ChrisAustin.com - North Carolina II

Installment 2 of the Carolina Chronicles. The Austin family vacation 2002.

Day One Saturday, July 21^st, 2002

The journey begins around 2:00am like last year, but we headed right down to North Carolina instead of making the usual detour to Syracuse to drop off the dog, which I thought would make for a shorter trip. I was wrong. I went to sleep until 6:30 where we stopped at a McDonalds in Harrisburg. Then we played some Nintendo, slept, and just sat around until lunch somewhere in Virginia, at a Wendys. This was the worst Wendys I have ever been to. The junior bacon cheeseburgers all were made without bacon. That was really the only reason I didn’t like it, but still, that is pretty major. There were plenty of confederate flags and t-shirts around too, and I knew we were in the South. Then we are off again, and we pull up at a stoplight where in the car next to us are three girls just dancing away to their music. So what do my brothers do but start mimicking their dancing in our car, and on they go until the light turns green. More driving and then we hit this sick traffic jam. For example, take this picture here, shot at 4:57pm:

Now observe this picture taken at 5:07:

Imagine riding on the same bridge for 20 to 30 minutes because of the traffic pileup. When we finally turn off the road my Dad just starts honking away at all the cars still in the jam. Why, I ask. And then, some girls we saw in Wendys were in the car behind us and wave to us. So my brothers wave back. This continues for maybe 2 blocks whenever the 2 cars are near enough. All I can do is sit in the back of the car and shake my head, with the occasional “Oh my Buddha.”

The house is nice. It is a house where the beach is closer then the swimming pool. There is a hot tub. There are many neighbors, whom I fear will be loud, but such is life. There is a basketball hoop. Unfortunately, I hate basketball, but it is nice that the house has a hoop. It is well stocked with Romance novels in case I should want to read some good literature. But best of all, one can see the ocean from where I am sitting right now.

Day Two Monday, July 22^nd, 2002

I wake up and have myself some breakfast. Today we go to the beach and enjoy boogie-boarding, except when people got bit by crabs or stung by jellyfish. Fortunately, I was not bitten or stung. We come home, eat lunch, and then I read for a while. We have a nice hammock here so I enjoy reading in it outside.

Day Three Tuesday, July 23^rd, 2002

Ate some good breakfast, and decided to take my first run in North Carolina. Let me tell you, running is not meant to be done in North Carolina. As in last year, I felt like I was going to pass out. The heat is unbearable. And worst of all, I see all these other people (lots of them old) running and biking on this road, with SMILES on their faces. If they were smiling down here, I was going to show them how wonderful it could be to run in New York. They would have to be amazed. After this we went to the beach and again I am fearful of the idiot crabs that exist. We come back and eat lunch, then I read in the hammock for like 4 hours straight, just because I can. Beach after dinner, where I decide I will eat every crab I ever find. I happened to see a dead crab through the ocean water being sucked in by the waves. At first I thought it was disgusting, but then I realized I was happy the crab was dead, and it gave me a good feeling inside. That feeling was short lived, however, because with my attention distracted by the dead crab, I did not see the decent size wave crash right into my midsection, knocking me right over.

Steve takes a walk with the 15 year old girl next door. He is almost 18.

We ate at Awful Arthurs for dinner, which is a very good place to eat, I even have a t-shirt. Then I think I went to bed.

Day Four Wednesday, July 25^th, 2002

I don’t remember much from today. At least nothing funny. Steve was hanging out with the neighbor girl again. Why he does this, I do not know. We are leaving in 2 days, and she is 15.

It rained so we postponed our trip to the dunes.

Day Five Thursday, July 26^th, 2002

I dreamt that I was arrested last night. It was a really vivid dream, I remember that during it I was thinking, just how in the world could I have gotten arrested, no one is going to believe this story. A group of people I knew at the time (I only remember Dave being there now) and myself were traveling through a tunnel somewhere, and we needed to break through these gates. So we ended up crawling through these bars, and for some reason we had to do this very fast. Then, police came out of nowhere and arrested us all. We were brought to this compound that was shaped like a long tunnel to a small mountain, which was in a valley. For some reason, they did not have guards escort us when we were inside, we were told to go to the bathroom and be back to our cells in 15 minutes. I wandered around and found Dave, and we started unpacking in a decent size cell. I don’t know how I had stuff to unpack with me, but I did. Then, I remembered that this was not the cell I was supposed to be in, and worse off, I was late. So I ran back to the cell with the jailor that I was supposed to be in, and instead of being mad, we all end up being released. None of this is making sense to me, but I am dreaming so it doesn’t have to. We leave through the back of the mountain compound, and then one of our people starts shooting at another one of our people. There was a little girl hidden in some dirt who started shooting back. And I realized that I must stop the first guy who shot so I ran in and tackled him with some kind of dumb choke hold. Now that I think about it, the guy who I tackled was the guy from Dumbo Drop who gets all the materials, including tranquilizers. The police come and take him away and I say bye to him. By now, everyone else is almost on the plane that I guess was taking us home, so I ran to the tailgate which was rising and tried to jump in, but it was almost closed. So I look at the guy who is controlling the gate by remote control, and he lowers it, then raises it, then lowers it, never letting me on. This goes on and on until finally I get in the plane, and I wake up. I couldn’t believe that it all had been a dream, because it seemed so real. And my neck hurt a lot.

