On Wednesday, I tried walking past the construction site on the beach and a guard sent me back the way I came, but by Thursday, he was gone and I could get closer to the Kitty Hawk Pier to watch heavy equipment operators moving sand around at Southern Shores.
The collateral damage of all this reshuffling of sand seems to be the horseshoe crabs whose carcasses littered the beach every morning this week like used firework casings on July fifth.
At night, the dredging boats are strung with white, red and green lights until they resemble a colorful riverboat (or, if you squint, like a Chinese dragon) as they move up and down the coastline, out to sea and back to shore.
Not everyone is a fan of all the hustle and bustle activity when they're on vacation, but I'm guessing it'll just be one of the beach details I'll probably always associate with 2017, like the noticeable after-affects of Hurricane Isabel in Summer 2004.
Eating crabs at I Got Your Crabs one evening, I turned to my companion, as fine a crab picker as I am, and asked if we couldn't be 100% certain we were the most adept pickers in the entire place. Without so much as looking at me or the people who surrounded us, I got an impatient, "Duh."
Not that we went to dinner to feel superior, but we also know our strong suits and aren't ashamed to admit them.
But that was our only foray into the commercial beach world and all the other meals (which for me alone seems to mean breakfast, lunch and dinner) were taken on the porch with a view of the ocean while I slept my usual nine hours to the best of all possible soundtracks: crashing waves.
Don't get the wrong idea. I know how incredibly lucky I am to have landed back at the beach again for the fourth time since Easter. Or, as a favorite beach-lover put it:
Wow, another trip to the beach! Some summer, eh?
Some summer indeed. It's turning out to be epic in a whole lot of ways besides browner legs.
Unless, that is, you don't consider a two-mile trudge through driving rain on a mostly deserted beach epic.
The ocean was warmer than the rain. On the way up the beach - pre-deluge - I chatted with a guy reeling in a string of croakers and on the slog back - soaked through my shirt and bathing suit to the skin - a guy gave me a high-five from the dry security of his deck. By halfway home from the pier, the rain had so saturated my new orange hat that drips from my hair ran down my face despite the straw brim.
It was glorious. It was elemental. It was so much better than not risking a walk at all because of the intimidating look of the clouds. Any seasoned beach-goer would have done the same.
I'd driven down, windows open, Tuesday morning, much of the way behind a rattletrap delivery truck that smelled like sour milk when I was downwind of it.
My soundtrack was all beach mixtapes made for me by fellow beach-goers, so reflecting their states of mind. From 2003 came a giddy paean to love, heavy on female voices, and the other from 2008, all about heartbreak and mostly sung by men. Both have beach associations for me beyond the givers' intents.
My stellar beach read was a birthday gift, Sherman Alexie's memoir/poetry pastiche, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and while I finished it, it's a little worse for the wear after this week.
Sand clings to a circle where a sticker once read "Autographed copy" and the book jacket is inexplicably stained brown in places. It's also mildly waterlogged along the edges, as if a particularly bold wave lapped it at high tide.
I can't be watching my book every minute, you know?
In what is surely a first for at least the last decade, the cottage where we stayed had no wifi. Not even any available wifi to steal from a neighboring house. And while my online needs are minimal when I'm at the beach, technically, I'd be a fool not to check given that I work for myself.
My solution was to drive to the closest wifi hot spot, check my email quickly, respond only when absolutely necessary and return to the cocoon of non-digital access.
It only made this beach trip sweeter.
The big news was all the progress made on the beach replenishment since I was in Kitty Hawk in late June. Then we'd seen the dredging boats far out in the ocean, even at night, but no activity onshore.
Now it's full-steam ahead, pipes have been laid and sand is already widening the beach in places I've been walking for decades. An enormous - four story? - contraption glides in and out of the water, looking like a gargantuan metal spider, while measuring the ratio of water and sand with its sensitive feet.
On Wednesday, I tried walking past the construction site on the beach and a guard sent me back the way I came, but by Thursday, he was gone and I could get closer to the Kitty Hawk Pier to watch heavy equipment operators moving sand around at Southern Shores.
The collateral damage of all this reshuffling of sand seems to be the horseshoe crabs whose carcasses littered the beach every morning this week like used firework casings on July fifth.
At night, the dredging boats are strung with white, red and green lights until they resemble a colorful riverboat (or, if you squint, like a Chinese dragon) as they move up and down the coastline, out to sea and back to shore.
Not everyone is a fan of all the hustle and bustle activity when they're on vacation, but I'm guessing it'll just be one of the beach details I'll probably always associate with 2017, like the noticeable after-affects of Hurricane Isabel in Summer 2004.
Eating crabs at I Got Your Crabs one evening, I turned to my companion, as fine a crab picker as I am, and asked if we couldn't be 100% certain we were the most adept pickers in the entire place. Without so much as looking at me or the people who surrounded us, I got an impatient, "Duh."
Not that we went to dinner to feel superior, but we also know our strong suits and aren't ashamed to admit them.
But that was our only foray into the commercial beach world and all the other meals (which for me alone seems to mean breakfast, lunch and dinner) were taken on the porch with a view of the ocean while I slept my usual nine hours to the best of all possible soundtracks: crashing waves.
Don't get the wrong idea. I know how incredibly lucky I am to have landed back at the beach again for the fourth time since Easter. Or, as a favorite beach-lover put it:
Wow, another trip to the beach! Some summer, eh?
Some summer indeed. It's turning out to be epic in a whole lot of ways besides browner legs.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Don't Tell Dad
Everybody has their own beach rules.
You can spring from the same set of loins, but it doesn't mean you "do" the beach the same way as your kin, a fact of which I'm reminded every time I share someone's beach time with them. The past few days have been at a cottage called "Flip Flops" with a couple of my sisters and various members of their clans.
We couldn't be more different beach-wise, at least in most ways.
Oceanfront is a must for me, while she's okay with oceanside, which is still considerably better than the sister who rents in the woods on the Sound side. I want to hear and see the ocean every minute of every day I'm there.
I wouldn't think of using air conditioning ever (hell, my cottage didn't even have window units until two years ago), but especially when I'm surrounded by salt air and breezes, while my sister cools her beach house to meat locker temperatures. Walking in, hot from the beach or wet from a shower, is unpleasantly cold.
Every cottage needs a screened-in porch in my opinion, yet my sister only requires a covered porch, although I will say that this year's did at least have a view of the ocean. I said nothing when she began the day by slathering anti-itch cream on all the bites on her ankles from last night's porch session.
They like to be off the beach by 4:00 while my favorite beach time is just beginning then. Maybe it's the art historian in me, but I can think of no richer, more saturated colors in summertime than the last few hours before about 7:00, after which the evening can officially begin.
And what folly is this? My father instilled in the six of us the absolute need for binoculars at the beach, yet they don't bring them. So all the strange ships far out in the water, the dark schools of bluefish just under the surface and playful pods of dolphins have to be scrutinized from afar. What can a person learn from that distance?
Where we agree is that time spent at the beach means time spent in the ocean.
Knowing today was my last day there and breaking every mother's rule about eating and going in the water, I finished my lunch, wiped the crumbs on my legs and headed directly into the ocean just behind Sister #4's family.
Nephew #1 eventually joined once the left and it was just us when three dolphins surfed the waves directly in front of us. As many times as I've seen them, I'd never been closer. Yet he headed back once he realized his beer was getting warm onshore.
Left alone in the brilliant green water by myself became almost a meditation.
Up to my neck, with no one around to talk to, it occurred to me that this was why doctors used to send recovering patients to the seashore: the gentle exercise of staying above the waves, the warm yet still refreshing water, the briny air all combined to make me feel utterly relaxed but also strangely invincible.
After a while, Sister #2 joined me in the ocean, saying I'd looked pitiful out there by myself. Beer gone, Nephew #1 returned, only to crack us up with his Nature Channel impersonation as a pale, young woman who'd been floating on a paddleboard nearby attempted to awkwardly stand.
In the muted voice of a golf announcer, he intoned, "Yes, and now she's presenting her albino thighs and cheeks to capture the male's attention and find a use for her child-bearing hips...." before she took a nosedive.
So much for my meditative state.
By the time I finally climbed out of the water, fingers as wrinkled as raisins, it had been nearly two hours since I'd given over the rest of my day at the beach to the ocean and it was time for a quick outdoor shower to get the salt crust out of my ears before heading home.
Home, past signs saying "Blue Lives Matter," behind an 18-wheeler spewing dirt like smoke with projectiles (illegal, right?) which, given my open car windows, felt a lot like traveling in Pigpen's wake and uncomfortably close to a group of trucks with Confederate flags parked on the side of Route 460.
None of which, I'm happy to report, affected my ocean-induced state of relaxation.
I made it home in time to catch Afrikana Film Fest's outdoor screening of the 1988 cult classic "Coming to America" being shown up on the hill at Tredegar under the stars.
Guests were encouraged to recite lines, sing songs and act out and they did. Dogtown Dance even performed live when the palace dancers did their big number in the movie.
Honestly, I hadn't seen it since I saw it in the theater when it came out when we were all in Eddie Murphy's thrall and swooning to hear him say things like, "I want a woman that will arouse my intellect as well as my loins."
It also didn't hurt to have - flashback! - Arsenio Hall say stuff such as, "Girl, you look so good, someone ought to put you on a plate and sop you up with a biscuit."
It's a compliment I know I'd be happy to hear, although it might taste a little gritty. I've still got sand in my hair.
You can spring from the same set of loins, but it doesn't mean you "do" the beach the same way as your kin, a fact of which I'm reminded every time I share someone's beach time with them. The past few days have been at a cottage called "Flip Flops" with a couple of my sisters and various members of their clans.
We couldn't be more different beach-wise, at least in most ways.
Oceanfront is a must for me, while she's okay with oceanside, which is still considerably better than the sister who rents in the woods on the Sound side. I want to hear and see the ocean every minute of every day I'm there.
I wouldn't think of using air conditioning ever (hell, my cottage didn't even have window units until two years ago), but especially when I'm surrounded by salt air and breezes, while my sister cools her beach house to meat locker temperatures. Walking in, hot from the beach or wet from a shower, is unpleasantly cold.
Every cottage needs a screened-in porch in my opinion, yet my sister only requires a covered porch, although I will say that this year's did at least have a view of the ocean. I said nothing when she began the day by slathering anti-itch cream on all the bites on her ankles from last night's porch session.
They like to be off the beach by 4:00 while my favorite beach time is just beginning then. Maybe it's the art historian in me, but I can think of no richer, more saturated colors in summertime than the last few hours before about 7:00, after which the evening can officially begin.
And what folly is this? My father instilled in the six of us the absolute need for binoculars at the beach, yet they don't bring them. So all the strange ships far out in the water, the dark schools of bluefish just under the surface and playful pods of dolphins have to be scrutinized from afar. What can a person learn from that distance?
Where we agree is that time spent at the beach means time spent in the ocean.
Knowing today was my last day there and breaking every mother's rule about eating and going in the water, I finished my lunch, wiped the crumbs on my legs and headed directly into the ocean just behind Sister #4's family.
Nephew #1 eventually joined once the left and it was just us when three dolphins surfed the waves directly in front of us. As many times as I've seen them, I'd never been closer. Yet he headed back once he realized his beer was getting warm onshore.
Left alone in the brilliant green water by myself became almost a meditation.
Up to my neck, with no one around to talk to, it occurred to me that this was why doctors used to send recovering patients to the seashore: the gentle exercise of staying above the waves, the warm yet still refreshing water, the briny air all combined to make me feel utterly relaxed but also strangely invincible.
After a while, Sister #2 joined me in the ocean, saying I'd looked pitiful out there by myself. Beer gone, Nephew #1 returned, only to crack us up with his Nature Channel impersonation as a pale, young woman who'd been floating on a paddleboard nearby attempted to awkwardly stand.
In the muted voice of a golf announcer, he intoned, "Yes, and now she's presenting her albino thighs and cheeks to capture the male's attention and find a use for her child-bearing hips...." before she took a nosedive.
So much for my meditative state.
By the time I finally climbed out of the water, fingers as wrinkled as raisins, it had been nearly two hours since I'd given over the rest of my day at the beach to the ocean and it was time for a quick outdoor shower to get the salt crust out of my ears before heading home.
Home, past signs saying "Blue Lives Matter," behind an 18-wheeler spewing dirt like smoke with projectiles (illegal, right?) which, given my open car windows, felt a lot like traveling in Pigpen's wake and uncomfortably close to a group of trucks with Confederate flags parked on the side of Route 460.
None of which, I'm happy to report, affected my ocean-induced state of relaxation.
I made it home in time to catch Afrikana Film Fest's outdoor screening of the 1988 cult classic "Coming to America" being shown up on the hill at Tredegar under the stars.
Guests were encouraged to recite lines, sing songs and act out and they did. Dogtown Dance even performed live when the palace dancers did their big number in the movie.
Honestly, I hadn't seen it since I saw it in the theater when it came out when we were all in Eddie Murphy's thrall and swooning to hear him say things like, "I want a woman that will arouse my intellect as well as my loins."
It also didn't hurt to have - flashback! - Arsenio Hall say stuff such as, "Girl, you look so good, someone ought to put you on a plate and sop you up with a biscuit."
It's a compliment I know I'd be happy to hear, although it might taste a little gritty. I've still got sand in my hair.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Missing the Wild Air
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
And so closes a beach week of magnificent moons, endless conversation and constantly-changing winds and fronts.
And by endless conversation, we're talking about descending into discussions of which excellent words have fallen out of usage due to the dumbing-down of language.
Let's bring back "togs" and "dither," shall we? And don't get me started on the subject of "Hollywood packing," a term new to me but instantly understandable, because we already went down that rabbit hole.
