Lookie who WE found!

Well we happened to arrive in the Wilmington NC area four or five days early for our rendezvous with the wedding party. Beth knew that Derek's 2nd grade teacher had recently moved back to her native land. A quick phonecall to Kathy to find Jean's email address, I sent off a dispatch. By luck, Jean's alert husband, Tim, decided to check his emails for the first time in a very long time and noticed that there was a one that was only 3 hours old from some folks named Beth & Warren. A quick holler down the hall to see if Jean knew of anyone with that name, and next thing you know we were having dinner at a lime-green restaurant on the beach. After eating we got in their jeep and went on a nice long drive to the South end of Carolina Beach to see where a storm filled in the ocean between the mainland and Bald Head Island, which technically is now Bald Head Penninsula, which must really irk the islanders, ooops, I mean penninsulans.
Tim drives onto this beach EVERY morning with his jeep loaded with a surfboard, a fly fishing rod, surf casting rod, spinning reel, and maybe a few other toys, and then he reviews what mood the ocean is and plays accordingly.

He is having a LOT of fun. Oh, and by the way, Jean is as happy as a clam at high tide.
Her southern accent has popped into full "native mode": Southern, but still at a New Englander's speed. Quite a combo.

After the beach we went to see the place that they have been calling home for the last month. Very nice. Good neighborhood. They are going to like it there.
Jean misses her kids because she is supposed to be going to school at this time of year, so she is going through a bit of adjustment, but Tim doesn't seem to be having quite as much difficulty. He tried distracting her by buying her the coolest monospeed fat-tire bicycle with a honkhonk horn. It's helping.

Patterns

The Outer Banks?

Hello Beth and Warren,

Where are you now?
Hope T. S. Gabrielle didn't coerce you away from the Outer Banks of NC,
Tim & Julie
Your campsite neighbors in the Julian Price campground just south of Blowing Rock.

*****************************

Yes, we WERE on the outer banks. The rain came back so we are driving around Camp LeJeune right now heading towards Wilmington, we think.
Good to hear from you.
We tried the Lexington style bar-b-que that you recommended. Nope. Not our style. BUT it also was our first experience with hush puppies. You have no choice, everybody gets 'em.
There was someplace else that you recommended that we did, but I can't remember right now what it was, but thanks, we wouldn't have done it without you. I'll look at our pictures and figure it out.
Thanks for the tips. Let us know if you have some more.
Warren

Wandering with Warren, October issue.

This is a column I write for "The Marmon News".

This is the Hershey issue. This is the issue when Ron has a hard time concentrating on anything BUT Hershey. I don't really understand what the big deal about Hershey is.
This will be my FIRST Hershey visit. That's right, I am admitting it, I have never been to the Hershey car show / swap meet / social concourse.
I never could go because I was working for a living, but now that I have trashed that whole "being responsible" concept, I find that my schedule allows me to spend a week with many thousands of other car freaks. Marmoneers Bill L. and Chuck A. have invited me to hang out with them, so I will have a place to sleep.
There is of course, one other very important reason that I can go this year.
If I was on a major food diet and I wanted to go cold turkey, I could control the needless intake of excess food, liposuction out the past indiscretions, and staple my stomach to restrict future binges.
I have done the equivalent with my car stuff. I have sold everything except the Marmon and the MINI, my thirty years of "can't live without" stuff is gone, and since we are currently hobos, we have no place to store anything.
I am officially safe to wander in that giant Hershey cookie-jar of car stuff. I will not be tempted because I have no place to store anything. I have no NEED for anything. I am just there as an observer to enjoy walking around in the rain with thousands of other people that, like me, bleed motor oil when cut. I can't get in trouble. My wallet is safe. I could carry large wads of cash with me if I wanted to. No problem. I would walk RIGHT by that "deal of a lifetime".

Now on the other hand, I do know that some of my Marmon buddies have real nice garages and barns. With a few hours of work some floor space could be freed up in [almost] any of them. I bet that some of my Marmon buddies would love to have temporary possession of that "deal of a lifetime" without having to explain why THEY were the weak ones, "it's someone else's stuff, I'm just storing it for him for a while".
It's called a synergistic relationship.
If it isn't stored at my place it isn't an addiction, right? I have to get up off of this beautiful sunny beach, put on my foul weather gear, visit a few teller machines between here and Hershey, and... this is going to be great! Hey! they might sell those large two or three-axle trailers that I've always wanted, right there at Hershey, right? Who needs a garage? Oooh, I'll need an antique truck to pull the trailer with, and it needs to be big enough for my Marmon. Maybe two trailers, that's legal in some states, right?
(I think I am beginning to look forward to this.)
Warren

http://www.marmonclub.com/

**********************************

Anonymous said...
watch who you talk about. your not that cool

September 12, 2007 12:12 AM

Monday morning on the Outer Banks (OBX, NC)

