View from the Mountain

The anatomy of a perfect beach day

I might be the wrong person to write this post, but it will interesting to see if others might have different ideas.

I have plenty of beach experience.  My mother told me that I was on the beach before I was a year old.

My beach exploring has involved beaches in exotic places like Australia, Canada, and Hawaii.

However, I will admit to being biased towards the beaches of North Carolina.

While my intention is to talk about the elements that make for a perfect beach day, it is hard to have a perfect beach day unless you are in a pretty good location.

I have seen some great locations yield not so nice experiences.  I still have memories of walking the beautiful sandy northern shores of Prince Edward Island only to find that my ankles were being sand blasted.

I can also remember being on the gorgeous sands of Corolla during a near miss of a hurricane. While both experiences bring back some memories, they do not qualify as perfect beach days.

Let me quickly add, even those experiences were far better than the best day behind a desk in an office.

To me a perfect beach day has to start with the right temperatures. It has to be just warm enough to be warm without being hot enough to cook your body.

My personal perfect beach temperature is around 84 degrees with a very gentle breeze. As to water temperature, I prefer around 80 degrees.

A water temperature any colder provides a little shock to the body when you first hit the water.  That's okay especially on hotter days, but not on my perfect day.

The wave action that makes for a great day depends on your age. I had someone write last night looking for calmer waters because of school age children. I'm fine in the waves and usually enjoy waves more than dead calm, but I understand someone wanting quiet waters for children.

We always handled the kids in the water issue by me being in the water whenever they were there.  That worked until they got to those teenage years when I handled it by surf fishing not far from where they were swimming.

While those aren't perfect solutions, my time in the water was never exceeded by our youngsters.  I think it was all those years of training that kept me on top of the situation.

Part of the perfect beach day also requires that the number of people on the beach fit that hard to define goal of  enough people to feel like you are at the beach without being so many that you feel crowded.

A good beach chair, something to quench my thirst, a nice towel for drying off, and some great company pretty well complete the picture for me.

Down on the Crystal Coast, I think we hit that perfect day last Saturday.  Here are a few slides from the adventure.

The long dry time

Most people know that Roanoke needs some rain.  The yards are dry and some construction sites are creating dust clouds.

The valley is still a sea of green, but it is watered by an ever smaller Roanoke River.

When I snapped this picture early in the morning on July 21, 2008, I was reminded of a similar picture that I took for the post, The river barely runs through it in late August 2007.

I haven't checked the river flow figures, but it sure looks like the Roanoke River is already at August levels a month early.

If that is the case, then it won't be long before Roanoke residents will be praying for tropical storms once again.

In September 2006 in my atrcile, Flooding roulette, I mentioned how Roanoke got more rain than coastal NC.  I think the two storm total was close to eleven inches.  It was very welcome rain.

This July the Roanoke valley is still having brush fires which leads me to guess that the fall forest fire season might be one that will be memorable for all the wrong reasons.

I wonder if are past the time when we need to start making all these hillside developments build water retention facilities that gradually release water instead of letting it all run into the river immediately.

If nothing else it might help our groundwater supplies which will become important if this drought doesn't disappear.

Shoes to fit a changing life style

I have done more than one posts on shoes.  It does seem that shoes have defined my life.

In one post, It's the footwear that defines you, that I wrote in the summer of 2005, I talked about the boots I wore hiking reminding me of days on the farm in Tay Creek.

Those days on the farm we just another step in forming the person that I am.  The shoes and boots were different than the ones I had at Harvard and at McCallie, the Presbyterian military school, that was my high school.

Since we are living on the coast my shoe choice has evolved once again.

In 2006 my feet got introduced to Crocs.  As you can see from the picture, I have taken to them like a duck to water.  I now have three pairs and have already worn out one pair of dress Crocs.

Sneakers and Birkenstocks have been constants in my life.  I didn't wear them much on the farm since there was always something trying to smash your toes, but I had some and probably wore them to town.

In the twenty years that we lived in Roanoke, I wore out a couple of pairs of hiking boots, several pairs of Birkenstocks, and lots of sneakers.  A few casual shoes got used up, but I still have some of my best dress shoes, and my favorite suit.