My cleverest guest played the winds superbly, moving from the West bedroom to the East suite once the winds did the same. She learned the hard way that the summer sunrise will penetrate eyelids and burn your retina if you let it, but she never lost the breeze.
A couple of overcast days and lower temperatures kept tan lines in check and me (and my rotating cast of six visitors) on the porch far more than usual. Not ashamed to admit that one afternoon slid seamlessly into evening with little change in seating arrangement or pauses for wardrobe changes.
After an especially lazy day, a guest acknowledged the naked truth, saying, "All I did yesterday was ripen." Perhaps, but her hygiene instincts kicked in before mine and I feel sure I was even riper.
In fact, I'm thinking a compliment about my "beach hair" may have been a reference to the sand and salt in it.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The first rule of beach vacation is that there are no food police and the second rule is that there are no bathing police, either. We are not here to impress each other, except with our sparkling repartee.
One major result of having so much company and conversation was how little beach reading I accomplished this week. Past years have won me summer reading awards for sheer number of titles devoured and this year's consumption was a paltry two books, including the lackluster Pulitzer prize winner I regretted wasting time on.
When it was time to pack up the cottage and head back to the big city, I left with the usual regrets - since arriving home, I'm missing the constant breezes almost as much as the rhythm of the waves - along with the novel thrill of knowing I'm only a few days away from vacation number two.
Lucky me, right?
The drive back was my baptism by road reminder of the real world that awaited me: a sign on Route 168 warning, "Expect heavy congestion at next light," causing me to wonder why displaying that information was necessary at all.
Is unexpected heavy congestion somehow harder to bear? Honestly, who really needs to start obsessing about congestion ahead of time?
But wait, it gets better. All was clear at the next light, so the fear mongering was for naught.
Otherwise, it was a pretty inoffensive drive past gas stations offering $1.99 gas and a vintage car show at Ronnie's Barbecue, with the highlight being a woman riding a horse along the Capital Bike Trail, something I'd never seen among the Spandex-clad bikers, happy families and walkers galore.
It's no hawk soaring over the Atlantic, which we saw repeatedly from our porch perch, but it'll have to do, at least until I sally forth on Vacation Part Deux, stylish and not at all ripe.
Warning: unexpected heavy fashion emphasis on next trip. It's almost time for some Hollywood packing, so excuse me while I dither about which frocks to take.
I'm sorry my beach vacation is over, but I'm glad to be back so I can leave again.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
And so closes a beach week of magnificent moons, endless conversation and constantly-changing winds and fronts.
And by endless conversation, we're talking about descending into discussions of which excellent words have fallen out of usage due to the dumbing-down of language.
Let's bring back "togs" and "dither," shall we? And don't get me started on the subject of "Hollywood packing," a term new to me but instantly understandable, because we already went down that rabbit hole.
My cleverest guest played the winds superbly, moving from the West bedroom to the East suite once the winds did the same. She learned the hard way that the summer sunrise will penetrate eyelids and burn your retina if you let it, but she never lost the breeze.
A couple of overcast days and lower temperatures kept tan lines in check and me (and my rotating cast of six visitors) on the porch far more than usual. Not ashamed to admit that one afternoon slid seamlessly into evening with little change in seating arrangement or pauses for wardrobe changes.
After an especially lazy day, a guest acknowledged the naked truth, saying, "All I did yesterday was ripen." Perhaps, but her hygiene instincts kicked in before mine and I feel sure I was even riper.
In fact, I'm thinking a compliment about my "beach hair" may have been a reference to the sand and salt in it.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The first rule of beach vacation is that there are no food police and the second rule is that there are no bathing police, either. We are not here to impress each other, except with our sparkling repartee.
One major result of having so much company and conversation was how little beach reading I accomplished this week. Past years have won me summer reading awards for sheer number of titles devoured and this year's consumption was a paltry two books, including the lackluster Pulitzer prize winner I regretted wasting time on.
When it was time to pack up the cottage and head back to the big city, I left with the usual regrets - since arriving home, I'm missing the constant breezes almost as much as the rhythm of the waves - along with the novel thrill of knowing I'm only a few days away from vacation number two.
Lucky me, right?
The drive back was my baptism by road reminder of the real world that awaited me: a sign on Route 168 warning, "Expect heavy congestion at next light," causing me to wonder why displaying that information was necessary at all.
Is unexpected heavy congestion somehow harder to bear? Honestly, who really needs to start obsessing about congestion ahead of time?
But wait, it gets better. All was clear at the next light, so the fear mongering was for naught.
Otherwise, it was a pretty inoffensive drive past gas stations offering $1.99 gas and a vintage car show at Ronnie's Barbecue, with the highlight being a woman riding a horse along the Capital Bike Trail, something I'd never seen among the Spandex-clad bikers, happy families and walkers galore.
It's no hawk soaring over the Atlantic, which we saw repeatedly from our porch perch, but it'll have to do, at least until I sally forth on Vacation Part Deux, stylish and not at all ripe.
Warning: unexpected heavy fashion emphasis on next trip. It's almost time for some Hollywood packing, so excuse me while I dither about which frocks to take.
I'm sorry my beach vacation is over, but I'm glad to be back so I can leave again.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Girls of Summer
I was raised to enjoy everything about a beach getaway.
There are the signs I pass cruising down Route 460 on a Wednesday morning:
Sunday night church services (plenty of time to recover from Saturday night)
Local produce and pickling spices ('tis the season)
Pass the Salt Cafe (shouldn't the kitchen know how to season the food?)
Mutt & Jett's Country Kitchen (do millennials even get the reference?)
There's the country store where I stop to get a six-pack of RC Cola in bottles and spot a sign next to a handsome old, chipped stone jug, reading, "Not perfect but I still have character and purpose."
A steal at $20.
My destination is an orange beach cottage with red trim and a porch that fronts the ocean (although there is a road - but no house- between us and it), an outdoor shower (beach view but no sky overhead) and two of my sisters in residence.
They're two of my favorites, but our beach preferences couldn't be more different. They keep the windows closed and the A/C on, despite a constant ocean breeze, but allow me to keep my bedroom windows open as long as my door stays shut.
They're sun worshippers while I prefer to be under an umbrella and a layer of SPF 70.
I'm gone for hours walking to the Avalon and Kitty Hawk piers north and south of us, meeting people along the way and being shown how to cast nets, while neither of them walks for more than 15 minutes.
When I make an effort to rise and shine at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, I discover they've been up since 7, awaiting my entrance.
And the laugh attacks are pretty much non-stop. When you've known two women their entire lives, you have a lot of memories to share and a lot of sentences that don't need finishing. What's funny is how they - along with my other three sisters - have always counted on me to be the keeper of the memories.
What year did Mom and Dad begin taking us to the beach? What turned another sister into someone so mean? What happened the first night we met a potential brother-in-law?
While I was there, we were invited to two happy hours, one by yet another sister who'd just the day before celebrated a birthday at her cottage and then the next night by an Irish friend of Sister #2's.
As Pru would be the first to point out, what's not to like about two nights of hors d'oeuvres for dinner?
It was at the first happy hour that the four sisters toasted with the RC Colas I'd brought, a beverage steeped in memories for all six of us. Growing up, Mom would buy one six pack of soda a week, always either Coke or preferably, RC, her favorite. Each one of us got one bottle to enjoy anytime during the week we chose to.
This was back in the olden days, kids, back before high fructose corn syrup and childhood obesity ruined everything.
There we also were entertained by Sister #3's ragtag bunch of bachelor friends, all of whom had changed their plans and come a day earlier once they'd heard about the sister happy hour on Wednesday. It's nice to know we still have that kind of draw.
When we left there to a chorus of "please stays," it was because we wanted to head to Dune Burger and gab while inhaling classic beach burgers al fresco while the sun set.
Thursday's happy hour had the benefit of an oceanfront deck (where, impressively, the outdoor shower was situated), loads of seafood (shrimp, mussels and clams) and several people we didn't know, which always makes it more fun for me. The Irish couple I especially enjoyed, as they drolly noted that they "live on an island, can't swim and don't like seafood."
Not so the rest of us, who dove in amid jokes about getting "the gout," hilarious to everyone except Sister #2 who actually got gout last year after eating seafood for 14 straight days at the beach. We all agreed that it sounds much funnier when referred to as "the gout," although #2 didn't seem to think so.
That night, we caught a major fireworks show on the beach right in front of where we were staying, an unexpected bonus given how long it's been since July 4th. I do wonder, though, how it is that given the abundance of signs saying that fireworks are illegal in North Carolina, there are always visitors shooting them off?
Both nights were gorgeous for the brightness of the moonlight late into the night, something we took advantage of by talking on the porch until we couldn't access our nouns any longer. My only regret was that Friday was the full moon lighthouse climb, something I've been trying to do for months but it never seems to work out.
Days were spent talking and reading on the beach, all the more interesting because I'm currently reading James Fox's book, "The Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia," a fascinating biography of the fabulous Langhorne sisters. Because so much of the book deals with the dynamics of the sisters' relationships, I was able to read aloud entire passages that, with a few name changes, could have been written about me and my sisters. They roared listening.
Apparently the problems of inter-sister relationships are not only universal, but timeless.
Today dawned rainy as we devoured cinnamon puffs, a breakfast pastry that had been a favorite during our childhoods (and one I hadn't had in decades) and local peaches so juicy they ran down our arms while eating them (my stone fruit allergy limited me to just a few bites until my tongue began itching and swelling) before the sun broke through and we headed straight for the beach.
Coming across an abandoned boogie board on the way, I step on it and do my best surfing impression, cracking up both my sisters.
"Karen, you're a mess!" Sister #4 laughs, doubled over. Sister #2 just shakes her head, her usual response to my humor.
No, a mess is the sign I pass on the way home that reads:
Weekend Special!
Gizzards
Livers
Diesel $2.59
But, me, a mess? Au contraire. I may not be perfect but I still have character and purpose. I don't know that I can let myself go for $20, however.
There are the signs I pass cruising down Route 460 on a Wednesday morning:
Sunday night church services (plenty of time to recover from Saturday night)
Local produce and pickling spices ('tis the season)
Pass the Salt Cafe (shouldn't the kitchen know how to season the food?)
Mutt & Jett's Country Kitchen (do millennials even get the reference?)
There's the country store where I stop to get a six-pack of RC Cola in bottles and spot a sign next to a handsome old, chipped stone jug, reading, "Not perfect but I still have character and purpose."
A steal at $20.
My destination is an orange beach cottage with red trim and a porch that fronts the ocean (although there is a road - but no house- between us and it), an outdoor shower (beach view but no sky overhead) and two of my sisters in residence.
They're two of my favorites, but our beach preferences couldn't be more different. They keep the windows closed and the A/C on, despite a constant ocean breeze, but allow me to keep my bedroom windows open as long as my door stays shut.
They're sun worshippers while I prefer to be under an umbrella and a layer of SPF 70.
I'm gone for hours walking to the Avalon and Kitty Hawk piers north and south of us, meeting people along the way and being shown how to cast nets, while neither of them walks for more than 15 minutes.
When I make an effort to rise and shine at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, I discover they've been up since 7, awaiting my entrance.
And the laugh attacks are pretty much non-stop. When you've known two women their entire lives, you have a lot of memories to share and a lot of sentences that don't need finishing. What's funny is how they - along with my other three sisters - have always counted on me to be the keeper of the memories.
What year did Mom and Dad begin taking us to the beach? What turned another sister into someone so mean? What happened the first night we met a potential brother-in-law?
While I was there, we were invited to two happy hours, one by yet another sister who'd just the day before celebrated a birthday at her cottage and then the next night by an Irish friend of Sister #2's.
As Pru would be the first to point out, what's not to like about two nights of hors d'oeuvres for dinner?
It was at the first happy hour that the four sisters toasted with the RC Colas I'd brought, a beverage steeped in memories for all six of us. Growing up, Mom would buy one six pack of soda a week, always either Coke or preferably, RC, her favorite. Each one of us got one bottle to enjoy anytime during the week we chose to.
This was back in the olden days, kids, back before high fructose corn syrup and childhood obesity ruined everything.
There we also were entertained by Sister #3's ragtag bunch of bachelor friends, all of whom had changed their plans and come a day earlier once they'd heard about the sister happy hour on Wednesday. It's nice to know we still have that kind of draw.
When we left there to a chorus of "please stays," it was because we wanted to head to Dune Burger and gab while inhaling classic beach burgers al fresco while the sun set.
Thursday's happy hour had the benefit of an oceanfront deck (where, impressively, the outdoor shower was situated), loads of seafood (shrimp, mussels and clams) and several people we didn't know, which always makes it more fun for me. The Irish couple I especially enjoyed, as they drolly noted that they "live on an island, can't swim and don't like seafood."
Not so the rest of us, who dove in amid jokes about getting "the gout," hilarious to everyone except Sister #2 who actually got gout last year after eating seafood for 14 straight days at the beach. We all agreed that it sounds much funnier when referred to as "the gout," although #2 didn't seem to think so.
That night, we caught a major fireworks show on the beach right in front of where we were staying, an unexpected bonus given how long it's been since July 4th. I do wonder, though, how it is that given the abundance of signs saying that fireworks are illegal in North Carolina, there are always visitors shooting them off?
Both nights were gorgeous for the brightness of the moonlight late into the night, something we took advantage of by talking on the porch until we couldn't access our nouns any longer. My only regret was that Friday was the full moon lighthouse climb, something I've been trying to do for months but it never seems to work out.
Days were spent talking and reading on the beach, all the more interesting because I'm currently reading James Fox's book, "The Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia," a fascinating biography of the fabulous Langhorne sisters. Because so much of the book deals with the dynamics of the sisters' relationships, I was able to read aloud entire passages that, with a few name changes, could have been written about me and my sisters. They roared listening.
