Outer Banks

This is the second year we've gone to the Outer Banks for a week at the end of the summer. My sister lives in Richmond so my parents drove down to her house a few days before and we flew down the day before. Then we all drove 3.5 hours from Richmond to Nags Head.

The plane ride down left a little to be desired. We got up at 3:45am (!!) to get to the airport by 5am to get on our flight that left at 6am. There were no food places open at that time so we just ate a granola bar before boarding. Then our plane was a little late arriving at JFK (of course) so we just had time to make our connection to Richmond. We sat on the runway for almost 2 hours (!!!) while someone decided an alternate route since there was bad weather somewhere along our path. We eventually made it to Richmond. It's a good thing we flew Jetblue and each had our own TV or I would've lost it and killed someone (or everyone).

Me while we waited for my sister to pick us up at the airport

The house we got was absolutely awesome: 4 huge bedrooms (two of which have attached bathrooms) and a big open living area on the top floor. It had a hot tub and most importantly, wireless internet! Monday morning while I was eating cereal on the deck I watched some crunchy hippy blow his nose in his hand while walking to the beach. He then wiped his hand on the ground, then a stop sign post, then some tall grass and finally on his swim trunks. We saw him a few times during the week, after this incident he was referred to as "snot-rocket".

The formula was basically the same every day: we'd get up around 8:30ish, eat some breakfast, work on the puzzle and then hit the beach by like 10. We'd go for a dip or just roast and then make our way back for lunch around 12:30. We'd putz around the house for an hour or so and make our way back to the beach around 2. Then come back around 4:30 and work on dinner. I'm used to eating dinner early, like between 5 and 5:30, and it would always work out that we'd end up eating at like 7 or 8 every night, it was killing me. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't wrangle everyone to make a decision until then.

The first day on the beach I got a wicked sunburn on the tops of my feet. I didn't have sunblock on, but I swear I was completely in the shade under my tent on the beach. I still don't know how it happened. That totally sucked because it really hurt to wear flip-flops to and from the beach. It was the worst coming back from the beach because the sand on my feet would get ground into my sunburn by my flops.

Every time we go down the shore we do a jigsaw puzzle. My sister got my dad a puzzle this past Christmas that we attempted to complete. This puzzle was unbelievably difficult, it was a water color with the same colors everywhere and 1000 pieces. We worked on this puzzle for 7 days and just couldn't finish it. All the pieces left were yellow and all shaped similarly; it turned into a guessing game that just took too long. I was sad. It looks like a piece of cake from this picture, but it was a bitch.

In typical Reid fashion, hurricane Dan showed up at the end of the week. What wasn't so typical was that it didn't really affect us at all! We got about 10 minutes of rain one afternoon and then more rain over that night. The weather during the next day was beautiful, but you couldn't go swimming due to rip currents. I think this is the first family vacation where we didn't have major rain for a whole day or two.

The night before we flew home my Blackberry Enterprise Server at work puked; the hard drive failed. This server has been running for years, why wouldn't it fail while I'm on vacation?! So annoying. So I had to stop at work on my way back from the airport and work some magic.