Friday, the sun woke us up to a bright and beautiful morning. Everyone was really ready to head for the beach cause this was our “last day”. You always have that day when you realize you have to go home tomorrow. How is it that a week at the beach seems to take forever to plan and get here and then is gone in a flash?
Everyone, including yours truly, rounded up all their stuff, and prepared to head for the beach. From every floor of the house came the sounds of greasing and spraying. I was heading down the stairs when I heard that unmistakable sound that is sort of a cross between a squirt and a splop. I rounded the corner to see my son and son in law dispensing large blobs of the dreaded white goo on themselves. Soon everyone was sufficiently SPFed, and we loaded all the beach gear in the back of the truck. The family walked down to the beach access, and I hauled the load of gear in the truck to my accustomed handicap parking space. This day we were early enough I didn’t even have to use the handicap space. I got a prime spot right beside the beach stairs. Everyone gathered up their load of “gear” and soon we were all installed in “a spot” on the beach. I was safely landed under my industrial strength umbrella, and had done a special rig that allowed the breeze to blow through the screen windows in my umbrella. (this is really a slick umbrella) I settled down with my book and some shade, my friends and family, and all was well with the universe.
We enjoyed the morning on the beach, and as lunchtime approached, we decided to adjourn to the house and then the boat. We reversed the process of beach landing, and hauled all the “gear” back to the house. We had a good lunch of tasty leftovers and some new veggie additions, and planned our afternoon. While we were eating lunch we got some good news: Vickie and I have been on the waiting list for the “dry stack” at Carolina Marina in North Carolina at Belews Lake. For those who don’t know a dry stack is a big building where they store your boat on big shelves and put it in the water when you want it. Well they had called and left a message on my cell phone that our slot had opened up. This was really cool since we were #20 on the waiting list this spring when we first asked them about getting in. It is a very nice facility, and the lake is pretty close to our house.
Vickie and Marian decided to go shopping. This left us with the perfect number for an afternoon of water sports. (thanks to Miss Vickie, but as she said, she could go boating anytime and thanks to Marian, she really didn’t want to go because of back pain) Tom, the boys and I headed out to launch the boat, and we told the girls we’d pick them up at the dock.
Well that was the plan, but when we got to the boat ramp, it seemed everyone in the general vicinity had the same idea. There was no place to park the truck and trailer. Well, I thought about it, and so I just dumped Wes IV, Tom, and Jon off with the boat, and told them I’d meet them at the dock. I took the truck back to the house, parked it, and joined the girls to meet them at the dock. All went pretty well, and soon we were out on the water. We headed upstream to the area where we had been the other day. Our intention was to let some of the folks ski. When we got up to where I thought we might pull someone, Jon got suited up and jumped overboard, turned out the water was waist deep, and he ended up standing in the ooze. We worked at trying to pull him, but the wind and current combined with the bumper-to-bumper boat traffic made it nearly impossible. We gave up on that, and put out the tube. Jon rode that and then Aylea. It was sort of like riding in the ocean however with all the boat wakes.
Finally I made an executive decision, and said let’s head downstream to the other end of the island and see if it is any calmer. Turned out it was much better. The swinging bridge at Sunset Beach only opens once per hour, so far fewer boats come that direction. We were able to get everyone a chance to tube, and we even anchored and swam a little. Even Tom got on the tube. I might not have mentioned it, but Tom is the Chief of Police in York County PA. I told the kids, “too bad I know him, this is just what I always wanted to do---drag a cop through the salt water at high speed on the end of a rope”. I told Tom later and we had a good chuckle over it.
While we were swimming, the bridge opened unexpectedly. We heard a great huge horn, and through came a barge, pushed by a tugboat, carrying a huge bridge girder. He proceeded upstream, and the little boats just had to get out of his way. It was surprising to see such a huge boat, but then I remembered that the Inter Costal Waterway is there for much more than recreation. It is a vital waterway for commerce on the East Coast. I could imagine what it must be like for that tug boat skipper threading his way up the channel with a bazillion rookie ICW boaters like me to contend with. Need to mention what a joy Greta was during this boating afternoon. She rode the boat, went in the water, watched mommie and daddy tubing, and generally had a big time. Very amazing behavior for a 2 year old.