Apparently the problems of inter-sister relationships are not only universal, but timeless.
Today dawned rainy as we devoured cinnamon puffs, a breakfast pastry that had been a favorite during our childhoods (and one I hadn't had in decades) and local peaches so juicy they ran down our arms while eating them (my stone fruit allergy limited me to just a few bites until my tongue began itching and swelling) before the sun broke through and we headed straight for the beach.
Coming across an abandoned boogie board on the way, I step on it and do my best surfing impression, cracking up both my sisters.
"Karen, you're a mess!" Sister #4 laughs, doubled over. Sister #2 just shakes her head, her usual response to my humor.
No, a mess is the sign I pass on the way home that reads:
Weekend Special!
Gizzards
Livers
Diesel $2.59
But, me, a mess? Au contraire. I may not be perfect but I still have character and purpose. I don't know that I can let myself go for $20, however.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
After So Many Years
I know I write this blog with the unavoidable biases of a 20th century refugee now living in the 21st.
Even when I'm reminiscing or sharing an anecdote from my past, it's tinged by how we, as a culture, interpret the world in 2015. In my case, you also have to allow for my gross eccentricities, but even then, often my take on life reeks of the here and now.
My annual trek to the beach can usually be counted as one of my favorite weeks of the year and understandably so. Certain pleasures - the outside shower, the long walks on the beach, the contentment of hearing the ocean night and day- carry over year to year while new experiences surprise and delight.
Coming to the cottage in May instead of July means first crack at the new pack of clothespins in the third kitchen drawer. If that doesn't sound like a treat to you, then clearly you've never known the hausfrau satisfaction of hanging wet garments out to dry on the clothesline in the salty breeze. By Independence Day, rust is showing itself on the clothespins. Not so now.
Our earlier arrival also meant that we practically had the beach to ourselves, with only a few visitors in residence nearby. Shells were abundant, unlike later in the season when they're picked over by early morning scavengers while I sleep in.
Lingering over a crescent-shaped bed of shells one morning, I look up to see a man playing bagpipes on his deck directly in front of me. It's a rare shell-gathering expedition when I'm serenaded by bagpipes for half an hour as I take my time searching for just the right specimens while he plays to the ocean and me.
And there's the reading, the pure, unadulterated self-indulgence of spending hours doing nothing but reading a book. I read on the beach, in the porch swing, in the big rattan chair on the screened porch, on the front sunset porch, on the couch after dark and in bed before I sleep.
After nine days, I've read five books and it's a disparate lot.
I begin with Gully Wells' 2011 memoir, "The House in France," about an ex-pat family's years in London during the swinging '60s and the house in Provence to which they return as a family for many years. It's a positively glamorous lifestyle I'll never know (neither Robert Kennedy nor Christopher Hitchens ever dropped by my parent's house), making for fascinating reading.
From there, I take on a 1964 book called "Edith Wharton 1862-1937," part biography and part literary analysis. What catches my attention here is the perspective. Author Olivia Coolidge is writing from a crucial point in women's history, only a year after Betty Friedan's seminal treatise, "The Feminine Mystique."
So while Coolidge is trying to explain the mind of a women who'd been nominated for the Nobel prize in Literature 30-some years before, many of her explanations are colored by the '60s, not Edith Wharton's era.
I don't know what I expected from a 1973 biography of Clark Gable, "Long Live the King," but surely not to read the word "groovy" as many times as I did. Written only a dozen years after Gable died, author Lyn Tornabene, had the distinct advantage of being able to talk to people the actor had flirted with, worked alongside and known.
The humor was courtesy of the interviewees' oh-so 1973 dialog, as they attempted to put a hip angle on a man born in 1901 and dead by the start of the tumultuous '60s. Not hip and the 400-page book showed me enough about the man to know that he would have hated being described that way.
And talk about dated! William Saroyan's "The Human Comedy," written in 1943, is about a world that no longer exists, a world where mothers accept the sacrifice of a son to war as part of their duty to country and even boys under the age of ten are referred to as 'men.' Everyone is in this together and pulls together for a greater good.
Ancient history, in other words. Perhaps most interestingly, it's the book that was made into the film "Ithaca" and filmed in Richmond last year. I'll be curious to see how the dated concepts are seen through the prism of 2015 when it comes out.
My final read of vacation was a 2009 novel picked up at the Kill Devil Hills library used book sale after I finished all the books I'd brought with me.
I'm not even sure why I selected it. I rarely read current fiction, I'd never heard of the author despite a cover squib saying, "One of the best writers in America~ Washington Post" and the cover photograph of angst-ridden millennnials is just the sort of rot I abhor. And don't get me started on a main character whose iPod has more musical importance to him than his stereo.
"The Song is You" has turned out to be the beach read over which my mind (and possibly heart) are most entwined. The main character, a mid-40s man still deeply attached to music, is trying to figure out how to be happy after some huge personal losses.
References to music thread throughout ("It took some more beer and listening to the Sundays before the illusion of randomness melted away"), catnip to a music lover such as myself. "He swung through his collection with what he felt was random compulsion, one song paused and blinking its consumed time after less than a minute because a chord or a voice or the liner notes reminded him of another song."
I have done that musical tangent game many a time myself.
Which is to say that the book captured me to the point that I began rationing out my reading the last two days, unwilling to go home knowing the ending. No, I meted out the pages, particularly saving the last 30 for once I was home. I want the pleasure of this book, this offbeat romance, the music that defines the anti-hero, to be something I got to savor at home and not just at the beach.
Because life at the beach is illusory, wonderful but unsustainable and now I'm back and things feel different. Because they are.
Maybe the song is me.
Even when I'm reminiscing or sharing an anecdote from my past, it's tinged by how we, as a culture, interpret the world in 2015. In my case, you also have to allow for my gross eccentricities, but even then, often my take on life reeks of the here and now.
My annual trek to the beach can usually be counted as one of my favorite weeks of the year and understandably so. Certain pleasures - the outside shower, the long walks on the beach, the contentment of hearing the ocean night and day- carry over year to year while new experiences surprise and delight.
Coming to the cottage in May instead of July means first crack at the new pack of clothespins in the third kitchen drawer. If that doesn't sound like a treat to you, then clearly you've never known the hausfrau satisfaction of hanging wet garments out to dry on the clothesline in the salty breeze. By Independence Day, rust is showing itself on the clothespins. Not so now.
Our earlier arrival also meant that we practically had the beach to ourselves, with only a few visitors in residence nearby. Shells were abundant, unlike later in the season when they're picked over by early morning scavengers while I sleep in.
Lingering over a crescent-shaped bed of shells one morning, I look up to see a man playing bagpipes on his deck directly in front of me. It's a rare shell-gathering expedition when I'm serenaded by bagpipes for half an hour as I take my time searching for just the right specimens while he plays to the ocean and me.
And there's the reading, the pure, unadulterated self-indulgence of spending hours doing nothing but reading a book. I read on the beach, in the porch swing, in the big rattan chair on the screened porch, on the front sunset porch, on the couch after dark and in bed before I sleep.
After nine days, I've read five books and it's a disparate lot.
I begin with Gully Wells' 2011 memoir, "The House in France," about an ex-pat family's years in London during the swinging '60s and the house in Provence to which they return as a family for many years. It's a positively glamorous lifestyle I'll never know (neither Robert Kennedy nor Christopher Hitchens ever dropped by my parent's house), making for fascinating reading.
From there, I take on a 1964 book called "Edith Wharton 1862-1937," part biography and part literary analysis. What catches my attention here is the perspective. Author Olivia Coolidge is writing from a crucial point in women's history, only a year after Betty Friedan's seminal treatise, "The Feminine Mystique."
So while Coolidge is trying to explain the mind of a women who'd been nominated for the Nobel prize in Literature 30-some years before, many of her explanations are colored by the '60s, not Edith Wharton's era.
I don't know what I expected from a 1973 biography of Clark Gable, "Long Live the King," but surely not to read the word "groovy" as many times as I did. Written only a dozen years after Gable died, author Lyn Tornabene, had the distinct advantage of being able to talk to people the actor had flirted with, worked alongside and known.
The humor was courtesy of the interviewees' oh-so 1973 dialog, as they attempted to put a hip angle on a man born in 1901 and dead by the start of the tumultuous '60s. Not hip and the 400-page book showed me enough about the man to know that he would have hated being described that way.
And talk about dated! William Saroyan's "The Human Comedy," written in 1943, is about a world that no longer exists, a world where mothers accept the sacrifice of a son to war as part of their duty to country and even boys under the age of ten are referred to as 'men.' Everyone is in this together and pulls together for a greater good.
Ancient history, in other words. Perhaps most interestingly, it's the book that was made into the film "Ithaca" and filmed in Richmond last year. I'll be curious to see how the dated concepts are seen through the prism of 2015 when it comes out.
My final read of vacation was a 2009 novel picked up at the Kill Devil Hills library used book sale after I finished all the books I'd brought with me.
I'm not even sure why I selected it. I rarely read current fiction, I'd never heard of the author despite a cover squib saying, "One of the best writers in America~ Washington Post" and the cover photograph of angst-ridden millennnials is just the sort of rot I abhor. And don't get me started on a main character whose iPod has more musical importance to him than his stereo.
"The Song is You" has turned out to be the beach read over which my mind (and possibly heart) are most entwined. The main character, a mid-40s man still deeply attached to music, is trying to figure out how to be happy after some huge personal losses.
References to music thread throughout ("It took some more beer and listening to the Sundays before the illusion of randomness melted away"), catnip to a music lover such as myself. "He swung through his collection with what he felt was random compulsion, one song paused and blinking its consumed time after less than a minute because a chord or a voice or the liner notes reminded him of another song."
I have done that musical tangent game many a time myself.
Which is to say that the book captured me to the point that I began rationing out my reading the last two days, unwilling to go home knowing the ending. No, I meted out the pages, particularly saving the last 30 for once I was home. I want the pleasure of this book, this offbeat romance, the music that defines the anti-hero, to be something I got to savor at home and not just at the beach.
Because life at the beach is illusory, wonderful but unsustainable and now I'm back and things feel different. Because they are.
Maybe the song is me.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Let Me Outshine the Moon
Age is all the rage right now.
That ridiculous Microsoft #HowOldRobot thing that's everywhere at the moment claims to be able to judge your age from a photograph. Apparently it needs some work because a 35-year old friend was told she looked 63 (she looks 30 in real life).
And what does it tell me when I give it my Facebook profile picture? That I'm a 29-year old female. It is to laugh.
I'm not saying that there aren't parts of me that act more like a 29-year old than my real age. Going out every night, attending so many music shows, hell, even my lack of fiscal conservatism could be considered more stereotypical of a younger person.
But my face? Sorry, that's a face that's seen a lot more than 29 years of life. It's experienced far more things than any 29-year old has had time to. And I don't have a problem with that.
However, it does point to some serious issues with #HowOldRobot. Work on it, geek squad, and get back with me.
Sunday morning, an observer might have guessed that I was more like 10 years old when I woke after only seven hours of sleep instead of my usual nine. The reason was pure excitement. I was leaving for the beach today and my annual week at the little oceanfront cottage that's been my destination since the '90s.
Itinerary: walk on the beach, read on the beach, eat, drink, sleep. Listen to the ocean 24/7.
Up early, I spent the morning doing the last of the packing and loading the car, eager to be on the lesser roads I take to the Outer Banks. The three-hour trip down is the kick-off to vacation, but since I was traveling solo, it's also an excuse to stop wherever I want, eat at roadside haunts that grab my attention and generally indulge myself.
I passed the Nina and the Pinta down off of Dock Street in my pursuit of Route 5 and ultimately 460, where I pulled into Adams Country Store with the Editors' "Open You Arms (and Welcome)" blasting my arrival.
Inside, a man with one eye on the race greets me from his stool behind the bin of hog jowls that that sit as sentry at the door as I head to the back case for an RC Cola. Behind the counter up front is a woman who eyes me warily until I announce without being asked that I want a ham sandwich with mustard.
Holding that cold bottle of RC as I cruise down 460 taking long pulls off of it, I am soon in the midst of a major caffeine buzz, hardly surprising since I don't drink coffee and rarely soda. It's kind of ideal right now, though, this buzz: cruising down the road on the way to the ocean under a bright blue sky and afternoon sun make me feel like I'm embarking on an adventure.
The geography captures my eye the whole way down because I'm looking at a very different landscape than I did all those years I came in July. The green of the trees is much lighter and more tender-looking, fresher. I pass a couple of old duffers tooling along, one in a restored Model T and the other in a '66 Mustang. They feel like they're on an adventure, too.
I wind up riding next to a Land Rover where the girl in the passenger seat is methodically wiping (probably last year's sand) out the inside of the same model boom box as I have, notable mainly because it's so groovy looking, curved and aerodynamic. Hers is white and mine is bright blue (a Valentine's Day present last decade) but there's no mistaking the groovy factor. We are sisters.
After passing Frog Island Seafood year after year, this time I stopped for lunch, chatting with a table of ROMEOS as my crabcake sandwich (made with Frog Island crab, they say) and onion rings are prepared.
The couple in front of me to order have a look and the server asked if they're riding today. "Yep," the Mr. says while the Mrs. tells her how perfect the weather is for it. It's the kind of day that could make any activity better.
At the cottage, there was good news and bad news. For the last couple of years, there have been window A/C units, eliminating a breeze from one window in every bedroom. I rail against it every year in the guest journal. Who takes a house right on the ocean and then closes the window so you can't hear it?
But on the "watch out for Mother Nature" front, the beaches north and south are severely eroded, much, much narrower than I've ever seen them after a lifetime of summers here. Scary narrow in some places. During high tide, the water was lapping the house's stilts.