Today was the customary day-trip to Okracoke. Everyone piles into the car, and we set off down the coast of North Carolina to a set of ferrys that will take us to our final destination. I spent my time thinking of ways to conquer Russia, if per chance the opportunity ever arises. We get to the ferry, where we park and everyone gets out to buy snacks and stuff, and I hold down the fort. I thought it would have been really funny if the ferry had arrived and I drove the van on it and left everyone getting their snacks, but they got back in time. Then Nate and I ran to try and take a picture by the Austin creek sign, which we accomplished, and then we ran back to the car. Then onto the ferry. We waved at some passing boats, some people are nice, some are indifferent, and there was at least one finger waved back at us, but such is life. Finally, we are in Okracoke, where we eat lunch at the Creekside Café. There were some British people nearby, but I couldn’t really hear them as much as I would have liked. Then we went to a little shop where I bought a bumper sticker for the neon. We found a beach to look for shells at, and when I got bored of looking for shells, I sat down and built a sand ziggurat. A ziggurat, for those of you who were not in my history of mathematics class, is an ancient Mayan temple that was mathematically good or something. Anyways, I built it, and Anna put a hermit crab she found on it. Then we left and I stepped on the ziggurat for good measure. Back onto the ferry, back through the long drive, home to eat pizza and to watch the Truman show (because its another one of the movies that I’ve never seen).

A special midnight ops had to occur as I noticed Steve slip out of the room during the night. I went to investigate after I heard the door shut – he left the building. This was very curious, because everyone was sleeping except Nate who was watching a movie in his room. So I look around the windows until I finally see him walking up and sitting on the neighbors porch with his 15 year old girlfriend. This was too much for me, I had to tell someone, so I went into Nate’s room and showed him the sight. We decided our best course of action would be to take a photograph of them sitting there for evidence. However, neither of our cameras had flash, so we grabbed my Dad’s digital camera and came up with a plan of action. We snuck upstairs and Nate watched through the window while I opened the sliding door to the 3^rd floor porch and crept out into the night, decked in black. I snapped a quick picture and realized too late that the flash did not go off. So back downstairs to the bathroom to figure out how to get the flash, then back upstairs. After a few flashlight signals from Nate, I was back outside slowly crawling to the corner of the deck. Then flash, and I was crawling back to the door after what seemed to be a random lightning strike. Nate told me he thought it was lightning at first before he realized I took the picture. All in all the picture didn’t turn out but we had a fun time telling about Steve’s little outside time anyways.

Day Six Friday, July 27^th, 2002

We went shopping today and I bought one of those fiber-optic things that lights up. It will be fun. Then we came home, and then we went to the beach after lunch. The waves were lethal today, massive walls of water bearing down on you and all you can do is try and jump over them. I almost was killed I think, I would be knocked over and then sucked under the water to do numerous summersaults under the wave until I forced myself to surface. We came home, then went to Tortugas Lie for dinner where I had a fish burrito thing. It is a nice restaurant because it has a million license plates all over the walls. Real old plates, vanity plates, Hebrew plates, British plates, and tons more. I wish I had that many. I only have 2, and they are the plates that used to be on my car. Then on to the big sand dune named Jockey’s Ridge. Me and Anna had our customary trips up and down the dune. We made the long trek to the sand castle, and then we went back. It’s tradition. Then either Steve, Nate, or myself would stand at the top of the dune and throw the Frisbee down to the other two. This was pretty fun, especially when the Frisbee flew near other peoples’ heads. Then home where we found tree frogs in our garage. REAL TREE FROGS! The kind that stick to anything and jump all over and are real soft and squishy. Anna named hers Jimmy. Mine was named Porter. Actually I just made up his name but I like it so that’s his name from now on. Goodnight.

Day Seven Saturday, July 28^th, 2002

Time of departure - 6:00 am. Just like last year.

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