Good Morning,
If you have been following the story up until now, you may notice a trend of us staying just ahead of record breaking heat, lung busting smoke, and car destroying floods until we finally ended up in North Carolina. We visited Asheville for one whole week and had a lot of fun, and collected some interesting nuggets there, and then the smog was accumulating and we had the urge to move on so we followed the Blue Ridge Parkway into Boone, saw Clay and MaryEllen's place, camped at a wonderful spot, and then zoomed to Apex to visit Chris & Sue for a few days. We unloaded half of our junk there for safe keeping because we needed to have extra space in the van until the end of the month because of... well for several reasons.
We then drove to Cape Hatteras, a place that I had always dreamed of returning to with a girl.
I was last here when bobby and I were teenagers and we spent a lot of time with a couple of wonderful teenage girls, but we were just a little too young. We were all a little too shy, and I was not able to concentrate completely on the wonders of the environment because my hormone addled brain was concentrating way too much on the possibilities.
Well, it is still beautiful here. It is still an unbeatable place to walk when you are holding hands with a lovely girl. I love it. My brain is still hormone addled, but it can devote the time creating actual scenarios and situations and sharing the beauty and wonder of the beach and the creatures scurrying around us instead of creating thousands of possible chess moves like the teenage brain is forced to do every waking hour, and sleeping hour for that matter.

Anyhow, we were on the beach for a terrific sunset followed some hours later by a terrific sunrise. Sometimes the order of those two things can be reversed, but on this island it seems that the sunset is usually BEFORE the sunrise.
We loved it here. We went to re-up with the ranger and found that we couldn't. Gabrielle was going to visit. The campground was being evacuated. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore was kicking everybody out. Even us. Dejected, we headed North. We traveled as far North on the outer banks as we could and then right before the bridge to jump to the mainland, there was a visitor center. We stopped in for a visit. They poo-poo-ed the whole thing, said it was going to fine, it didn't look like the rest of the island was going to be evacuated, here take a coupon book, and be sure to stop at our fine sponsors, have a nice day.

We turned around, headed South again, and started looking for food. We had some great She-Crab Soup and then started looking for lodging. It wasn't so easy. All of the beach side rooms seemed to be taken by news-teams that had arrived to take pictures of the "big storm".
After 4 hours we settled for a parking lot facing room in the Ramada. The crowds in a seaside community are not "the best of humanity", more whining about that later.

After a wonderful evening of big waves, we enjoyed a wonderful morning of big waves, as we watched windsurfers go past us like Lear-Jets.

Beth wasn't aware of it, but she was due for a stress free night, but she was not happy about paying for a room at the Ramada when we had better accommodations for $20 at the campground. So I made arrangements to sneak in to a wonderful B&B for a nice comfy evening. Beth is packing the van now, as I am once again multi-tasking by typing this post at the same time as I keep repeating "Just a minute, I'm almost done here...", whew, it's amazing I can juggle all of this at the same time. The van is probably just about ready to go, so work, work, work, I suppose it's time to drive again. We are going back to our wonderful campground and enjoy one of the best beaches in the world.
Thanks for listening. I don't really have time to scroll up and see what this post was about, but I'm sure I never got there, and if I did, well good for me.
Warren, the guy chasing the ghost crabs.

An email about those cute animations.

Dear Miss Edie,
Could you please remove me from your automatic cute-stuff address list.
I don't open those things because of the viruses that many of them contain, and being on the road I am not in one spot long enough to reload all of my software every month.
That is why I didn't know about the rollcall email that you sent me. My system (and many others) will automatically dump these animated messages into the trash and then they add your email address to the spammers list. The only reason I even saw today's email from you is because I had specifically marked you as "NOT spam" two days ago. If you have had problems with people not receiving important emails from you in the past, this is why. Also my name being on one of those long mailing lists at the top of this email means that I am a guaranteed victim of a virus if ANY of the people on that list gets a mail worm, this isn't a maybe, this is guaranteed. Have you had a lot of viruses in the past?
As soon as I send this email I am going to add each address in the list of this email to my spam list (except yours of course) because I know within a week or two their computers will probably be sending me a "gift" in the middle of the night.
These cutesy animations are not created for people's enjoyment, they are created as a method to "spread the word". That "word" is not a very nice word.

I don't want to be deleted from your "Hello how are you list", just take me off your "forward the cute cartoons list".
Thanks. Your syrup is great. There are some people that have never tasted real maple syrup.
See you in December.

Yer Pal,
Warren

You know, I think I will put this on the blog, so that some of my other friends will know why I may not get their emails.