A look down later while lathering up in the outdoor shower off the big, screened porch revealed how much closer the sand under the house is than it was last year. Dredging can't start too soon, if you ask me.
After an hour setting the little cottage to rights, or at least ordering it the way that gives me the most pleasure, I am joined by my favorite beach partner, who'd also stopped at Adams. Beds made, we set out for a walk.
The peace and quiet of being here in early May is extraordinary. Most houses, especially the biggest ones, aren't occupied. People walking down the beach are an occasional diversion, not the endless parade they are in July. The water is too cold for any but the school-age children who on their only beach vacation this year.
Of all the unlikely coincidences, it's restaurant week down here, something I go out of my way to avoid in Richmond, but here it's just a reminder of how off-season it is right now.
At our favorite dive bar, we run into the same plumber as last year, except this year he provides the insider's tour and we got to experience the blue room.
The two closest places, Run Down Café (which is anything but, although it was in the mid-'90s) and Ocean Boulevard (starting strong with a appetizer of lamb shoulder with sorghum-glazed spring vegetables) both check out as intact and open. A new place in the old piano bar produced a tomato pie with pimento cheese that was stellar and I'm no pimento cheese worshipper.
Walking the beach is far more exercise than in the past because the sand has so little time when the ocean isn't lapping at it to dry out. I began a memoir, "The House in France" that's already delivering a peek into an ex-pat world I've never known. One afternoon nap so far and it was a doozy.
The first night here was a full moon, the moon making distinct shadows on the floor of the screened porch, a brilliant white light that lit up the ocean, too.
Real life intrudes when my partner in crime has to return to the city shortly after Tuesday dawns pink and perfect. My next visitors don't come for days.
It'll be interesting to see what I do with so much time alone here.
That ridiculous Microsoft #HowOldRobot thing that's everywhere at the moment claims to be able to judge your age from a photograph. Apparently it needs some work because a 35-year old friend was told she looked 63 (she looks 30 in real life).
And what does it tell me when I give it my Facebook profile picture? That I'm a 29-year old female. It is to laugh.
I'm not saying that there aren't parts of me that act more like a 29-year old than my real age. Going out every night, attending so many music shows, hell, even my lack of fiscal conservatism could be considered more stereotypical of a younger person.
But my face? Sorry, that's a face that's seen a lot more than 29 years of life. It's experienced far more things than any 29-year old has had time to. And I don't have a problem with that.
However, it does point to some serious issues with #HowOldRobot. Work on it, geek squad, and get back with me.
Sunday morning, an observer might have guessed that I was more like 10 years old when I woke after only seven hours of sleep instead of my usual nine. The reason was pure excitement. I was leaving for the beach today and my annual week at the little oceanfront cottage that's been my destination since the '90s.
Itinerary: walk on the beach, read on the beach, eat, drink, sleep. Listen to the ocean 24/7.
Up early, I spent the morning doing the last of the packing and loading the car, eager to be on the lesser roads I take to the Outer Banks. The three-hour trip down is the kick-off to vacation, but since I was traveling solo, it's also an excuse to stop wherever I want, eat at roadside haunts that grab my attention and generally indulge myself.
I passed the Nina and the Pinta down off of Dock Street in my pursuit of Route 5 and ultimately 460, where I pulled into Adams Country Store with the Editors' "Open You Arms (and Welcome)" blasting my arrival.
Inside, a man with one eye on the race greets me from his stool behind the bin of hog jowls that that sit as sentry at the door as I head to the back case for an RC Cola. Behind the counter up front is a woman who eyes me warily until I announce without being asked that I want a ham sandwich with mustard.
Holding that cold bottle of RC as I cruise down 460 taking long pulls off of it, I am soon in the midst of a major caffeine buzz, hardly surprising since I don't drink coffee and rarely soda. It's kind of ideal right now, though, this buzz: cruising down the road on the way to the ocean under a bright blue sky and afternoon sun make me feel like I'm embarking on an adventure.
The geography captures my eye the whole way down because I'm looking at a very different landscape than I did all those years I came in July. The green of the trees is much lighter and more tender-looking, fresher. I pass a couple of old duffers tooling along, one in a restored Model T and the other in a '66 Mustang. They feel like they're on an adventure, too.
I wind up riding next to a Land Rover where the girl in the passenger seat is methodically wiping (probably last year's sand) out the inside of the same model boom box as I have, notable mainly because it's so groovy looking, curved and aerodynamic. Hers is white and mine is bright blue (a Valentine's Day present last decade) but there's no mistaking the groovy factor. We are sisters.
After passing Frog Island Seafood year after year, this time I stopped for lunch, chatting with a table of ROMEOS as my crabcake sandwich (made with Frog Island crab, they say) and onion rings are prepared.
The couple in front of me to order have a look and the server asked if they're riding today. "Yep," the Mr. says while the Mrs. tells her how perfect the weather is for it. It's the kind of day that could make any activity better.
At the cottage, there was good news and bad news. For the last couple of years, there have been window A/C units, eliminating a breeze from one window in every bedroom. I rail against it every year in the guest journal. Who takes a house right on the ocean and then closes the window so you can't hear it?
But on the "watch out for Mother Nature" front, the beaches north and south are severely eroded, much, much narrower than I've ever seen them after a lifetime of summers here. Scary narrow in some places. During high tide, the water was lapping the house's stilts.
A look down later while lathering up in the outdoor shower off the big, screened porch revealed how much closer the sand under the house is than it was last year. Dredging can't start too soon, if you ask me.
After an hour setting the little cottage to rights, or at least ordering it the way that gives me the most pleasure, I am joined by my favorite beach partner, who'd also stopped at Adams. Beds made, we set out for a walk.
The peace and quiet of being here in early May is extraordinary. Most houses, especially the biggest ones, aren't occupied. People walking down the beach are an occasional diversion, not the endless parade they are in July. The water is too cold for any but the school-age children who on their only beach vacation this year.
Of all the unlikely coincidences, it's restaurant week down here, something I go out of my way to avoid in Richmond, but here it's just a reminder of how off-season it is right now.
At our favorite dive bar, we run into the same plumber as last year, except this year he provides the insider's tour and we got to experience the blue room.
The two closest places, Run Down Café (which is anything but, although it was in the mid-'90s) and Ocean Boulevard (starting strong with a appetizer of lamb shoulder with sorghum-glazed spring vegetables) both check out as intact and open. A new place in the old piano bar produced a tomato pie with pimento cheese that was stellar and I'm no pimento cheese worshipper.
Walking the beach is far more exercise than in the past because the sand has so little time when the ocean isn't lapping at it to dry out. I began a memoir, "The House in France" that's already delivering a peek into an ex-pat world I've never known. One afternoon nap so far and it was a doozy.
The first night here was a full moon, the moon making distinct shadows on the floor of the screened porch, a brilliant white light that lit up the ocean, too.
Real life intrudes when my partner in crime has to return to the city shortly after Tuesday dawns pink and perfect. My next visitors don't come for days.
It'll be interesting to see what I do with so much time alone here.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Bring It, Art!!
When you're talking about a week at the beach, do you focus on what you did or didn't do?
Sunday: Arrived at the same little oceanfront cottage I've been renting for 20 years to find the ocean an incredibly warm 77 degrees, a drastic improvement over last year when the water was so cold we couldn't go in all week. I wasn't in the water half an hour before the surf knocked me over, earning me incredulous looks from my crew when I emerged.
"Is that blood on your leg?" Given the missing skin over my kneecap, I just assume it's a rhetorical question and let it bleed. Sure, my legs are the moneymaker, but ocean cred has been established early on. As the fireman has been known to say, YOLO (you only live once). We are resolved to drink a Rose a day all week long.
First beach read of the week: Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.
Monday: Our morning walk on the beach reveals that Southern Shores, the beach just north of us, has lost considerable width over the past year. Morning tides are high, so shell collecting is abundant. After a day of nothing more than sitting on the beach reading, forays into the now 78-degree ocean and napping, we clean up and head south to Outer Banks Brewing Station where locally caught steamed shrimp and fat hushpuppies are just the ticket to soak up our extended Monday happy hour on the porch.
Tuesday: While I've yet to check my e-mail since we arrived, the male members of the household are keenly attuned to the outside world and today's World Cup match between U.S. and Belgium. They're not going to watch it anywhere that serves mussels, so I decline to join and spend a happy afternoon with the womenfolk, reading 1913: The Year Before the Storm, full of anecdotes about Stravinsky, Freud, Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann.
We stay in the ocean so long that our fingers resemble prunes when we make it back to the house to shower off the briny water. Already, my skinned knee is healing thanks to the salt. Once the balance of the sexes has been restored (after the U.S. team's heartbreaking loss), two of us take to the beach and walk up to Art's Place ("Locals welcomed, tourists tolerated...sometimes") for burgers and more N.C. shrimp.
When I ask about the sign outside touting "Live music tonight 7 p.m." our server, Courtney, looks abashed and says, "Oops, I was supposed to change that. Live music was last night." We're happy enough to spend the rest of the evening sitting on the porch swing listening to the black ocean, the whitecaps the only visible indications of the sound's source.
Wednesday: In addition to the four decades of music (heavy on the '90s) that the local radio station plays (the playlist varies so little from year to year that we could practically write it out ourselves...and therein lies part of the charm), today's patter is full of talk of Arthur, the tropical storm gathering force and heading directly for us.
Interestingly, in a quarter century of vacationing during this week, we have never had a hurricane. As one of the pithy members of the household noted, "hashtag Al Gore." Indeed. The DJ says the ocean needs to be 82 degrees for a storm to form and since we have been in the upper '70s for days, we plan accordingly.
That means it's date night and we start with a drive down Collington Road, where we end up at a little locals bar called the Blue Crab ("the crab" to those in the know) where we take our libations out to the soundside deck when a man looks at me and calls out, "I was waiting for you! I knew you'd come."
Once again, it has been proven that I carry the gene that causes strangers to talk to me. My date chooses the furthest table, albeit with only one in between us and my new admirer, and we observe bird life on the sound while a foosball game goes on nearby.
Our dinner destination, the Brine and the Bottle, is on the causeway and new to us both, although we're into its slogan - get pickled! We sit on the deck, the pre-Arthur wind whipping my hair around non-stop but also bringing a sense of weather excitement to the evening. Mortified when I drop my knife and it neatly slides between the wide-set boards of the decking, our server assures me it happens all the time. "Periodically we just send someone underwater to retrieve all the dropped stuff." Don't sweat the small stuff, I get it.
To start, quail and pickled anaheim chili waffles and fried green tomatoes with S.C. peaches, candied bacon and buttermilk chive dressing before I move on to a soft shell crab with pickled ramp tartar sauce while my date has olive oil-poached mahi mahi. After moving to the other side of the deck, we finish with two desserts - one chocolate, one blueberry and peach - and bubbly to toast vacation.
Not that the evening needed to get any better, but we make a final stop at Kelly's to hear the Deloreans, an '80s cover band that eschews the hair bands of Sweet Justice for pop. Cyndi Lauper, the Go-Gos, Prince (oh, yes, we partied like it was 1999), performed by a female lead singer who played a bass with day-glo strings, a snarling guy mimicking Billy Idol and another who looked like David Byrne. It was a blast.
Thursday: Arthur becomes official and Hatteras Island was being evacuated, but not us, so people began preparing for the storm, battening down hurricane shutters on the few houses that still have them. Food Lion puts up corrugated metal sheeting over their windows. Awful Arthur's changed their sign to read, "We had the name first!" and homeowners boarded up windows with plywood spray painted, "Go away, Arthur" and, three houses down from us, the cocky, "Bring it, Art!"
You can call Kitty Hawk the "ghetto of the Outer Banks," but I like its attitude.
With the ocean suddenly a chilly 59 degrees, swimming was out, but not eating. Lunch of fried rockfish strips, fried okra and cole slaw plus chocolate milkshakes at John's drive-in was interrupted only when a John's employee came to take away our table umbrella, sure that Arthur was imminent. We didn't have the heart to tell him it was 12 hours away.
A cop stopped by the house to suggest we move our cars to higher ground (which we did) but didn't warn us to leave, in fact reassured us they'd be around all night if we needed anything. Fog rolled in so heavy toward early evening that the Kitty Hawk pier, barely a third of a mile away, was invisible in the mist. Visibility on the ocean kept diminishing. Many of the vacationers in nearby houses packed up and left.
We did the only sensible thing: had a long happy hour on the porch and then ate crabs, corn and cole slaw on the picnic table. Everyone wanted to get in bed early so we could get up once the storm arrived and watch.
Today's beach read: When French Women Cook
By 2:30 a.m., Arthur was overhead and the wind was a pretty continuous high-pitched whine while the surf pounded just outside. We all got up to watch and discuss before going back to bed and re-emerging at 5:30 once the wind had shifted from off the ocean to off the sound. It was then that Arthur began ripping off siding and insulation from the house across the street and eventually ours, leaving pieces to beat against the house until the wind died finally down. My first hurricane at close range: a rousing success and great entertainment.
Friday: The "no swimming" flags were up when we awoke and the surf was rough enough (and only 65 degrees) to ensure no one would flaunt the flags except surfers, so we called the Nags Head pier to see if they were serving and then drove south to survey the damage and eat.
Like our house, many had taken more than a few blows on the north and eastern sides and there was a lot of sand on the road in places, but all in all, the beach looked pretty good. We ate our pancakes, eggs and sausage gravy watching throngs of vacationers milling about on the beach, like sightseers at a train crash.
