The trip down to Nags Head was interesting to say the least. For those of you who don’t live in Virginia, Nags Head, NC is the official beach destination for almost all of Virginia. Some smartass people in Richmond once proposed that Nags Head be called an official suburb of Richmond, which the papers labeled humorous attempt at stealing a county from the middle of another state. Anyway, once (sometimes twice) a year my extended family (two branches from a very large tree) go down the Nags Head for a week of vacation fun. This year, since July 4th, a national holiday that fell on a Friday, my mother, my wife, my sister in law and I all decided that we would go down on Friday morning instead of fighting the thousands of other cars that would be traveling on Thursday night. It turned out to be a smart move. The four of us, driving three cars, left Richmond and reached Newport News (still in VA) around eight in the morning. We stopped at a donut shop and after consuming half of an apple fritter, I gathered the other three dreary and near asleep individuals around the car for the last leg of the trip. Let me diverge here and explain something. In my early twenties I was perhaps one of the most anal retentive people on this earth. I would often make trips such as these and have a timeline and execution plan in place with pre-throughout maps and lunch destinations and how long we could take at each. I would then put a half-hour buffer in there for the stops my mother would need to take. At my current age, I’m lucky if I feel the need to print out maps of any sort. It’s nearly a one-hundred and eighty degree change in personal philosophy. So, when were about to leave the donut place, I gather the rag tag group of people around my wife’s care and explain what our next steps are.
“Okay, here’s the game plan, we are going to go through the inner loop, go underneath the tunnel, and hit the NC border. Once we hit the NC border, we will then stop again for restroom breaks. Any questions?”
My wife and mother look at each other as if a long lost relative was leading the charge. My sister-in-law looked at me, saluted and said, “Yes, General!” I just looked at her and said, “Get into the car.” She did and we were on our marry way.
The story picks up when we were just about to hit the VA-NC border. About ten to fifteen miles away from this imaginary line that means so much, we hit what I could only describe as fog. It turned out to be smoke from a fire that had been raging for months now. Apparently, there is a fire raging in NC that is causing lots of smoke that can lessen visibility down to a quarter of a mile and a horrible smell, which is what our three car convoy encountered. It got bad enough that at one point, I couldn’t see my wife’s car that was less than a tenth of a mile behind me. It passed, but I do have to wonder what is going on with that fire? Once we arrived in NC, everything was cherry (I finished the book “Generation Kill” and now am in a Marine Corps language mood, by the way, it was a good book)…I mean good.
I took a nap, while my wife went to the beach for about an hour. I think that was the best hour of sleep that I had down at Nags Head. The next big event on the holiday that is the celebration of our National Independence was the letting off of fireworks, which I must ad was spectacular. But before I go on to the next subject, let me digress and tell you about how much fun I had at the “celebration” of our independence. In Nags Head, the city/county (whichever) uses the pier’s as a way to set them off. There are four, maybe five in total, and they are great places to do such a celebration. Ten people went to see the fireworks, and if you include my sister and her husband going to a different section of the city/county, twelve of the fourteen people made it to watch the legal shock and awe. We get to a place directly in between two of the piers and get ready for the spectacle. As we wait (we got there an hour before the fireworks started) I spy this Emo kid with tight-assed jeans, a white shirt and what I thought was a knit cap (it was dusk so I couldn’t quite see his whole attire). I shook my head and wondered that even at the beach, this kid had to look horrible and piss off his parents. The fireworks, though, were awesome. But this year surprised me. Normally, the past three to four years prior, it was just a couple of people here and there and then the one on the pier, but this year was different. Everyone and their brother had fireworks and some of them were even more spectacular than the city/county fireworks. It was amazing. Just point to any part of the beach and there were fireworks coming from it. I must say the last time that I saw that many fireworks at Nags Head was July 4, 2002 at the height of our patriotic fever. It was a site that I will not soon forget.
