Adult play time!

Since about 1990, my brother Mark and his wife, and usually our friend Winston Trice and his wife Betse from Richmond, have accompanied us to Cape Hatteras during a week in the fall.  The timing is to take advantage of the increasing winds, while the water and air temperature haven't dropped too much.
The Outer Banks of North Carolina stick way out in to the Atlantic, and are basically sand bars that mankind has claimed and populated with fancy houses and tourist shops.  These islands are regularly cut off from the rest of the world by storms, breaches in those sandbars by storms, cuts in electrical cables, etc.

There are only four or five groups of people that infest these sandbars this off-season time of the year:  fishermen, whose manhood is gauged by the number of fishing rods they can put on the front of their vehicles,

surfers, taking advantage of the wind-driven waves,

a smattering of old retired people (not like us, of course) checking out the knick-knack shops, and finally, those taking advantage of the shallow Pamlico Sound waters coupled with the wind to windsurf and kitesurf.  That's us! 

It is a predictably unpredictable week - we have seen winds literally from zero to 85 miles per hour, air temperatures from 80's to near freezing, and water temps from bathing suits to thick wetsuits.  However, the common denominator is a week of recreation, laughter, and reacquainting with old friends.  And eating too much.  And shop-crawling to check out the latest gear.

Some days, the wind is quiet for part of the day, and so we take to the bikes.  No, not the pink one.

This year the wind blew nicely.  Paula, braving the gut-check brought on by not windsurfing for seven years, headed out and nailed her water starts and sailing.  

Meanwhile, the guys got out the kites!

While recognizing the relative unimportance of kiteboarding in the eternal scheme of things, it has been a goal of mine to learn it.  With good winds and kind help from my brother Mark and Winston Trice, our good friend of 40 years, I made some good progress this week.

We invited Nate Turner along, one of the former missionaries who served with us in Peru.  On the way out to the Outer Banks, we realized he had never had North Carolina barbecue.  That had to  remedied, and Shaw's in Williamston did the trick.

After church in Kitty Hawk on Sunday, we went by the site of the Wright brothers first flight.  By the way, that's my brother with his arm around that other lady, not me.  We look a lot alike - both devastatingly handsome.

We also stopped to let Nate see where cotton came from.

Ex-Elder Nate turned out to be an expert kiter and he had a blast, even having to hang around with old guys like us.

On the way back home, we tried to remember a bad week in Hatteras.  It hasn't ever happened.

We hope your breaks from reality are as much fun.

Dave & Paula