It was a fine, sunny afternoon for reading and talking to strangers. Our house's scarred look meant that we were part of the beach gawker tour that afternoon and more than a few people stopped to take photos or ask about the damage. One woman asked to come all the way up on the porch, concerned because her mother spends two weeks in that cottage every May, "So it feels like home to us." Tell me about it, toots.
With all the fireworks rescheduled, dinner was served at Ocean Boulevard where we had the same bartender we've had for ten years. After the OBX skillet with pork shoulder, goat cheese, and tomato chutney, I went for a bistro salad and pan-seared scallops while next to me, a one-pound veal chop was my date's choice and my, but it was tasty. We were leaving just as fans of the Hound Dogs family band were arriving, but after so much hurricane-watching last night, we needed a rest.
Beach read: VCU professor Tom De Haven's Dugan Under Ground.
Saturday: Glorious weather for our last full day. No swimming flags still up, but water warming up nicely. I took my morning walk in both directions to see what there was to see. Between those who evacuated and those whose cottage terms ended on Saturday, it was not particularly crowded anywhere. Not ashamed to say I did some serious beach napping all afternoon and burnt my buns.
And then the day trippers began arriving. Fortunately, without ocean access, many left before long and we had our beach back. Finally, at 5:00, the no swimming flags came down and most of us hit the water, now a lovely 72 degrees, immediately. I only had one knockdown, luckily not on the healing knee, although my sunburnned back end didn't deserve it, either.
Best of all, we had happy hour standing knee-deep at the ocean's edge, a first but most certainly not a last. If you can balance your Rose while all around you post-hurricane waves are crashing on you, then you are truly beach-worthy.
Dinner was in-house and pitch perfect: bacon cheeseburgers, succotash made from butterbeans, corn and onions procured at the Grandy Market farm stand on the way to the beach, and salad of mesclun with Grandy peaches and radishes bathed in a goat cheese dressing. Yum.
Full as ticks, we dragged blankets (and bubbly) to the beach for the fireworks, all of which were south of us this year. Usually it's like a tennis match, heads swiveling to see both north and south, but this year we could focus all our attention to the Avalon pier.
As a bonus, there was a fire-twirler performing on the beach next to us and we watched him in between explosions. Happy birthday, America.
Sunday: To keep it fresh, we did the morning walk down in Nags Head where plenty of people were surfing but we were happy just strolling. Cowabunga. Then after a stop to get a N.C. map, it was on to Manteo for a walk around the waterfront admiring schooners, pirate ships and tycoon-type yachts until Avenue Waterfront Grille opened and we commandeered a table overlooking the sound and marina to eat, drink and map out a course.
Then heading west on Roanoke Island, we glided over multiple bridges (including waiting on one swung open for a boat to clear), through lots of swamps, past signs warning of bears and red foxes, when we unexpectedly saw a sign for "Vineyards on the Scuppernong" and pulled into a visitors' center to get the scoop.
A short boardwalk from the nature center (no bears or foxes spotted), we came upon the former firehouse and Columbia town hall turned winery. A surprise wine tasting in the afternoon? Thanks, I think I will. The grapes were all sourced from New York and many were fruit wines (the peach which was blended with Chardonnay being particularly winning, a refreshing light summer wine) but there were two dry ones and we had a glass of the Armadas made with 100% Viognier after we finished the tasting.
Wandering up Route 17, we eventually decided on Norfolk for dinner, enjoying steak frites and our final Rose of the week on the patio of the Green Onion. "Way to stretch out vacation as long as possible," my companion observed, clearly as satisfied as I was about our marathon trip back.
Why limit happy to only an hour? Why keep a week at the beach to a mere seven days? Why do birds suddenly appear?
Only checked my e-mail once all week. Didn't listen to the dire predictions about weather. Didn't always take a buddy in the ocean with me despite rip tides. Didn't blog.
Arthur? Just part of the fun. Next trip to the beach can't come soon enough. Bring it.
Sunday: Arrived at the same little oceanfront cottage I've been renting for 20 years to find the ocean an incredibly warm 77 degrees, a drastic improvement over last year when the water was so cold we couldn't go in all week. I wasn't in the water half an hour before the surf knocked me over, earning me incredulous looks from my crew when I emerged.
"Is that blood on your leg?" Given the missing skin over my kneecap, I just assume it's a rhetorical question and let it bleed. Sure, my legs are the moneymaker, but ocean cred has been established early on. As the fireman has been known to say, YOLO (you only live once). We are resolved to drink a Rose a day all week long.
First beach read of the week: Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.
Monday: Our morning walk on the beach reveals that Southern Shores, the beach just north of us, has lost considerable width over the past year. Morning tides are high, so shell collecting is abundant. After a day of nothing more than sitting on the beach reading, forays into the now 78-degree ocean and napping, we clean up and head south to Outer Banks Brewing Station where locally caught steamed shrimp and fat hushpuppies are just the ticket to soak up our extended Monday happy hour on the porch.
Tuesday: While I've yet to check my e-mail since we arrived, the male members of the household are keenly attuned to the outside world and today's World Cup match between U.S. and Belgium. They're not going to watch it anywhere that serves mussels, so I decline to join and spend a happy afternoon with the womenfolk, reading 1913: The Year Before the Storm, full of anecdotes about Stravinsky, Freud, Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann.
We stay in the ocean so long that our fingers resemble prunes when we make it back to the house to shower off the briny water. Already, my skinned knee is healing thanks to the salt. Once the balance of the sexes has been restored (after the U.S. team's heartbreaking loss), two of us take to the beach and walk up to Art's Place ("Locals welcomed, tourists tolerated...sometimes") for burgers and more N.C. shrimp.
When I ask about the sign outside touting "Live music tonight 7 p.m." our server, Courtney, looks abashed and says, "Oops, I was supposed to change that. Live music was last night." We're happy enough to spend the rest of the evening sitting on the porch swing listening to the black ocean, the whitecaps the only visible indications of the sound's source.
Wednesday: In addition to the four decades of music (heavy on the '90s) that the local radio station plays (the playlist varies so little from year to year that we could practically write it out ourselves...and therein lies part of the charm), today's patter is full of talk of Arthur, the tropical storm gathering force and heading directly for us.
Interestingly, in a quarter century of vacationing during this week, we have never had a hurricane. As one of the pithy members of the household noted, "hashtag Al Gore." Indeed. The DJ says the ocean needs to be 82 degrees for a storm to form and since we have been in the upper '70s for days, we plan accordingly.
That means it's date night and we start with a drive down Collington Road, where we end up at a little locals bar called the Blue Crab ("the crab" to those in the know) where we take our libations out to the soundside deck when a man looks at me and calls out, "I was waiting for you! I knew you'd come."
Once again, it has been proven that I carry the gene that causes strangers to talk to me. My date chooses the furthest table, albeit with only one in between us and my new admirer, and we observe bird life on the sound while a foosball game goes on nearby.
Our dinner destination, the Brine and the Bottle, is on the causeway and new to us both, although we're into its slogan - get pickled! We sit on the deck, the pre-Arthur wind whipping my hair around non-stop but also bringing a sense of weather excitement to the evening. Mortified when I drop my knife and it neatly slides between the wide-set boards of the decking, our server assures me it happens all the time. "Periodically we just send someone underwater to retrieve all the dropped stuff." Don't sweat the small stuff, I get it.
To start, quail and pickled anaheim chili waffles and fried green tomatoes with S.C. peaches, candied bacon and buttermilk chive dressing before I move on to a soft shell crab with pickled ramp tartar sauce while my date has olive oil-poached mahi mahi. After moving to the other side of the deck, we finish with two desserts - one chocolate, one blueberry and peach - and bubbly to toast vacation.
Not that the evening needed to get any better, but we make a final stop at Kelly's to hear the Deloreans, an '80s cover band that eschews the hair bands of Sweet Justice for pop. Cyndi Lauper, the Go-Gos, Prince (oh, yes, we partied like it was 1999), performed by a female lead singer who played a bass with day-glo strings, a snarling guy mimicking Billy Idol and another who looked like David Byrne. It was a blast.
Thursday: Arthur becomes official and Hatteras Island was being evacuated, but not us, so people began preparing for the storm, battening down hurricane shutters on the few houses that still have them. Food Lion puts up corrugated metal sheeting over their windows. Awful Arthur's changed their sign to read, "We had the name first!" and homeowners boarded up windows with plywood spray painted, "Go away, Arthur" and, three houses down from us, the cocky, "Bring it, Art!"
You can call Kitty Hawk the "ghetto of the Outer Banks," but I like its attitude.
With the ocean suddenly a chilly 59 degrees, swimming was out, but not eating. Lunch of fried rockfish strips, fried okra and cole slaw plus chocolate milkshakes at John's drive-in was interrupted only when a John's employee came to take away our table umbrella, sure that Arthur was imminent. We didn't have the heart to tell him it was 12 hours away.
A cop stopped by the house to suggest we move our cars to higher ground (which we did) but didn't warn us to leave, in fact reassured us they'd be around all night if we needed anything. Fog rolled in so heavy toward early evening that the Kitty Hawk pier, barely a third of a mile away, was invisible in the mist. Visibility on the ocean kept diminishing. Many of the vacationers in nearby houses packed up and left.
We did the only sensible thing: had a long happy hour on the porch and then ate crabs, corn and cole slaw on the picnic table. Everyone wanted to get in bed early so we could get up once the storm arrived and watch.
Today's beach read: When French Women Cook
By 2:30 a.m., Arthur was overhead and the wind was a pretty continuous high-pitched whine while the surf pounded just outside. We all got up to watch and discuss before going back to bed and re-emerging at 5:30 once the wind had shifted from off the ocean to off the sound. It was then that Arthur began ripping off siding and insulation from the house across the street and eventually ours, leaving pieces to beat against the house until the wind died finally down. My first hurricane at close range: a rousing success and great entertainment.
Friday: The "no swimming" flags were up when we awoke and the surf was rough enough (and only 65 degrees) to ensure no one would flaunt the flags except surfers, so we called the Nags Head pier to see if they were serving and then drove south to survey the damage and eat.
Like our house, many had taken more than a few blows on the north and eastern sides and there was a lot of sand on the road in places, but all in all, the beach looked pretty good. We ate our pancakes, eggs and sausage gravy watching throngs of vacationers milling about on the beach, like sightseers at a train crash.
It was a fine, sunny afternoon for reading and talking to strangers. Our house's scarred look meant that we were part of the beach gawker tour that afternoon and more than a few people stopped to take photos or ask about the damage. One woman asked to come all the way up on the porch, concerned because her mother spends two weeks in that cottage every May, "So it feels like home to us." Tell me about it, toots.
With all the fireworks rescheduled, dinner was served at Ocean Boulevard where we had the same bartender we've had for ten years. After the OBX skillet with pork shoulder, goat cheese, and tomato chutney, I went for a bistro salad and pan-seared scallops while next to me, a one-pound veal chop was my date's choice and my, but it was tasty. We were leaving just as fans of the Hound Dogs family band were arriving, but after so much hurricane-watching last night, we needed a rest.
Beach read: VCU professor Tom De Haven's Dugan Under Ground.
Saturday: Glorious weather for our last full day. No swimming flags still up, but water warming up nicely. I took my morning walk in both directions to see what there was to see. Between those who evacuated and those whose cottage terms ended on Saturday, it was not particularly crowded anywhere. Not ashamed to say I did some serious beach napping all afternoon and burnt my buns.
And then the day trippers began arriving. Fortunately, without ocean access, many left before long and we had our beach back. Finally, at 5:00, the no swimming flags came down and most of us hit the water, now a lovely 72 degrees, immediately. I only had one knockdown, luckily not on the healing knee, although my sunburnned back end didn't deserve it, either.
Best of all, we had happy hour standing knee-deep at the ocean's edge, a first but most certainly not a last. If you can balance your Rose while all around you post-hurricane waves are crashing on you, then you are truly beach-worthy.
Dinner was in-house and pitch perfect: bacon cheeseburgers, succotash made from butterbeans, corn and onions procured at the Grandy Market farm stand on the way to the beach, and salad of mesclun with Grandy peaches and radishes bathed in a goat cheese dressing. Yum.
Full as ticks, we dragged blankets (and bubbly) to the beach for the fireworks, all of which were south of us this year. Usually it's like a tennis match, heads swiveling to see both north and south, but this year we could focus all our attention to the Avalon pier.
As a bonus, there was a fire-twirler performing on the beach next to us and we watched him in between explosions. Happy birthday, America.
Sunday: To keep it fresh, we did the morning walk down in Nags Head where plenty of people were surfing but we were happy just strolling. Cowabunga. Then after a stop to get a N.C. map, it was on to Manteo for a walk around the waterfront admiring schooners, pirate ships and tycoon-type yachts until Avenue Waterfront Grille opened and we commandeered a table overlooking the sound and marina to eat, drink and map out a course.
Then heading west on Roanoke Island, we glided over multiple bridges (including waiting on one swung open for a boat to clear), through lots of swamps, past signs warning of bears and red foxes, when we unexpectedly saw a sign for "Vineyards on the Scuppernong" and pulled into a visitors' center to get the scoop.
A short boardwalk from the nature center (no bears or foxes spotted), we came upon the former firehouse and Columbia town hall turned winery. A surprise wine tasting in the afternoon? Thanks, I think I will. The grapes were all sourced from New York and many were fruit wines (the peach which was blended with Chardonnay being particularly winning, a refreshing light summer wine) but there were two dry ones and we had a glass of the Armadas made with 100% Viognier after we finished the tasting.
Wandering up Route 17, we eventually decided on Norfolk for dinner, enjoying steak frites and our final Rose of the week on the patio of the Green Onion. "Way to stretch out vacation as long as possible," my companion observed, clearly as satisfied as I was about our marathon trip back.
