Windy Ocracoke

Heavy winds. Clear skies. Freezing cold. 

So naturally Rusty and I took a road trip. 

It was a half hour each way because we stopped to inspect the chaos along Highway 12. Predictably we are cut off with wind gusts to 56 miles per hour. 

This could be serious but as it is we are fine. I worry more about peoples’ animals and I  hope they are being looked after. Himself is snug indoors when he wants to be enjoying the central heat.    

We don’t have a dog door so when he’s had enough of sunbathing on the deck he sits at the front door and stares through the glass. I wish he’d bark but he just stares real hard. It gets annoying  keeping an eye out for him but what can I do? He woke me as usual at 5:30 and we went for walk number one. It was going to be a long day. 

The 5:30 car drove by as it does each day and turned up it’s side street. Maybe it’s the night auditor at some weird all night emporium tucked away on Ocracoke. It was warm, 60 degrees but Rusty got bored so we went home.  I slept till 9:30. Then we took walk number two. We passed Santa looking the worse for wear, flopping in the breeze like he’d tied one on the night before. 

And we arrived at Springer’s Point. 

A cacophony of signage. Dogs on leash. Pick up after your dog. Use common sense etc…I did a whole post on Springer’s Point which is going to crop up here next week as this place has some history, but for now it’s storm drama shock horror. 

I wanted to enjoy the storm a bit. That’s why we came to Ocracoke: to enjoy winter without suffering my kryptonite which is snow. So far so good.  

There are some resemblances to Key West  inasmuch as the sound is shallow and honking winds create relatively modest waves which surprised me. 

Hurricane Dorian in 2019 was a Category 1 storm but it caused terrible damage to Ocracoke. 400 of the 1200 homes in the village were wrecked or suffered severe damage. A lot of them were rebuilt on stilts, not the 15 foot style of the Keys floodplain but by at least a few feet. 

It was windy out there and Rusty found the creaking cedar trees to be a bit disturbing. He preferred walking the waterside trail. 

I enjoyed it thoroughly, not too cold but windy enough it gave me camera shake in the strong gusts. We met another couple of people out there watching the waves. Bonnie and Jason rescue cats, live in central North Carolina and are used to the power being knocked out by periodic winter ice storms. Rusty loves Bonnie.  They weren’t phased by the prospect of no power over the weekend. 

Actually they had planned a trip to Antarctica with another couple of friends but  their flight, not their friends’ flight, got delayed and all their connections went west. They weren’t too bummed as they knew Antarctica would be there when their trip got reorganized. But still …their friends are down south and they are here. 

So what do you do if you can’t see the snowy white wastes of penguin land? Why you book a trip to Ocracoke of course! That gave me pause. I’m stuck on an island which Antarctic explorers choose as an alternative to the coldest place on Earth? I enjoyed talking to them. 

Layne had bean soup to make after lunch so I planned another expedition for later in the day. 

Meanwhile we meandered over to the tea shop around the corner to have a hot chocolate, for us not Rusty who was reveling in the cold air. 

The little store boggled my mind. They had all sorts of delicious English foods, Christmas pudding, custard, chocolates and so forth. I snuck a fruit cake past the guardian of my health which I shall eat alone as Herself hates candied fruit. Lucky me. 

Traditionally bread is said to be the “staff of life.”  I am one of those peculiar people who actually likes fruit cake and could live off it. Give me your castoffs, unwanted gifts and make me very happy. A cup of Yorkshire Gold and a massive hunk of this stuff, any fruit cake, and I’ll shut up for the time it takes to stuff it in my face. Ocracoke came through for me. 

It was a raw day yesterday with more promised into Christmas. 

Rusty was pretty tired and slept through the indoor  exercise portion of the afternoon. He actually expressed some reluctance to get aboard GANNET2 for a drive he was that tired, my middle aged dog. 

The (only) road to the Hatteras ferry terminal was windy and wild. 

Getting out of the van to make a photograph took some planning to avoid the wind and wind blown sand coming inside. 

Hatteras on the horizon, twenty minutes away on a free ferry ride currently unattainable. 

The terminal obviously was deserted. This isn’t the time of year where you might have to wait for the next ferry even when they are running. In winter they run about once an hour from 4:30 am to midnight daily, approximately. 

It was cold and strangely energizing to be out leaning into the wind. No boats at all at the docks! 

Rusty was pretty sure the whole trip was bogus so he stuck with me but took no joy in the display of nature as I did. Back home he passed out exhausted on the couch.  We got into the van and drove the 14 miles south, twenty minutes roughly back to the village. 

I’m sure locals drive this far above the 55 mph speed limit in their giant trucks and do it in ten minutes but I was in no hurry. 

It was a beautiful evening and I could stop as I wanted to look at the scenery. There was no other traffic. 

The ocean wasn’t the sound, the waves here were much larger. Europe and Africa were three thousand miles in that direction: 

Apparently Highway 12 at Oregon  Inlet further north on the main islands is still a mess from Dorian and is getting some work. The two hour drive to Kitty Hawk is not much different from this as I remember it. And I’m not surprised the highway gets torn up from time to time. 

They have to build the sand berms to keep the ocean off the highway but that does rather limit the views as you drive! 

I pulled off only at the parking areas for beach access. I was not in the mood to get stuck in unseen soft sand and find myself faffing around trying to dig out all by myself. There was bean soup and fruitcake waiting at home.  

That was fun, an hour spent getting cold and wind blown and wearing out my dog. 

The rental company sent us a note reminding us to let the taps drip to prevent freezing. Of course the sound of precious water drip drip dripping is driving me mad but I’m not in the tropics anymore. 

