Mini Lilypad – Beach Weekend

Our frequent weekend trips, coupled with lots of work, have kept me from updating lately.  But I’ve had family members clamoring for details on what’s happening lately in our lives (CLAMORING).  I must keep my public satisfied, or . . . or they’ll be unsatisfied.  Last weekend – – – –

In June of 2006 a pair of close friends got married at the Outer Banks – the bride’s family owns a house there, and she got the use of it for the wedding (and also this past weekend, it’s where we stayed). Their beautiful classy wedding was an absolute blast and also a disaster. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they’d secured several permits, made preliminary calls to the police department, and had assurances from the city that their backyard reception with Motown band would be fine, it was shut down by a pair of grumps down the road who called in a noise violation at 8pm on a Saturday night. The police who shut it down could not be prevailed upon to even check out the permits. Without even so much as a “Sorry WE’RE RUINING YOUR ONE AND ONLY WEDDING THAT ALSO WAS CLEARLY NOT A CHEAP AFFAIR,” they kicked out all 150 of us before 9pm, which was almost 3 hours earlier than planned. The skiff her dad had arranged as a surprise to whisk them away to their honeymoon was not there yet – the skiff-captain and the caterers and the band still had to be paid for their whole time – the guys had a mad dash to run and decorate her car quickly so it would be ready to take them away 3 hours early (did I mention?? 3 hours??) Thank God for her wedding planner, who called a local tavern and asked them to host the continuing reception. The bride and groom, typical of their good-natured cheer, were mad and spluttering for about point-oh-two seconds, and then got over it and ended the night by pole dancing on the bar and sharing tequila shots. That ridiculous experience, coupled with the CLEARLY UNFAIR speeding ticket I got on my way down to the wedding, had soured me on the Outer Banks.

This weekend trip, although great, didn’t save the OBX reputation. First the trip, then the snark: D is the Professor’s childhood friend, C is D’s college sweetheart and new bride. We love spending time with them – C is smart, generous, funny, and always happy. D – well, since he’s married to C and we love her we have to put up with him, even if he is a bit Loser with a capital L. 😉 The house was a great wooden creaking wonder, we felt like we were on a sailing ship the whole weekend. Many jokes were made about pirates, arrrrr, which are my favorite kind of jokes as you all know. The weekend was a bit early in the season and therefore a touch cold, but we still had enough sun to warrant sitting in the sand one morning, enjoying the sun and a couple of Coronas. The rest of the weekend we spent napping, taking walks, playing games, talking, cooking, drinking, talking some more. D & C made a memorable meal one night of crab cakes, grilled scallops, oven baked corn on the cob, and sautéed broccoli, polishing it off with some fabulous wine (called ‘Shug’). It was divine.

So, I love the house, I love the people, I loved the trip. I have no love, however, for the OBX. The church where D & C got married is a stunning historic church. It’s an anomaly, though, in a nondescript lineup of nondescript buildings. C’s family house is really nice, and a few steps from the beach. It’s a nice beach, but a block behind the beach is the same old strip malls you see anywhere. There’s little charm, little besides the ocean to delineate this place from Anytown, America. And when we left the house, with a week’s worth of recycling clinking in garbage bags in the backseat, we discovered that it is nearly impossible to recycle on the Outer Banks. An ecological “treasure,” a tourist “paradise” to be protected for generations to come, and no one knew where the recycling station was. It was rumored to be by the fire station, but after carefully inspecting every inch of ground around said station, we found nothing. We asked at a couple of gas stations – “Er, I don’t recycle, so I don’t care,” were answers to my query for directions.

We went back to the fire station and asked a fireman, who gave us very complicated directions to an out of the way place, and then warned it probably wouldn’t be open on a Sunday. We turned off the main road, took a fork in the road down a gravel path, drove through a pitted unpaved lot with weeds sprouting up, and came to a rusty chain. It was a “recycling station” – aka rusting dumpsters clustered by a rusting tin-roofed hut – but only open a handful of hours a day, and not at all on Sundays.

We asked elsewhere. We started our drive home, the car beginning to smell like a bar (we don’t have a divided trunk, so the stuff was in the car with us). Smoke started coming out of my husband’s ears as I fiddled with the borrowed (and useless) GPS, trying to locate somewhere to dump these bags. Several false leads later, we found a small town (Edenton) with a visitor’s center, where two sweet ladies told us where the local station was. Again, it was difficult to find (“Turn left here, then right at the old IGA, and then just past the rickety house with a gorilla on the porch, you’ll see it on your left.” “Gorilla on the porch?” “Yes sir, the man has a porch and he keeps a gorilla on it, you can’t miss it.” It was a stuffed gorilla, by the way.) No signage at all to help us along. However, it was open, praise the recycling gods. A toothless and friendly old man directed us where to dump our steaming smelly cargo, and we walked out of there sticky, stinky, and proud of our dedication to the Earth.

And irritated, forever irritated, by the OVERRATED, FULL OF ITSELF, BAD AT RECYCLING Outer Banks.

I’d do it all again, though, for that scallops and crab cakes dinner. Yummmeeeee.