Why limit happy to only an hour? Why keep a week at the beach to a mere seven days? Why do birds suddenly appear?
Only checked my e-mail once all week. Didn't listen to the dire predictions about weather. Didn't always take a buddy in the ocean with me despite rip tides. Didn't blog.
Arthur? Just part of the fun. Next trip to the beach can't come soon enough. Bring it.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Say What You Need to Say
All good things must come to an end.
So after breakfast, I did what will (sadly) probably be my last beach walk of 2013, stretching it out for as long as I could.
And by that, I mean I walked all the way to the Kitty Hawk limit and beyond, savoring the clear skies and 75-degree air.
Once back, Pru and I made one last trek to the beach, stretching out our beach towels for one last hour of people-watching, leg tanning and girl talk.
After packing up the car, I headed up the beach road listening to my favorite local radio station, the Dj's voice totally familiar from so many summers down here.
With all the windows down and salty air blowing across me, the moment crystallized when John Mayer came on.
I say that because I first heard him on this very station back in 2002. This was a newer song, but the effect was the same.
Have no fear for givin' in
Have no fear for givin' over
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much
Than to never say what you need to say again
It was a fitting way to head up the road.
But I only got as far as mile post 2.5 when the car insisted on turning in to Art's Place for lunch.
This little bar and grill has been around for 30 years and I've been staying within a half a mile of it every summer for at least as long, so it was a visit long overdue.
It's a place that advertises right on its menu that they're open 6 a.m. "till you let us go home" and that "Locals welcome, tourists tolerated...sometimes."
With my long time Kitty Hawk attendance record, I was ready to fight for my right to stay.
I took the last seat at the small bar, next to two guys deep in conversation about their guitars and the bands they'd played in.
When a server saw my purse in my lap, she pointed to the hook under the bar, but in front of one of the guys.
Saying I didn't want to crowd him, she insisted I use it, saying, "Maybe he'll talk to you then."
I ordered Art's signature burger and eavesdropped as they segued into how much they'd liked Split Enz.
Without so much as looking up, the server behind the bar ran her hand through her cropped hair and said nonchalantly, "I got the Flock of Seagulls hair swoop."
She did indeed.
While eating my burger, I listened to Rolling Stones and Hendrix and admired the old black and white photos of the beach after numerous catastrophic-looking storms.
Once my plate was empty, she asked if I wanted anything else.
By then I'd spotted the Patron behind the bar, and while not my favorite tequila, it'll do in a pinch.
Ordering one got the result she'd expected from hanging my purse.
All of a sudden, the guy next to me wanted to chat. We talked so long that his friend joined in.
They chided me for waiting so long to try Art's and for not barging into their conversation earlier.
By the time my tequila was gone, they sounded really sorry that I hadn't wandered in nearer the start of my visit down.
Ah, well. There's always next time.
It was time for me to get home to do some work.
Coming up 158, I passed a tractor pull with a line of cars half a mile long waiting to get in.
I breezed past the Currituck Wildlife Fest with a big, bird-adorned sign for a "calling contest."
I have to assume this means grown men imitate fowl, but I'm really not certain.
Time to get back to my real life.
Do it with a heart wide open
A wide heart
Always.
So after breakfast, I did what will (sadly) probably be my last beach walk of 2013, stretching it out for as long as I could.
And by that, I mean I walked all the way to the Kitty Hawk limit and beyond, savoring the clear skies and 75-degree air.
Once back, Pru and I made one last trek to the beach, stretching out our beach towels for one last hour of people-watching, leg tanning and girl talk.
After packing up the car, I headed up the beach road listening to my favorite local radio station, the Dj's voice totally familiar from so many summers down here.
With all the windows down and salty air blowing across me, the moment crystallized when John Mayer came on.
I say that because I first heard him on this very station back in 2002. This was a newer song, but the effect was the same.
Have no fear for givin' in
Have no fear for givin' over
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much
Than to never say what you need to say again
It was a fitting way to head up the road.
But I only got as far as mile post 2.5 when the car insisted on turning in to Art's Place for lunch.
This little bar and grill has been around for 30 years and I've been staying within a half a mile of it every summer for at least as long, so it was a visit long overdue.
It's a place that advertises right on its menu that they're open 6 a.m. "till you let us go home" and that "Locals welcome, tourists tolerated...sometimes."
With my long time Kitty Hawk attendance record, I was ready to fight for my right to stay.
I took the last seat at the small bar, next to two guys deep in conversation about their guitars and the bands they'd played in.
When a server saw my purse in my lap, she pointed to the hook under the bar, but in front of one of the guys.
Saying I didn't want to crowd him, she insisted I use it, saying, "Maybe he'll talk to you then."
I ordered Art's signature burger and eavesdropped as they segued into how much they'd liked Split Enz.
Without so much as looking up, the server behind the bar ran her hand through her cropped hair and said nonchalantly, "I got the Flock of Seagulls hair swoop."
She did indeed.
While eating my burger, I listened to Rolling Stones and Hendrix and admired the old black and white photos of the beach after numerous catastrophic-looking storms.
Once my plate was empty, she asked if I wanted anything else.
By then I'd spotted the Patron behind the bar, and while not my favorite tequila, it'll do in a pinch.
Ordering one got the result she'd expected from hanging my purse.
All of a sudden, the guy next to me wanted to chat. We talked so long that his friend joined in.
They chided me for waiting so long to try Art's and for not barging into their conversation earlier.
By the time my tequila was gone, they sounded really sorry that I hadn't wandered in nearer the start of my visit down.
Ah, well. There's always next time.
It was time for me to get home to do some work.
Coming up 158, I passed a tractor pull with a line of cars half a mile long waiting to get in.
I breezed past the Currituck Wildlife Fest with a big, bird-adorned sign for a "calling contest."
I have to assume this means grown men imitate fowl, but I'm really not certain.
Time to get back to my real life.
Do it with a heart wide open
A wide heart
Always.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Crossing State Lines
Beach log wrap-up.
Water temperature: gradually warmed up to 67 by the last day, but the much cooler-than-usual temps made for far less time in the ocean (sadly) other than walking along the edge every day.
Books read: "Over Here, Over There: The Andrews Sisters and the U.S.O" and "Remembered Laughter: The Life of Noel Coward."
Best random song heard: "Dare County Blues" sung by a local singer on the rooftop deck of the Rundown Cafe during sunset.
It was a fine Fourth, meaning hot dogs for lunch and the absolute best cheeseburgers for dinner, both meals savored on the screened-in porch while watching the endless parade of red, white and blue stars and striped bathing suits on everyone from babies to geezers.
The only saving grace? No patriotic Speedos seen.
We watched the fireworks from beach chairs facing the ocean, sipping celebratory Pommery champagne and twisting our heads back and forth like at a tennis match to catch the neighbors on either side setting off blasts, as well as the displays in Southern Shores and at the Avalon Pier.
The evening finished with neighbors releasing mini hot air balloons (wish lanterns, according to the in-the-know one in the group) and watching them drift on the ocean breezes until they were as small as a star.
It was a gloriously clear night for stargazing until the last of the faraway explosion sounds finally died away.
Friday we set off to have an adventure, ending up at the Bodie Island lighthouse where, to our amazement, they were selling tickets to walk up the 219 steps for the first time in 140 years.
When the park ranger told me that, I grabbed her arm in excitement, since we'd come looking for nothing more than a walk and some history.
Since the next few tours were already sold out, we bought tickets for the 2:50 tour and set off to Wanchese for lunch, ending up at the Fisherman's Wharf.
My first trip to the bathroom there resulted in my meeting a local and we discussed the difficulty of doing anything with hair at the beach (her recommendation: cut it off and give up) and the second trip yielded a familiar face.
Walking out of the stall I intended to walk into was a Richmond musician and teacher and I don't know which of us was more surprised to see the other.
"Karen, I see you everywhere, but never across state lines!" she laughed.
Back at our waterfront table, the owner's wife informed us that the kitchen was "a man down" and to expect delays, mollifying us with hushpuppies.
Nothing says relax like fried carbs.
With a non-stop view of trawlers and pleasure boats coming and going, we were in no hurry and eventually inquired of our server what libations were available.
"Oh, we don't have alcohol on this side of the island!" she exclaimed, all big blue eyes and gorgeous white teeth.
We tried to guess whether it was the preference of the Wanchesians (where a local church's sign proclaimed "Wanchese is Jesus") or if Manteo just sold enough booze to make up for the entire island.
In any case, the fried and steamed shrimp were tasty and plentiful and anyone can drink iced tea for one beach day lunch.
Back at the lighthouse, we endured a painful 10-minute lecture on escaping rip tides from the park ranger, despite the fact the chance of a rip current in the lighthouse seemed extremely remote.
There were nine or ten kids in our group of 22 and since all were wearing some form of flip-flops, our guide warned them to walk slowly and carefully so they wouldn't lose a flop down the spiral staircase.
Naturally, we didn't even make it to the second landing before one of the boys lost a flip-flop.
The mortification on his mother's face was classic.
Leaning over the railing through the grated steps, he leaned down and yelled, "I love you, Mom! I love you, Dad!"
It might have helped if he hadn't lost another one two flights up.
Ignoring the kids and the two women with height issues, we powered on, eager to reach the top and fresh air, since none of the windows inside the lighthouse were open.
I bet those windows were allowed to be open 140 years ago, is all I'm saying.
Up top, we had stellar views of a nearby (and private) duck hunting lodge, a public fishing pier and the long wooden walk that crossed the snake sanctuary I had no intention of going anywhere near.
Instead, we walked over to the little fishing pier afterwards, meeting fisherman headed back to their trucks with lines and buckets and a few still fishing away in the late afternoon sun.
I stuck my feet in the sound, finding it as warm as, well, piss, before waving adieu to the last of the fishermen and heading back up the coast.
It had been a fine afternoon's adventure, with me especially tickled after a lifetime of summers on the Outer Banks, to have finally been allowed to climb that lighthouse.
On one morning walk, we saw two excited little girls running down the beach with "Event Viewing" signs, piquing our curiosity about what the event might be.
Get this: It was the "Curtis Family body surfing championships," according to the sign.
There was even a white board with brackets of Curtises who'd qualified to scrape up their bellies in the ocean in pursuit of whatever bragging rights the championship might bring them.
Makes an ordinary beach group feel kind of lame just having happy hours and trying to beat each other at drunken Scrabble, doesn't it?
When we set out to have breakfast at the Nags Head pier, we weren't expecting a competition of our own, but that's exactly what we got.
After a 45-minute wait, we finally were seated in the back room (the one overlooking the ocean), but when our server, a familiar face due to her long-time service there, came to take our order, a clamor arose from the next table.
The eight-top of leathery. older people already on their second and third rounds of bloody Marys, began banging implements and shouting at out server that they'd been seated first.
Excusing herself and knowing we'd understand ("She can spot us for industry types," one in our group observed), she moved over a few feet and began taking their order.
Without missing a beat, once she'd taken theirs, she returned to us and sweetly asked what we wanted, hissing under her breath, "I'm not putting their order in until I take yours."
Well, I guess she'd made her point.
The politics of service aside, I was just happy to have a big plate of hotcakes and bacon in front of me.
One of us noted that his corned beef hash was straight out of a can, but, let's face it, no one goes to the pier for high-quality food.
The coffee drinker raved about how delightfully awful the Maxwell House coffee was, especially after extensive doctoring.
It's cheap, it's fast and it's a uniquely beach-y experience and that's the most you should expect from it.
After a perfect beach day of reading, napping and watching the parade of scantily-clad humanity, we had a dinner summit.
Last year, a local I'd met at Ocean Boulevard had told me that High Cotton had the best 'cue on the beach.
Locals are supposed to know these things.
Going on nothing but that (and the fact that it was a quarter mile walk away), we headed up the beach for some brisket and a rack of ribs.
Passing by the Rundown Cafe, we heard the dulcet tones of Hannah Buckley upstairs on the deck, which was enough of an enticement to lure us back once bones were sucked clean back on the porch.
It had been a couple of years since I'd been to Rundown, so I was pleasantly surprised that they'd enlarged their "tsunami deck" to now include a "hula deck," notable for its long, wooden banquette and colorful cushions.
We found a spot in front of one of the surfboard-topped tables and sat there listening to Hannah cover everything from Radiohead to Fiona Apple with a healthy smattering of original material in between.
In fact, at one point, she began a lovely original song about meeting a guy, singing sweetly of their compatibility and her affection for him and then, boom, he did her wrong.
My fellow vacationer looked at me and observed, "Never saw that coming."
Nope, sitting on a breezy deck with the sun sliding low in the western sky and a glass of wine in hand, who would have?
When Hannah finished, there was a rush of eager admirers (all male, of course), stuffing her tip jar and vying for her attention.
We exited stage right and head south looking for further entertainment.
"Let's find some place where we can make fun of people," someone said.
At Barefoor Bernie's, the sign promised live music Tue/Sat and there was a bridal shower group sitting out front in impossibly high heels (perfect for beach walking), looking bored and high maintenance at the same time.
Here was some fun we could sink our teeth into.
We killed some time waiting for the music to begin with bubbles and guacamole before a slacker-looking, 40-ish guy strolled out with his drink and a guitar.
From the first warbly notes, it was obvious this was not someone who should be singing in public.
Even better, his choice of cover songs was as trite as we could have hoped for, given our purpose.
John Mellencamp. Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden" with an off-key chorus of "gitchy-gitchy" that had our table in stitches. A surprisingly well-chosen but poorly executed "Cry Love."
And this was after he'd knocked his guitar neck into the low-hanging ceiling fan.
We had to laugh or, like everyone else in the room, we'd have had to leave.
Okay, we did after his first set.
Some people shouldn't quit their day jobs, if you know what I mean.