Waking up Christmas Eve morning Rusty decided 8:30 was a good hour to venture out so he came in and woke me yawning ostentatiously as usual. Our walk was frigid with west winds cutting through everything. Even the modest puddles were transformed into things of beauty more or less. 

Dingbatters In A Storm

In the grand scheme of things the overwrought weather forecasters predicting nationwide mayhem this Christmas weekend would probably look at Ocracoke’s forecast  and, if they noticed it at all they would shrug it off as nothing. However for the more delicate among us I’d like to think low temperatures near 20 degrees Fahrenheit and daytime highs barely breaking freezing would be of some note. They will be for us as we wait for the freeze to reach us. 

We drove up the highway yesterday to check out the beach and with a plan to fly an actual kite. I’m not a kite expert but I’m pretty sure some vital part was missing from the assembly because the kite folded itself double and refused to fly in a stiff breeze. 

A not entirely successful flight so we contented ourselves with a more modest walk. It was a good day for that. 

Highway 12 through the Hatteras National Seashore on Ocracoke is rather featureless, perhaps you could say stark in its austere beauty. In any event it does not make for interesting driving. 

To my horror I discovered a pool of fluid underneath GANNET2 and I groped around wondering which hose might be loose. Layne suggested, idiotically of course, that it might just have overflowed since the last time I topped off the fluid reservoir. I worried but there has been no sign of more leaking since so she as usual was probably right. I shall just keep an eye on it. 

Naturally my spare gallon of OAT (organic acid technology) coolant was low because the van does require topping off occasionally. By way of compensation Promasters require coolant changes only every 150,000 miles which boggles my mind. Modern cars do amaze me for their reliability and ease of maintenance. Anyway I went looking to buy another gallon and I figured it was hopeless in Oacracoke but lo and behold the hardware department at the variety store had what I needed. Amazing. 

The other modern technology that blows my mind is shipping and receiving. I had been thinking about buying a new lens for my Panasonic G95 camera and I happened to browse KEH’s online store where I spotted the 14-140 mm lens used for   $275,  less than half the brand new price. I ordered it shipped to Bruce in Arizona for pick up on our way to Mexico. Thank you Bruce, who tells me he has the lens already and it looks excellent. 

However  KEH also buys gear and I set up a zoom call wherein their buyer looked at my two lenses for sale and offered me $135 and sent me an online label. Just like that. On Ocracoke. Layne had an empty box (of course) and we went by the Real Estate company who are our landlords where they printed the label and put the box in their UPS shipping pile. It’s probably half way to Atlanta by now and we get a PayPal payment next week from KEH. The ease of modern commerce leaves me stunned. Forgive me if I sound naive, but all this modest little commerce carried out on line with zoom and instant responses leaves me breathless. 

I met (and forgot to photograph) the young guy who drives the UPS truck to Ocracoke daily. He loves the route as it mostly involves driving with not too many deliveries in the village. He drives about three hours down the Outer Banks from the UPS warehouse, rides the Hatteras ferry and drops off about 60 parcels per trip. His last route was about 260 so this is light by comparison and with 15 more years to go before he gets his Teamster pension at age 50 he’s hoping to keep the simple Ocracoke route. He also told me how to get my lenses shipped which was very helpful. We shared a laugh when he told me his mother told him to go to college or get a proper job with a pension and I said the same thing about my wife…

At the Island Real Estate company they were super friendly and helpful and dealt with my lens package in no time. It turned out the employee’s husband is a sheriffs deputy on the island and as he was hanging out at his wife’s office on his day off we got to talking shop which I found fascinating. They have five deputies and are dispatched from the mainland by a call center that covers three counties. They have a small holding cell on Ocracoke but they have to transport prisoners to Manteo several hours north. That with the ferry ride is an all day round trip. Making an arrest on Ocracoke takes manpower! And just like Key West alcohol seems to be the big driver of crime, drunk Dingbatters and drunk O’cockers are the main criminals. I was really impressed by the way he understood his community and the empathy he has for dispatchers who may not know the subtleties of finding addresses on Ocracoke which is a village that lives by landmarks more than street numbers.  I made him laugh when I could recite my street address and describe the house as  the “one behind the pizza parlor” without hesitation. When you’ve been a dispatcher you always want to know exactly where you are in case the worst happens. There’s nothing worse than a dying tourist whose family doesn’t know the name of their hotel or their room number, and that has happened to me on the phone more than once. I noticed they have an ambulance on the island and an airstrip…just in case!

Obviously with a major storm approaching we needed to stock up with liquor so we stopped by the third business in the variety store complex, groceries, hardware and…the ABC liquor store. The clerk told us it was quite cold enough and she wasn’t looking forward to freezing temperatures. Most likely the power will go out was her prediction, noting that the wind blows salt spray onto the power poles shorting the circuits. She was surprised I was familiar with the concept from similar situations in the Keys. 

She laughed when I said we would do five as long as there is electricity. Her suggestion was to turn up  the heat as much as possible. That way when the power fails it will take longer to cool down. I got a spare bottle of whiskey instead.

Thursday was rain all day, scudding clouds and lots of rain. I took Rusty for a walk which he seemed to enjoy less than I did when thunder rumbled and the wind picked up. 

There was no one else out on foot but trucks kept rushing by. It wasn’t even that cold and I was in Crocs and shorts. The cold and very high winds are coming Friday and the realtors sent us a note saying we should let the taps drip during the freeze. This is new stuff for us. 

So far so good as they say. I’m curious to see what the weekend will bring.