Ealy morning fog

I woke up a little late this morning, Hilda had been up long enough to have finished her first cup of coffee. When I went downstairs, I looked out the window and saw a thin layer of fog covering the Duck landscape. That's the way it does when the weather is unseasonably warm, the water has already cooled off (a little bit) and the warm air causes the early morning fog. It will most likely burn off by mid-morning.

The last two days have been glorious, warm, sunny, no wind, so nice there was nothing much to write about. We walked down to Sunset Grill yesterday for a fish-and-chips lunch, and the place filled up pretty quickly, so I guess there are a lot of people here for Thanksgiving week.

My smashed finger is getting better every day, so much so that I can once again type with both hands in a semi-natural way. Hilda has been busy the last couple of days getting everything ready for our trip to SC, and I've been trying to wrap up any loose ends at work in preparation for my long absence. Tomorrow this time, we'll be on our way south, and I will be away from my desk for the better part of two weeks. I'll try to post when I can to report on the festivities in SC.

Smashed

Last night, Hilda and I headed over to Manteo to pick up Jenni and go to the high school production of "Larceny and Old Lace." One of Jenni's good friends, Trevor who is the son of Annie and Greg Clark, has a leading role in the play and that was as good an excuse as any for Hilda and Jenni to attend.

Before leaving Jenni's house, she asked me to help her mount her road bike on the training stand, so that she can ride indoors during the winter months. Somehow, in moving the stand into position, I managed to let the two heavy steel legs swing together and smash my next-to-pinkie finger. I think it was the most painful injury I've ever had for the first few minutes, and then settled into a black and blue throbbing which it maintained all during the night.

Needless to say, I sat out the play, opting to stay home with the cats and nurse the injured finger while they went to the play. They returned home about 9:00 with rave reviews, so I'm sure I missed a treat.

Today, I'm typing with a hand and a half, so I'm going to keep it short and sweet.

Till next time.

OBX Marathon and Beyond

Well, it's been a while, but things have been really busy.

Last weekend was the OBX Marathon and Half Marathon. Earl and Jenni both worked at the Expo on Saturday, registering runners and handing out T-shirts, respectively. I (Earl) had a lot of fun, got to meet a lot of people from other parts of the state and country and welcome them to the Outer Banks. Jenni, on the other hand had the job of handing out less-than-popular T-shirts. It seems the organizers decided that instead of the tradition souvenir T-shirt, they would give runners some nice, technical sports apparel with the OBX Marathon logo. While this seems to be a nice idea, it turned out not to be very popular with the runners, and Jenni had to listen to a lot of complaints. I thought the shirts were very nice, but not so festive.

On race day, Hilda and I worked as route marshalls at the 10 mile checkpoint. I took a bunch of pictures of people I didn't know, and Hilda cheered wildly for them. After the runners finished passing by our station, we went by Sean's house and took him and Phoenix out to Stack-em-High for brunch. All in all it was a fun, but tiring two days.

Jenni took a lot of pictures of the marathon, and has posted many of them on her SmugMug photo site. You can view them at http://www.jwoo.smugmug.com/

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all a blur to me, getting up at 5:00 am and driving to Hatteras on Mon & Tues and to Currituck on Wednesday and working a full day. I'm getting along well with working on the road again, though, and I think my clients are pretty much getting used to seeing me instead of Earl Kelly.

On Thursday, a cold front came through and we had a pretty breezy days with winds of 25-30, and rain pretty much all day. In the afternoon, the temperature dropped to the low 40's, but warmed back up once the rain stopped. Like everyone else in the East, we needed the rain, and wind is pretty normal, so we can't complain.

Today, Friday is a beautiful fall day. Hilda and I got outside for a little while when we took both trucks to get them serviced, and enjoyed being out. My understanding is that we're going to Manteo tonight to see a high school play, I'll report on that later. Looks like a quiet weekend coming up, so we can get prepared for the long holiday weekend next week.

Surgeries!

Things have been pretty darn quiet here on the Outer Banks for the last couple of days, but that doesn't mean nothing is going on with our families. On last Wednesday, we had not one but two surgery patients to check on. Our son David had a some fairly extensive veins removed form his leg, and Bobby Johnson, our famous brother-in-law had some minor surgery of a more intimate nature. Both guys seem to be getting along well, and we're happy about that.

