These Are Days

After recently being told I'm an evangelical for the beach, I'm wearing the title as a badge of honor.

What I hadn't anticipated was how quickly my proselytizing would land me right back there, albeit it in a much different configuration, a more southerly location and under a thunder moon.

Windows were rolled down for the drive down which was broken up with a leisurely lunch on the waterfront at the Coinjock Marina. "You'd have to know about this place," my companion observed about the unlikely location. I did.

This time the beach setting was Surf Shack #6 in Nags Head at a cottage peopled by three other couples, an obscene amount of beer and wine and crowned by a crow's nest with impressive views to the horizon and the sound.

Where we were especially clever was in arriving mid-day Sunday when the other couples had checked in Saturday and done all the heavy lifting setting up the house and porches.

Since that job always falls to me on my own beach week, it was a treat to just show up, throw on a bathing suit and be, not just on the beach, but in the ocean less than 15 minutes after arrival.

That and being back at the beach only two weeks after I left it are the kind of summer indulgences an evangelist could get used to.

And while I'd optimistically brought two books, four couples mean it's an ongoing party and not the reading kind.

Headquarters would be established on the beach every morning like magic while we walked (either beyond Jennette's Pier or past the Outer Banks Pier), so we'd come back to find the rest of the group arranged under and around a canopy while all we had to do was add our chairs and beach bags and - voila! - another day at the beach was underway.

One morning, we got back from our walk - the last half an hour listening to rumbling thunder - just as a major storm was rolling in, so we high-tailed it up to the crow's nest for a lightening and thunder show of epic proportions.

One of the guys said there'd been a tornado warning while we were gone and given the odd swirling of some murderous looking clouds, we weren't surprised when torrential downpours followed. We made the best of it with books, naps and a picnic in bed with a view out the open window of the driving rain and the ocean beyond it.

One afternoon, we spotted a plane pulling a message that read, "Amanda May Pabst, will you marry me?" and bantered about whether it was a real proposal or just a brilliant idea put forth by the plane company to entice business.

The romantic in me prefers to believe it was the first.

One evening we decided to lose the crowd and went to dinner alone at Ocean Boulevard for a gorgeously dry and zippy Rose of Sangiovese by Barnard Griffin which we sipped with a summer gazpacho piled with lump crabmeat, creme fraiche and parsley oil.

And that was before diving headfirst into a special of beer-battered monkfish over a jambalaya of summer corn, red peppers and crowder peas that was to die for and polishing off grilled shrimp over cheddar grits and black pepper coleslaw, too.

Afterward, we walked across the Beach Road and took seats in the sand to watch the waning Thunder Moon rise over the ocean, but only after making its way through bands of black clouds as elaborate as burnt velvet, behind which heat lightening put on a show.

As a bonus, fireworks were being set off in the direction of the Avalon Pier, so everywhere we looked, there was a spectacle to behold.

The two of us took lunch one day outside at the Nags Head Fishing Pier's new tiki bar, where we watched surfers, ate local grilled tuna and pondered the angry-looking guy nearby with the small American flag stuck in the sand in front of his beach chair.

Because some of the house's occupants were talented, there was guitar playing on the beach. Because the winds were ideal for it, there was kite flying so high it seemed likely we'd never get it back down. Because there was a screened porch, we had breakfast there. Because there was a crow's nest even higher,  we had happy hours and sunset-viewing there.

And because the ocean was a wonderfully warm 75 degrees (and clear as the Caribbean), we stayed in until our fingers and toes looked like prunes. Repeatedly.

Unlike the other couples, we were the renegades who slept in with windows open, a fan on and used the outdoor shower at the least provocation.

Because kicking it old school is just part of what I preach. Let's raise a glass of Rose and praise beach life.

Can I get an amen?

Exodus From the City

Current read: "Notes" by Eleanor Coppola/1979
Best random song heard: "In Between Days" by the Cure/1985

Today was the start of my annual beach vacation, so I've shifted camp three hours south with hopes of finding good food and music here in between reading and sleeping.

I always look forward to the trip down Route 460 because no matter how many years I drive it, I always notice different things.

Like the roadside sign that said, "Phone from car" on a pole over a low-mounted public telephone. Here I thought pay phones were disappearing and yet there's one conveniently placed so the driver need not even get out of his car.

Unless he's driving an SUV and then he'd have to hang out the window to his waist to reach the low-slung receiver. Actually, I'd like to see that.