I wonder if I should get rid of the dress shoes and suit.  I would rather be dressed for eternity in LL Bean's cargo shorts than a suit with a tie.

On the coast my dress shores are a pair of Sperry Topsiders.  I would wear the dress Crocs to church, but my wife objects.  I like to take the position that being 59 years old makes me invisible except to people who are about my age.  Most of them care more about being comfortable than about fashion dictates.

I have taken to wearing nice polo shirts to church instead of a sports coat.  One of the members was joking with me about that the other Sunday, and I told him that I hoped church got out on time since I wanted to go home and get more casual for work.  He did a double take.

I explained to him that male Realtors® in our office consider shorts to be our summer uniform and sometimes our winter uniform if the temperatures cooperate.  This week he had on a short sleeved dress shirt.  I think he is getting with the program.

My white Crocs are my boating shoes.  They don't mark the boat, and they are great in the water.  My orange Crocs are my around the house shoes.  I even do some gardening in them.  Sometimes I ride my bike with them, but usually I take time to put on my sneakers.

My sneakers are my walking and shopping shoes.  Of course the Birkenstocks are my beach shoes.  I keep them in the back of the car for impromptu beach walks.

I actually have a pair of white rubber boots in the garage that I use once in a while when working in the mud behind the dock.  There is also an old pair of sneakers that I use to mow the yard.  I have given up on my requirement to wear steel toed boots while mowing.  There are no hills to slip on down here, and it is hot enough in sneakers.

While I wear all those shoes, my favorite footwear is nothing.  I love to go barefooted, and I do around the house and even outside.  It was part of growing up in North Carolina.  Whether in Lewisville or Mount Airy, I spent time running around barefooted.

Much of the summer we shunned shoes.  Certainly there is no better way to enjoy a beach or a nice green yard.

I am personally glad to have left the wingtips behind. They actually remind me far too much of those spit-shined black shoes in military school.  My Sperry Topsiders remind me of the soft loafers that I wore in college.  I was also glad to leave the farm boots behind when we moved to the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia from our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick.  Somehow I don't even miss hiking boots these days.

It will be interesting to see if my shoes continue to evolve or if I have finally gotten to a set that will do me for a while.

I'm not planning on changing careers or moving so maybe that will be the case.

Organizing your time in Paradise

Mostly I think that there are not enough hours in the day.

That would especially be the case for daylight hours.  I always run out of daylight.

Sometimes I work hard at planning around the weather, the tides, and the daylight. If you are careful you can even manage to stay up with your work.

We actually had something of a less than desirable weather week. This second week in July here on the Carolina coast was too hot and humid which is not far off of normal for this time of year. 

There is no sense in cooking yourself even in a boat if you know better days will be here shortly.  As a resident if the weather is too hot or humid, you stay out of it unless you have visitors coming.

Last week, we had no visitors scheduled other than some real estate clients on Monday morning.  Early in the week, I had to do some supplemental watering since we were very dry until the rains came just before the weekend.  Wednesday morning I dedicated to mowing the yard, trimming the grasses behind the dock and any other home maintenance.

I actually managed to catch up a lot on my writing during the hot and humid weather. On Friday we found out that we had company coming on Saturday.

One of my cousins who was almost like a sister to me called to say that she and her husband were going to be in New Bern for a couple of days and wanted to visit us.

That meant a little house cleaning, but fortunately we had guests the previous Saturday night for dinner so I had already done the floor mopping thing which is the only really bad thing about visitors coming except cleaning the bathrooms.

With the house cleaning done and the rain stopping Friday afternoon, I decided to create a new video in response to my former college roommate's movie, "Toad Spawn."  I was actually more interested in learning the new iMovie than I was in doing a frog movie.

Still I had fun with the movie and got it posted to YouTube late Friday night.

Saturday morning the air had cleared, and I decided to sneak in 5 miles of biking and a few laps in the pool.  I didn't have time to relax a lot after that on Saturday because I also had to photocopy and mail some Homeowners' Association covenants and other information before the post office closed at noon.