The weather has definitely turned cooler in the last few days, but so far it has been a beautiful Outer Banks Autumn, with cool nights and nice, sunny days just right for a long sleeved t-shirt or such. I've been working for the last couple of days, so I've been pretty busy with that.

This is Marathon weekend on the Outer Banks, and I'm working at the Expo this afternoon. For those who don't do events like runs or bike rides, the expo is the place where the runners go to pick up their bibs (numbers they wear) goody bags and t-shirts. While they are captive, they are also tempted with an array of stuff to buy from runners apparel to peanuts and everything in between.

Early tomorrow morning, Hilda and I will go to our post on the race route where we will stand by to cheer the runners on and offer any assistance a runner might need as he/she passes by our station. Our official title is course marshall, but we are really more like cheerleaders. We are at about the 10 mile mark, so most of the runners are at their performance peak when they pass by us. Our station is at the very beginning of a three mile or so sand road through the Nags Head Woods maritime forest, a unique feature of the OBX Marathon, and one that many runners are surprised by. We worked at the same station last year and had a blast. After the race tomorrow, I'll try to post some of the highlights of the day, and maybe a photo or two of the race.

Oops!

Guess I forgot that I was supposed to update every day or so. Let me see now, what's been going on since the last post.

On Saturday, Sean and Jantaporn both had to work in the afternoon, so Hilda and I went over and kept Phoenix from about 2:00 until Jantaporn got home around 7. It was a beautiful sunny day, although a little breezy, so we walked with him to the playground down the block and then to the pier and gazebo at the other end of the street. He's kind of like the Energizer bunny, he just keeps going and going. Later in the afternoon, we took him down to Sam & Omies restaurant for dinner. They weren't busy at all and Phoenix was the hit of the evening, with all the waitresses stopping by our table to ooh and ahh over him. One lady in particular kept saying "he's beautiful, he's just gorgeous."

Things have been pretty quiet around here since then. Yesterday (Tuesday) was election day in Duck and we were two of the 126 people who turned out to vote for town council. There were six people running for five spots, and naturally one of our guys lost. That's usually the way we vote.

I guess that's about all the news from Duck for now.

NOEL

Well, Hurricane Noel passed by the Outer Banks yesterday and last night without much fanfare. Yesterday was blustery, with some wind gusts that would blow doors open or closed, and some salt accumulated on windshields, etc., but not much else happened. The ocean was very rough, and I heard about some minor over wash on the beach road, but that's pretty routine and happens several times each winter.

I haven't been on Hatteras Island since Thursday afternoon, when it was beginning to get a little breezy, but I suspect there was probably some over wash on Pea Island, or at least some blown sand on the road. We had some rain during the night when the wind sounded to be about at it's peak, but I don't think it was a significant amount. The leaves on some of the trees look like they're turning brown quickly, but after all it is November, so it's hard to know how much of that is because of the salt and how much is just normal for the time of year.

This morning the wind has shifted to the northwest, so the sound's filling back up, and it's not blowing as hard as it was earlier. I guess Noel has done whatever mischief he could, and is going on about his business. This morning I heard a news person on the radio refer to it as "the system formally known as hurricane Noel." I guess that's going out with a whimper.

Halloween

Hilda and I have lived in Duck for almost 21 years, and we have yet to have a trick-or-treater come to our house, so Duck didn't seem like a feasible neighborhood for Phoenix's first trick-or-treat experience. Sean & Jantapon's neighborhood isn't really much of a walking neighborhood, either, so it was decided by the higher powers that we would all go to Jenni's house in Manteo for Halloween. She lives in a nice neighborhood of homes with porches and streetlights and lots of animals and kids, so it was a logical choice.

We arrived at Jenni's house around 6:00 yesterday evening. Hilda and I stopped on the way and picked up a couple of Pizzas for a quick dinner while waiting for the doorbell to start ringing. Phoenix went out trick-or-treating, accompanied by the entire entourage, to three close neighbor houses, and he was delighted with the treats he got. Not that he will be allowed to eat any of the candy, but he really enjoyed playing with it.

The turnout was not as big as we expected, but we did be quite a few, mostly young and cute, so we had a lot of fun watching them come to the door. Overall, it seems that Halloween was pretty calm on the Outer Banks this year.