Near downtown Ivor (an oxymoron if ever there was one), I saw a sign saying "Scales, Shower, Stuckey's."

I saw no evidence of any of those things in the lot where the sign was, but they must have been there at one time, beckoning to sweaty, hungry truckers.

There was a sign for the Isle of Wight Wedding Chapel, should the urge to marry overcome you on the way to or from the beach (it didn't).

In a nod to 21st century patriotism, I saw a house decorated with four of those giant blow-up figures (dogs and elephants), all with hats of red, white and blue stars and stripes.

They flanked an enormous blow-up flag incapable of blowing in the breeze.

Passing the sign for the Hampton Roads Beagle Club next to a cornfield, I did a silent salute to my dearly departed beagle.

When our caravan finally stopped for lunch, it was at the Coinjock Marina Restaurant on the Intercoastal Waterway.

We opted to eat on the deck where signs noted, "Do NOT feed the dogs. They are on a diet!" The one chihuahua we did see was not only overweight but had such long toenails it appeared she'd never walked on concrete.

Our server overheard us discussing the tripling of the toll on the Chesapeake Expressway and immediately offered a "shortcut" that would only take ten minutes but save us the $6 next time.

Her route involved turning at any number of Wawa's and 7-11s and sounded best left for locals. But it was a nice gesture nonetheless.

We watched boats go by and people take off on jet skis (including one guy who couldn't hook the last fastener on his life jacket because of his belly) slowly, so as not to cause a wake in the current-less water which changes direction with the wind.

Meandering down the road after lunch, we stopped for produce at the smallest stand we could find, scoring watermelon, North Carolina peaches that had just arrived yesterday, Silver Queen corn and, best of all, freshly shelled butterbeans. No beach vacation is complete without them.

Between getting settled in at the cottage, spending time on the beach just as everyone else was leaving and savoring a simple supper on the porch, I didn't even crack my first beach book until well after the over-eager neighbors finished setting off (illegal) fireworks around 10:00.

So I failed at my first day of beach reading. What's the point of being at the beach besides the view and the sound of the ocean, if not to be reading non-stop?

I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Lunching on the Intercoastal Waterway

Almost six hours at the National last night plus barely three hours of sleep meant that a beach nap was seriously in order today. Conveniently, I had plans to leave this morning for the beach to visit my sister and her husband and their gaggle of male friends for a couple of days. Tired eyes aside, I hit the road as soon as I got up, eager to stretch out on the sand and make up for last night's brevity.

I got as far as Coinjock before I decided to stop for lunch. Mainly I needed a Coke (not being a coffee drinker but in serious need of caffeine) but it was late enough in the morning to qualify for lunch. And actually I was hungry.

As kids, when my Dad would drive us to the Outer Banks, he always made some sort of joke when we passed the U-R-Next barbershop in Coinjock on the inter coastal waterway. In subsequent years, an overpass was built and Coinjock's marina added a restaurant; I knew because of a billboard I'd pass. Today I got off there to see what Coinjock was looking like these days. Could that barbershop still be there?

The wooden restaurant did indeed sit right on the waterway and had a nice deck outside, the perfect place to eat, caffeinate and watch the fast-moving water go by. The menu informed me that Coinjock was an Indian word for mulberry, although in modern times, there have been no sign of mulberry bushes.

My server LeAnn, a lifelong resident of Coinjock and nearby Grandy ("I've lived my whole life on one side or the other of this water," she told me), brought me my Calabash shrimp sandwich and Coke in what seemed like no time at all. Maybe she could see how needy I was.

The enormous pile of lightly battered fried shrimp on a sesame seed bun with house made cocktail sauce was just what I needed, but the three Cokes were lifeblood themself. The homemade chips came with their own Ranch dressing for dipping. Life was good at lunch.

LeAnn told me that the water can move in either direction or be completely still; since it has no current, it is completely at the mercy of the wind. I enjoyed its sound rushing by me as I sat outside eating with the beach-bound as well as locals.

When I asked LeAnn about the "new" overpass bridge, she deferred to an older couple, locals who could answer my question since she didn't remember a time when it didn't exist. Before they left, they came over to wish me a good trip. And LeAnn confirmed that not only does the U-R-Next barbershop still exist, but she still takes her boys there for their buzz cuts.

Legend has it that kids around there use to pay Ring Around the Coinjock Bush, at least according to the informative menu. My guess is that they didn't always have buzz cuts though.

But only because the U-R-Next Barbershop hasn't always been there.