At least the last night of vacation had plenty of laughs.
On the drive home today, we stopped at Adams' Country Store for country ham sandwiches on white bread (the only option being mayo or mustard) and glass-bottled sodas.
Yes, sir, two Orange Crushes and an RC Cola, please.
While we stood there admiring the hog jowls, the whole hams and the dandoodles (assorted pig parts stuffed into a casing and looking like, um, guy parts), a man came in for his own sandwiches and struck up a conversation with me.
Inquiring where I was headed, he warned me of the endless backup on 95, a fact he knew because he drives up and down the east coast delivering fluids.
No problem, I assured him, since no part of my beach trip involves the soul-sucking 95.
"Maybe I should just give you my cartons to take to Richmond," he laughed, but the other driver in our caravan informed him we had no extra room.
"It's just a couple of boxes of blood," he explained as if that would make a difference, smiling to show he had two teeth missing.
Thanks, no, I said, taking my Saran-wrapped sandwich and RC out to the stone table under the shade tree for lunch.
The country ham virgin in the group took one bite and said, "Wow, this is salty!"
Two more bites and that tune changed. "I love this ham!"
Who wouldn't with a sweet old-school soda to wash it down?
It's like a week at the beach when the ocean is colder than you'd hoped for.
You start out thinking you're not going to like it and next thing you know, you're having the best beach week imaginable.
Must have been that imaginary wish lantern I sent off.
Water temperature: gradually warmed up to 67 by the last day, but the much cooler-than-usual temps made for far less time in the ocean (sadly) other than walking along the edge every day.
Books read: "Over Here, Over There: The Andrews Sisters and the U.S.O" and "Remembered Laughter: The Life of Noel Coward."
Best random song heard: "Dare County Blues" sung by a local singer on the rooftop deck of the Rundown Cafe during sunset.
It was a fine Fourth, meaning hot dogs for lunch and the absolute best cheeseburgers for dinner, both meals savored on the screened-in porch while watching the endless parade of red, white and blue stars and striped bathing suits on everyone from babies to geezers.
The only saving grace? No patriotic Speedos seen.
We watched the fireworks from beach chairs facing the ocean, sipping celebratory Pommery champagne and twisting our heads back and forth like at a tennis match to catch the neighbors on either side setting off blasts, as well as the displays in Southern Shores and at the Avalon Pier.
The evening finished with neighbors releasing mini hot air balloons (wish lanterns, according to the in-the-know one in the group) and watching them drift on the ocean breezes until they were as small as a star.
It was a gloriously clear night for stargazing until the last of the faraway explosion sounds finally died away.
Friday we set off to have an adventure, ending up at the Bodie Island lighthouse where, to our amazement, they were selling tickets to walk up the 219 steps for the first time in 140 years.
When the park ranger told me that, I grabbed her arm in excitement, since we'd come looking for nothing more than a walk and some history.
Since the next few tours were already sold out, we bought tickets for the 2:50 tour and set off to Wanchese for lunch, ending up at the Fisherman's Wharf.
My first trip to the bathroom there resulted in my meeting a local and we discussed the difficulty of doing anything with hair at the beach (her recommendation: cut it off and give up) and the second trip yielded a familiar face.
Walking out of the stall I intended to walk into was a Richmond musician and teacher and I don't know which of us was more surprised to see the other.
"Karen, I see you everywhere, but never across state lines!" she laughed.
Back at our waterfront table, the owner's wife informed us that the kitchen was "a man down" and to expect delays, mollifying us with hushpuppies.
Nothing says relax like fried carbs.
With a non-stop view of trawlers and pleasure boats coming and going, we were in no hurry and eventually inquired of our server what libations were available.
"Oh, we don't have alcohol on this side of the island!" she exclaimed, all big blue eyes and gorgeous white teeth.
We tried to guess whether it was the preference of the Wanchesians (where a local church's sign proclaimed "Wanchese is Jesus") or if Manteo just sold enough booze to make up for the entire island.
In any case, the fried and steamed shrimp were tasty and plentiful and anyone can drink iced tea for one beach day lunch.
Back at the lighthouse, we endured a painful 10-minute lecture on escaping rip tides from the park ranger, despite the fact the chance of a rip current in the lighthouse seemed extremely remote.
There were nine or ten kids in our group of 22 and since all were wearing some form of flip-flops, our guide warned them to walk slowly and carefully so they wouldn't lose a flop down the spiral staircase.
Naturally, we didn't even make it to the second landing before one of the boys lost a flip-flop.
The mortification on his mother's face was classic.
Leaning over the railing through the grated steps, he leaned down and yelled, "I love you, Mom! I love you, Dad!"
It might have helped if he hadn't lost another one two flights up.
Ignoring the kids and the two women with height issues, we powered on, eager to reach the top and fresh air, since none of the windows inside the lighthouse were open.
I bet those windows were allowed to be open 140 years ago, is all I'm saying.
Up top, we had stellar views of a nearby (and private) duck hunting lodge, a public fishing pier and the long wooden walk that crossed the snake sanctuary I had no intention of going anywhere near.
Instead, we walked over to the little fishing pier afterwards, meeting fisherman headed back to their trucks with lines and buckets and a few still fishing away in the late afternoon sun.
I stuck my feet in the sound, finding it as warm as, well, piss, before waving adieu to the last of the fishermen and heading back up the coast.
It had been a fine afternoon's adventure, with me especially tickled after a lifetime of summers on the Outer Banks, to have finally been allowed to climb that lighthouse.
On one morning walk, we saw two excited little girls running down the beach with "Event Viewing" signs, piquing our curiosity about what the event might be.
Get this: It was the "Curtis Family body surfing championships," according to the sign.
There was even a white board with brackets of Curtises who'd qualified to scrape up their bellies in the ocean in pursuit of whatever bragging rights the championship might bring them.
Makes an ordinary beach group feel kind of lame just having happy hours and trying to beat each other at drunken Scrabble, doesn't it?
When we set out to have breakfast at the Nags Head pier, we weren't expecting a competition of our own, but that's exactly what we got.
After a 45-minute wait, we finally were seated in the back room (the one overlooking the ocean), but when our server, a familiar face due to her long-time service there, came to take our order, a clamor arose from the next table.
The eight-top of leathery. older people already on their second and third rounds of bloody Marys, began banging implements and shouting at out server that they'd been seated first.
Excusing herself and knowing we'd understand ("She can spot us for industry types," one in our group observed), she moved over a few feet and began taking their order.
Without missing a beat, once she'd taken theirs, she returned to us and sweetly asked what we wanted, hissing under her breath, "I'm not putting their order in until I take yours."
Well, I guess she'd made her point.
The politics of service aside, I was just happy to have a big plate of hotcakes and bacon in front of me.
One of us noted that his corned beef hash was straight out of a can, but, let's face it, no one goes to the pier for high-quality food.
The coffee drinker raved about how delightfully awful the Maxwell House coffee was, especially after extensive doctoring.
It's cheap, it's fast and it's a uniquely beach-y experience and that's the most you should expect from it.
After a perfect beach day of reading, napping and watching the parade of scantily-clad humanity, we had a dinner summit.
Last year, a local I'd met at Ocean Boulevard had told me that High Cotton had the best 'cue on the beach.
Locals are supposed to know these things.
Going on nothing but that (and the fact that it was a quarter mile walk away), we headed up the beach for some brisket and a rack of ribs.
Passing by the Rundown Cafe, we heard the dulcet tones of Hannah Buckley upstairs on the deck, which was enough of an enticement to lure us back once bones were sucked clean back on the porch.
It had been a couple of years since I'd been to Rundown, so I was pleasantly surprised that they'd enlarged their "tsunami deck" to now include a "hula deck," notable for its long, wooden banquette and colorful cushions.
We found a spot in front of one of the surfboard-topped tables and sat there listening to Hannah cover everything from Radiohead to Fiona Apple with a healthy smattering of original material in between.
In fact, at one point, she began a lovely original song about meeting a guy, singing sweetly of their compatibility and her affection for him and then, boom, he did her wrong.
My fellow vacationer looked at me and observed, "Never saw that coming."
Nope, sitting on a breezy deck with the sun sliding low in the western sky and a glass of wine in hand, who would have?
When Hannah finished, there was a rush of eager admirers (all male, of course), stuffing her tip jar and vying for her attention.
We exited stage right and head south looking for further entertainment.
"Let's find some place where we can make fun of people," someone said.
At Barefoor Bernie's, the sign promised live music Tue/Sat and there was a bridal shower group sitting out front in impossibly high heels (perfect for beach walking), looking bored and high maintenance at the same time.
Here was some fun we could sink our teeth into.
We killed some time waiting for the music to begin with bubbles and guacamole before a slacker-looking, 40-ish guy strolled out with his drink and a guitar.
From the first warbly notes, it was obvious this was not someone who should be singing in public.
Even better, his choice of cover songs was as trite as we could have hoped for, given our purpose.
John Mellencamp. Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden" with an off-key chorus of "gitchy-gitchy" that had our table in stitches. A surprisingly well-chosen but poorly executed "Cry Love."
And this was after he'd knocked his guitar neck into the low-hanging ceiling fan.
We had to laugh or, like everyone else in the room, we'd have had to leave.
Okay, we did after his first set.
Some people shouldn't quit their day jobs, if you know what I mean.
At least the last night of vacation had plenty of laughs.
On the drive home today, we stopped at Adams' Country Store for country ham sandwiches on white bread (the only option being mayo or mustard) and glass-bottled sodas.
Yes, sir, two Orange Crushes and an RC Cola, please.
While we stood there admiring the hog jowls, the whole hams and the dandoodles (assorted pig parts stuffed into a casing and looking like, um, guy parts), a man came in for his own sandwiches and struck up a conversation with me.
Inquiring where I was headed, he warned me of the endless backup on 95, a fact he knew because he drives up and down the east coast delivering fluids.
No problem, I assured him, since no part of my beach trip involves the soul-sucking 95.
"Maybe I should just give you my cartons to take to Richmond," he laughed, but the other driver in our caravan informed him we had no extra room.
"It's just a couple of boxes of blood," he explained as if that would make a difference, smiling to show he had two teeth missing.
Thanks, no, I said, taking my Saran-wrapped sandwich and RC out to the stone table under the shade tree for lunch.
The country ham virgin in the group took one bite and said, "Wow, this is salty!"
Two more bites and that tune changed. "I love this ham!"
Who wouldn't with a sweet old-school soda to wash it down?
It's like a week at the beach when the ocean is colder than you'd hoped for.
You start out thinking you're not going to like it and next thing you know, you're having the best beach week imaginable.
Must have been that imaginary wish lantern I sent off.
Monday, July 1, 2013
And I Feel Fine
Beach log, day two
Water temperature: low sixties (up from positively frigid yesterday)
Current book: "Between Parentheses" by Roberto Bolano
Best random song: acoustic version of REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It"
Yesterday was travel day, arrival day and the official start of the annual beach vacation.
Color me happy.
Coolish, with a leaden sky and the traditional stop at the Weeping Radish Brewery for their stellar, fat hotdogs with grilled onions for a late lunch made for an especially pleasant trip down.
Afterwards, I cruised past the Gale Force Guns & Ammo Shop. where vacationers can pick up any last minute firearm needs before hitting the banks.
I was expecting changes on the beach after the big storm last fall that decimated Kitty Hawk and, sure enough, there were.
My beloved outside shower moved from beach level to porch level and tons of sand has clearly been brought in although the entire beach is definitely much lower than it used to be.
Otherwise, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Thankfully.
Nineteen years coming to the same house and the greatest pleasure is in how little things change.
Today began with an early morning pelting rain, which necessitated me closing the window over my bed, but not, perish the thought, getting up for another two hours.
Breakfast included Weeping Radish's superb bacon. followed by a long walk on the beach under roiling clouds.
Dolphins put in an appearance just before a late lunch, cavorting right in front of the house.
It was also the first "inane technology" moment as the woman on the gazebo next door proceeded to call someone on her phone and shriek about the dolphins rather than just enjoying the moment.
Don't get me started.
When a light rain forced us off the beach late in the day, we took shelter on the screened porch, drinking tequila and playing Scrabble until the sweet tea lover among us beat the pants off of us.
Damn Southerners.
After multiple attempts, we finally tuned in my favorite cheesy, local radio station, the one who plays the exact same songs every year with the addition of a very few new offerings.
I couldn't stand it year round, but for vacation, it's another welcome reminder that some things never change.
And, just maybe, they have the potential to get even better.
Water temperature: low sixties (up from positively frigid yesterday)
Current book: "Between Parentheses" by Roberto Bolano
Best random song: acoustic version of REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It"
Yesterday was travel day, arrival day and the official start of the annual beach vacation.
Color me happy.
Coolish, with a leaden sky and the traditional stop at the Weeping Radish Brewery for their stellar, fat hotdogs with grilled onions for a late lunch made for an especially pleasant trip down.
Afterwards, I cruised past the Gale Force Guns & Ammo Shop. where vacationers can pick up any last minute firearm needs before hitting the banks.
I was expecting changes on the beach after the big storm last fall that decimated Kitty Hawk and, sure enough, there were.
My beloved outside shower moved from beach level to porch level and tons of sand has clearly been brought in although the entire beach is definitely much lower than it used to be.
Otherwise, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Thankfully.
Nineteen years coming to the same house and the greatest pleasure is in how little things change.
Today began with an early morning pelting rain, which necessitated me closing the window over my bed, but not, perish the thought, getting up for another two hours.
Breakfast included Weeping Radish's superb bacon. followed by a long walk on the beach under roiling clouds.
Dolphins put in an appearance just before a late lunch, cavorting right in front of the house.
