Arse Over Teakettle, Sandy Ear, Monsoon Season, and the USS NC
First, I’ll go ahead and say that I totally forgot to take any food pics, but I’m going to go ahead and list what I ate so that we can get to the adventure part:
- egg McMuffin (minus the meat), hashbrown, coffee. Unfortunately, I forgot our breakfast and left it on the counter; it was high-fiber english muffins with pb and j. But the egg mcmuffin was good too:)
- lunch: hummus wraps with Roasted Red Pepper hummus, spring mix and jalopeños on an Italian FlatOut.
- snack: a few Rice Worx Rice chips and 3 Milano cookies. Also a few animal crackers.
- Dinner: vegetarian corn dog and a few sea salt and black pepper kettle chips. And a calorie-laden beverage.
So, on to the day. First, I’m an idiot. I did not check the weather online. Of course, it really wouldn’t matter, because I took the day off, so we were going to have to go, rain or shine. It rained on and off for most of the three hour drive from Charlotte to Wilmington, but started to clear up a little as we got to the beach. Parking was TEN BUCKS!! Seriously. Bleh. Anyway, we got ourselves settled and headed to the water for some fun.
About the time spent in the ocean:
- trying to jump waves with a bum ankle that you’ve re-injured twice already is a stupid, stupid idea.
- it’s hard to pee in the ocean when the waves are too choppy to go out far enough to be submerged at least to the waist (come on, don’t try to act like you don’t pee in the ocean, seriously).
- bending down to hit the wave head on is also a bad idea.
Regarding the last one…the wave in question knocked me over, yes, but somehow, in knee-high water, it managed to push me over, cause me to do some sort of strange half-cartwheel, dragging me ass-over-teakettle along the bottom of the ocean. On a not-so-funny note, my ankle didn’t enjoy being called to use to get me back up quickly to avoid being dragged to my death during the next wave. On what was an extremely funny note to my friend Katie, my left ear was full of sand, as was my butt crack. I was terrified to do the “squat during a wave” move to rinse out the sand, so I have a thoroughly polished crack now. And, after a shower, I’m still picking sand out of my hair and ears.
So, then it rained.
Not what I intended to experience at the beach. Did we have to use the giant beach umbrella that I brought….yep, sure…we huddled under it like drowned dogs in our soaked towels:(.
So we waited it out and had our hummus wraps and decided that, if it rained again, we’d just pack up and find something else to do for the rest of the day. We did get enough sun to get a good pic of us, though:
Katie is such a dear friend and such a cutie, eh?
After a quick stop at Micky D’s for a coffee (because the rain was freaking cold) (I got a small cappucino with sugar-free vanilla syrup), we decided to hit up the USS North Carolina since we’re both history nuts. The legacy of this ship is incredible. It served in every battle of the Pacific Theatre of WWII and earned fifteen battle stars (see site for reference), all while losing only TEN men the entire time.
The self-directed walking tour took us about five hours (it would have been faster, but we read *everything*) and let us go all the way down to the engine room, the missile-preparing and loading room and the communications room to the every-day living quarters (the barbershop, doctor’s office, galley, etc), to the bridge, and up into the gun turrets. My grandfather fought in WWII. I also lost a great uncle there, and had another great uncle take shrapnel in the Omaha Beach invasion (D-Day). My father also served in the Navy during Vietnam, so, to be in the places where men gave up so much of their lives to protect us was such an honor.
See how HUGE the anchor is?
Katie also had to get the obligatory “Mel Driving the Ship” pic
So, guys, I know this was a super-long post with little to no food content, but part of healthy-living blogging is sharing our lives, yes? Thanks for reading. Food content to resume tomorrow:)