After making it to the post office by 11:50 am, I then stopped by one of the local fisherman's stands and bought some fresh shrimp and flounder fillets.  I headed home after a phone call from my wife enlightened me that some other friends were going to bring us some eggplants just after noon.

I was more excited about seeing our friends than getting some eggplants, but I do plan to give them a try.  We ended up inviting our friends for lunch which was a lot of fun.

When they left I dove into cleaning the shrimp.  It was fortunate my cousin and her husband were late since it gave the shrimp twenty minutes to finish cooling in the fridge.

After catching up with them and having a shrimp appetizer, we took them on a tour of the area. Fortunately traffic was much lighter than last weekend.

In fact we stopped at Jordan's Seafood in Emerald Isle for a quick dinner.  We walked in a little after 5 pm and with only about ten minutes of waiting sat down at a table.  We all had senior plates of fried oysters and founder.  It was very tasty.  I was amazed that we even got into the restaurant.  When we left, I am guessing the wait for a table was over an hour.

Our friends left about 8pm, and I spent much of the time before bed working on my real estate web links.  We were in bed just before midnight, and I got up at about 6:45 am.

I answered a few emails, read the morning newspaper, cooked breakfast, helped clean up, and then decided to go for a short kayaking trip.  I was in the water by 9:10 am and back on dry land at 9:45 am.  I hit the showers at a little after 10 am, and I was properly dressed and leaving for church at 10:35 am.

We got out of church right at noon.  We ate a quick and cheap double cheeseburger lunch at MacDonald's and got back home by 12:30 pm.  I  changed clothes since wearing shorts to work is one privilege that I don't plan to lose.  By 12:48 pm I was headed to work.

It's now a little after 5 pm, and I am headed home.  I think a nap is in order before I start cooking fish for dinner.

Then again the nap may have to wait, I am hoping to cram in a beach walk and/or a boat ride around dinner time.

If I could just add a few hours,  I would be fine.

Pricing models that irritate me

I am a pretty reasonable consumer.  I don't mind paying for quality services or goods, but I really hate "hidden charges" or charges cleverly disguised.

Last night we were having dinner at one of our favorite restaurants which will remain nameless.

We ordered our normal items and as we like to do these days asked if we could substitute steamed vegetables for french fries.  The waitress said no problem, and that was the beginning of the problem.

The main items we ordered were fine and our veggies were not quite as good as usual, but they were okay.  However, when we got our bill I noticed we had been charged an additional 99 cents each to switch from fries to vegetables.  We had ordered the same meals a dozen times in the last six months without being charged extra.

I questioned the waitress on the charge, and she said it was the new computer system which automatically added the charge.  She offered to have management come talk to be about it.  Since I know the owner, and knew he wasn't around, I said not to bother.  However, I wrote him a personal note about it this morning.

This irritates me almost as much as the restaurants that don't tell you how much their beverages are unless you ask and find out they are charging $2 for a glass of tea.

I have gotten irritated at some lawyers charging inflated prices for every fax that they do.  I recently sat through the presentation of a lawyer who is doing real estate closings for a flat fee.  It makes sense to me.  He will even come to our office so the customer is in more familiar circumstances.  I may give him a try.

Next on my irritation list are car dealerships with their surcharges on your service bill.  You would think with rates as high as they charge, that they could cover waste disposal some other way than tacking it on to your bill.

Then there is the whole mess of cable TV pricing and Internet access.  I thought someone was going to protect us from these highway robbers.  Our cable bills are ridiculous considering how little television we watch.

Yet the only solution seems to be bundled services.  The trouble is I want a high quality land line and good internet access.  They're both in different bundles where we live.

I am not willing to go with DSL or live all the time with Internet challenged telephones.

The idea that we can be sucked into some bad services with good pricing on one good service just isn't going to work for me.

It all reminds me of the Apple Computer model of business.  We will give you the best operating system around, but the only way you are going to get it is to buy our over priced hardware.

Perhaps that explains why I haven't bought a Mac in two years.