It was also the first "inane technology" moment as the woman on the gazebo next door proceeded to call someone on her phone and shriek about the dolphins rather than just enjoying the moment.
Don't get me started.
When a light rain forced us off the beach late in the day, we took shelter on the screened porch, drinking tequila and playing Scrabble until the sweet tea lover among us beat the pants off of us.
Damn Southerners.
After multiple attempts, we finally tuned in my favorite cheesy, local radio station, the one who plays the exact same songs every year with the addition of a very few new offerings.
I couldn't stand it year round, but for vacation, it's another welcome reminder that some things never change.
And, just maybe, they have the potential to get even better.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Summer Breeze
A pictures's worth a thousand words.
Hanging in one of the bedrooms of this little white house on the ocean that I have been renting for eighteen years now, is an enlargement of a black and white photograph.
In the old (pre-Photoshop days) picture, an enormous wave, hurricane like in its size and menacing swell, curls over a few tiny oceanfront houses scattered along the mostly undeveloped shoreline of Kitty Hawk.
A closer look reveals that the small house near the center of the photo is the one I am standing in.
The one I come back to every year for a week or two, depending on my pocketbook.
The house in the picture looks exactly the same as it does today; only the proximity of the other houses has changed.
Where there was once long stretches between houses, now they are filled with other cottages, some rustic and many newer.
When I first began renting this particular house, it had no telephone, which I loved.
Until last summer, it had no air conditioning. Now it has three window units which I resent mightily.
The house sits close to the ocean, more so now even than before Hurricane Isabel in 2003.
With every window open during the time I am here, it's like being surrounded by the sun, wind and water.
All three come through every door and window from sunrise to sunset, ensuring that we never have to wonder what the weather is.
Today the water reached a week-long high of seventy five degrees, so warm it is like bath water.
Not once but twice today, a school of dolphins swam so close by that some people floated on rafts further out than where they jumped.
After an extended happy hour on the screened porch overlooking the ocean, we took a group vote and decided to let someone else cook for our last night.
We played "follow the leader" the eighth of a mile to the Rundown Cafe, which is no longer rundown.
When I first started going there in the '90s, it was a beach shack with a limited menu for locals.
Once they built a rickety deck on the roof, it was the perfect place for a few drinks once the sun went down.
And if the deck shifted a bit as we lingered on the roof, we chalked it up to the cocktails.
It's since been renovated (twice, I think) and is a bloated shadow of its former self, although the vintage surfboards and other beach ephemera haven't changed.
So we sat on the deck facing the ocean and ate locally caught mahi, fried up into fish bites, served with a ginger habanero sauce and some fabulous pickled cabbage.
I sipped tequila as we ate pound after pound of locally caught shrimp and the sun finally sank behind the sound.
Walking back toward the house, many of the houses were lit up from within, providing a voyeuristic thrill for the nosy among us.
Me, I couldn't have cared less what was going on anywhere else on the beach.
Let's just say that vacation has been very, very good to me.
But I will miss the constant sound of the surf. It unwinds me like nothing else can.
After nearly a week at the seaside, I am as relaxed as I could hope to be.
Someone even told me today that it showed on my face.
Maybe I should take a picture.
Hanging in one of the bedrooms of this little white house on the ocean that I have been renting for eighteen years now, is an enlargement of a black and white photograph.
In the old (pre-Photoshop days) picture, an enormous wave, hurricane like in its size and menacing swell, curls over a few tiny oceanfront houses scattered along the mostly undeveloped shoreline of Kitty Hawk.
A closer look reveals that the small house near the center of the photo is the one I am standing in.
The one I come back to every year for a week or two, depending on my pocketbook.
The house in the picture looks exactly the same as it does today; only the proximity of the other houses has changed.
Where there was once long stretches between houses, now they are filled with other cottages, some rustic and many newer.
When I first began renting this particular house, it had no telephone, which I loved.
Until last summer, it had no air conditioning. Now it has three window units which I resent mightily.
The house sits close to the ocean, more so now even than before Hurricane Isabel in 2003.
With every window open during the time I am here, it's like being surrounded by the sun, wind and water.
All three come through every door and window from sunrise to sunset, ensuring that we never have to wonder what the weather is.
Today the water reached a week-long high of seventy five degrees, so warm it is like bath water.
Not once but twice today, a school of dolphins swam so close by that some people floated on rafts further out than where they jumped.
After an extended happy hour on the screened porch overlooking the ocean, we took a group vote and decided to let someone else cook for our last night.
We played "follow the leader" the eighth of a mile to the Rundown Cafe, which is no longer rundown.
When I first started going there in the '90s, it was a beach shack with a limited menu for locals.
Once they built a rickety deck on the roof, it was the perfect place for a few drinks once the sun went down.
And if the deck shifted a bit as we lingered on the roof, we chalked it up to the cocktails.
It's since been renovated (twice, I think) and is a bloated shadow of its former self, although the vintage surfboards and other beach ephemera haven't changed.
So we sat on the deck facing the ocean and ate locally caught mahi, fried up into fish bites, served with a ginger habanero sauce and some fabulous pickled cabbage.
I sipped tequila as we ate pound after pound of locally caught shrimp and the sun finally sank behind the sound.
Walking back toward the house, many of the houses were lit up from within, providing a voyeuristic thrill for the nosy among us.
Me, I couldn't have cared less what was going on anywhere else on the beach.
Let's just say that vacation has been very, very good to me.
But I will miss the constant sound of the surf. It unwinds me like nothing else can.
After nearly a week at the seaside, I am as relaxed as I could hope to be.
Someone even told me today that it showed on my face.
Maybe I should take a picture.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
We Call That N.B.T.
It's good to know that when it comes to birthdays, I'm not the only one who thinks they should be a multi-day celebration.
So when I get invited to be part of such revelry, I welcome the opportunity to share in the fun.
And when the birthday celebrant wants to take the fun to the beach, all the better.
The overcast day is spent indulgently, sitting on a couch in front of an open balcony door, looking at the ocean.
And that's it.
There is wine on that couch, including one hilariously called "Sexy Wine Bomb," a big California blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, Syrah and Petit Sirah.
It claims that discovering this wine is like "going on a third date and realizing that the person you are with is not only good-looking, but also not the slightest bit creepy."
All involved appreciate a wine with a sense of humor and a luscious mouthfeel.
There is a cheese course, there is a dinner course and then there is a bottle of good 2004 Chianti.
And when the ocean-view, couch-sitting portion of the birthday celebration ends, it is duly noted that it took eight hours for that part of the celebration to run its course.
Don't come to these kinds of birthdays if you're in a hurry.
At the discretion of the birthday celebrant, the sunny day portion of the great birthday caper does not begin early.
And when it does, it is the antithesis of the day before.
An epic beach walk involves bare feet despite it being February, spying in the windows of empty beach cottages (only worthwhile contenders), specific shell gathering (I have been told I will stoop for anything and it was meant as a compliment) and breezy salt air that smells as briney as an oyster.
Hours later the walk concludes only because everyone is starving.
A NY-style deli provides enormous paninis (Italian for me naturally), five-layer chocolate cake and one the birthday boy can't resist: something called chocolate ecstasy.
By this point, it is late afternoon and time for another birthday outing, this one to a soundside beach for sunset viewing.
Yes, the sign said private property and yet there wasn't a soul around, so the birthday revelers take a chance and walk out to a gazebo over the water to watch the light show.
What begins as shades of browns and blues soon morphs into pinks and golds in the sky which then translate to the water's surface.
For the art geeks among us, what begins as a Constable painting becomes a Turner as the colors of the sky melt into the barely rippling water, suggesting impressionistic brushstrokes on its surface.
Standing at the edge of the gazebo for an hour, the peace is shattered when a guy and his wife approach, and he's talking a mile a minute on his cell phone.
He ends that call only to take a second one and he's still approaching.
Birthday or not, this qualifies as a buzz kill.
The birthday party is moved to an undisclosed location where music is an integral part of the festivities.
The first Paul Weller album is played as a tribute to the birthday boy who said in 1992 that it was an album he could play over and over.
Actually the word he had used was endlessly.
And on a momentous occasion such as a birthday, it's all about the endless.
Endless wine, endless food, endless sitting, endless walking, the endless sound of the ocean.
It's not just the birthday person who doesn't want birthday celebrations to end.
Fortunately, everyone involved has nothing but time.
So when I get invited to be part of such revelry, I welcome the opportunity to share in the fun.
And when the birthday celebrant wants to take the fun to the beach, all the better.
The overcast day is spent indulgently, sitting on a couch in front of an open balcony door, looking at the ocean.
And that's it.
There is wine on that couch, including one hilariously called "Sexy Wine Bomb," a big California blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, Syrah and Petit Sirah.
It claims that discovering this wine is like "going on a third date and realizing that the person you are with is not only good-looking, but also not the slightest bit creepy."
All involved appreciate a wine with a sense of humor and a luscious mouthfeel.
There is a cheese course, there is a dinner course and then there is a bottle of good 2004 Chianti.
And when the ocean-view, couch-sitting portion of the birthday celebration ends, it is duly noted that it took eight hours for that part of the celebration to run its course.
Don't come to these kinds of birthdays if you're in a hurry.
At the discretion of the birthday celebrant, the sunny day portion of the great birthday caper does not begin early.
And when it does, it is the antithesis of the day before.
An epic beach walk involves bare feet despite it being February, spying in the windows of empty beach cottages (only worthwhile contenders), specific shell gathering (I have been told I will stoop for anything and it was meant as a compliment) and breezy salt air that smells as briney as an oyster.
Hours later the walk concludes only because everyone is starving.
A NY-style deli provides enormous paninis (Italian for me naturally), five-layer chocolate cake and one the birthday boy can't resist: something called chocolate ecstasy.
By this point, it is late afternoon and time for another birthday outing, this one to a soundside beach for sunset viewing.
Yes, the sign said private property and yet there wasn't a soul around, so the birthday revelers take a chance and walk out to a gazebo over the water to watch the light show.
What begins as shades of browns and blues soon morphs into pinks and golds in the sky which then translate to the water's surface.
For the art geeks among us, what begins as a Constable painting becomes a Turner as the colors of the sky melt into the barely rippling water, suggesting impressionistic brushstrokes on its surface.
Standing at the edge of the gazebo for an hour, the peace is shattered when a guy and his wife approach, and he's talking a mile a minute on his cell phone.
He ends that call only to take a second one and he's still approaching.
Birthday or not, this qualifies as a buzz kill.
The birthday party is moved to an undisclosed location where music is an integral part of the festivities.
The first Paul Weller album is played as a tribute to the birthday boy who said in 1992 that it was an album he could play over and over.
Actually the word he had used was endlessly.
And on a momentous occasion such as a birthday, it's all about the endless.
Endless wine, endless food, endless sitting, endless walking, the endless sound of the ocean.
It's not just the birthday person who doesn't want birthday celebrations to end.
Fortunately, everyone involved has nothing but time.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Hello Moon
So I'm back at the little oceanfront house I rent every summer, with the usual itinerary: eat, drink, read, walk, sleep.
With the changes in my personal life, there have been some adjustments to my vacation routine, though; I invited a steady stream of visitors to join me throughout the time I'm down here.
Taking a page from Dr. Seuss, I'm going to refer to my visitors as Things.
Thing 1 is my only guest at the moment, but that will change tomorrow.
In the meantime, we had Thai fish fritters made with sea bass (it was the fish of the day, so it was all over the menu) and served with sweet chile sauce at Colington Cafe (Skeeter's, my first choice, was closed today).
The sun went down over the marsh as we made the shift from country ham to crab, scallops and sea bass.
When we got back, it was to witness the orangest moon sitting right on the horizon, surely an indicator that a walk toward it was in order.
Thing 1 is a photographer, not that he took any pictures, but I hadn't even been down to the ocean since we'd arrived, so it was time to correct that.
The moon continued its ascent as we walked through the water's edge, losing its color gradually, but gaining a brightness that illuminated a path across the ocean.
Definitely postcard-worthy.
And while I could wax poetic about the sound of the ocean all around me, the lively breeze that seems to be coming from every direction and the benefits of porch swing therapy, I probably ought to get to bed.
It's almost 12:30 and I've got a long day of eating, drinking and being merry to attend to tomorrow.
And then there's those ten books just begging to be read and talked about.
Thing 2, best bring your A game is all I'm saying.
Is it any wonder I keep coming back to this place?
With the changes in my personal life, there have been some adjustments to my vacation routine, though; I invited a steady stream of visitors to join me throughout the time I'm down here.
Taking a page from Dr. Seuss, I'm going to refer to my visitors as Things.
Thing 1 is my only guest at the moment, but that will change tomorrow.
In the meantime, we had Thai fish fritters made with sea bass (it was the fish of the day, so it was all over the menu) and served with sweet chile sauce at Colington Cafe (Skeeter's, my first choice, was closed today).
The sun went down over the marsh as we made the shift from country ham to crab, scallops and sea bass.
When we got back, it was to witness the orangest moon sitting right on the horizon, surely an indicator that a walk toward it was in order.
Thing 1 is a photographer, not that he took any pictures, but I hadn't even been down to the ocean since we'd arrived, so it was time to correct that.
The moon continued its ascent as we walked through the water's edge, losing its color gradually, but gaining a brightness that illuminated a path across the ocean.
Definitely postcard-worthy.
And while I could wax poetic about the sound of the ocean all around me, the lively breeze that seems to be coming from every direction and the benefits of porch swing therapy, I probably ought to get to bed.
It's almost 12:30 and I've got a long day of eating, drinking and being merry to attend to tomorrow.
And then there's those ten books just begging to be read and talked about.
Thing 2, best bring your A game is all I'm saying.
Is it any wonder I keep coming back to this place?
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