As the afternoon came to a close all had recreated their fill, and we headed back to the dock. Tom and the boys dropped me and the girls off at the dock, and I went to fetch the trailer. I got the trailer and headed for the boat ramp. When I got there we had a giant traffic jam at the boat ramp. One lady couldn’t back up her trailer-this was quite comical to watch, as she almost backed it over the side of the ramp. Since it was only a jet-ski trailer, it ended up with a guy simply picking the trailer up to get it oriented properly as she backed it up. Then one guy’s boat was broken down and blocking the first launch, then while successfully avoiding a collision with the side of the boat launch, my son accidentally changed launches at the last minute, meaning that our boat was in the wrong slot for loading, and the guy in that slot was trying to back down to launch and couldn’t figure out what to do. My son didn't want to tempt fate and risk a mishap on his (otherwise uneventful) second time driving my new boat by moving it to the other launch, and the guy trying to launch didn't want to move to let us unload and get out of the way.
We were all sitting there in our trucks kind of looking at each other and I saw Tom talking with the guy that seemed to have terminal indecision. Low and behold everything started moving and all of a sudden, we all got straightened out. I found out later Tom had just “explained” to the guy he’d either have to move or sit there forever, despite his protests about losing his place in line. I should note that Tom is a very easy-going, friendly guy, but in his position as a career police officer, he has gotten good at this sort of very persuasive "explaining" that gets the desired result without making everyone angry. We certainly appreciated him putting on his "chief" hat for a moment to sort everything out with a minimal amount of drama. We got the boat loaded and headed back to the house. Of course on the way back the tube blew out of the back of the boat on the road. Tom and Jon jumped in another vehicle and went back for it.
Everyone turned to, and we thoroughly scrubbed down the boat to get all the salt water and sand off it. Meanwhile the ladies managed to put together a great dinner from all the stuff left in the refrigerator, and we sat down to a great communal meal reliving all the great moments of the day, and sharing good times. A great end to a great week.
Soon after dinner, everyone once again turned to and we began packing, cleaning, and preparing for the exit on Saturday. All hands were on deck, and when everyone finally turned in for the night, we were the requisite number of hours away from departure in the morning.
Just to finish up, everyone got loaded up Saturday morning, and the leaving was uneventful. For us the traffic was relatively ok, no back ups but I-40 was pretty frantic.
Wes IV reported “we didn't really run into bad traffic until we hit 95 when 64, 295 and 95 all merge together above Richmond, where, just for good measure, it goes from 4 lanes to 3. The combined beach traffic made for a longish ride home. Very few dead stops, but a lot of time where you'd be motoring along at 65 and then all of the sudden it'd slow down to 30, then go back up to 65 or 70. As far as I can tell there were no accidents, and the root cause seemed to be that the VA State Police were doing an "admirable" job enforcing the speed limit, but what it was actually doing was causing a chain-reaction backup due to a combination of rubbernecking on flashy lights and standard "oh crap it's a cop (slam on the brakes)" halfway across VA. I counted no fewer than 6 traffic stops along that stretch. What should have taken us 6 hrs took closer to 7 with only one 30 min stop for lunch. Because we stopped fairly early on in the trip (about 11), that ended up being a nearly 5 hour nonstop stretch of driving for Tom and I - we were amazed that no one needed to stop, but VERY ready to be out of the car when we finally hit home.”
We had an unusual event while riding on I-40. This big lighted sign over the roadway said “SILVER ALERT CALL 511” So we dutifully called 511 and got to listen to 9 traffic messages none of which had any particular bearing on anything that had to do with anything. Still haven’t figured out what the “SILVER ALERT” was supposed to be. Perhaps it was an Al-Qaeda secret alert for terrorists. The forty bazillion people traveling I-40 all calling 511 at the same time allowed them to slip a message through the cell overload. Or maybe the cell companies paid North Carolina to do it to waste minutes. But anyhow everyone got home safe, and we are vowing to do it again.
More later,
Wes
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