Nantucket Beaches and Hurricanes

I had someone drop me an email yesterday and ask if I doctored the photos that I took and made up the stories around them. I generally don’t. The interesting thing about carrying a camera with you all the time is that you can take pictures of all the stupid stuff that happens around you. I think stupid stuff is all around us but we generally ignore it and if you just take pictures of your day, you’ll see how stupid stuff surrounds our life. For example, a good exercise is to have someone drive your car down the Interstate in the fast lane while you sit in the passenger seat taking pictures of people driving as you pass them. You’ll find that 73% of people are talking on a cell phone, 42% are wearing hats, 17% are picking their nose, and 3% are reading something. I won’t post the pictures here of my research today though. Just be careful the next time you pick your nose while driving… It may get your picture on my blog.
Actually, I don’t think I had any stupid pictures from yesterday which is somewhat disappointing. All you are going to today is a boring story of how we went to the beach and a hurricane is going to ruin next week.

Thursday evening we went to a little restaurant here on the south wharf.

The hostess was very nice and kept coming back to the table and giving us tips on where to go to the beach and other places to eat.
I had the tuna (medium rare) and it was really good. She told us we had to try out “Black Eyed Susan’s” the next morning for breakfast so we made a note of that.
After dinner, Susie and I went into some of the art shops on the wharf here. They were having some sort of wine tasting thing going on. I had to go into the little basket shop here and ask why a 6-inch basket cost $900. Supposedly, Nantucket is known for their baskets. People must just be bored in the winter here and weave baskets.

We found a pet store and bought the dogs some new toys (they were cheaper). Soren loves the sea gull. It’ll be chewed in half in no time.

The next morning we got up and planned on making it a “beach day”. First thing, however, we wanted to head uptown to Black Eyed Susan’s and get some breakfast. We did find the place:
But there are only like 3 tables in the place so we didn’t eat there. We found this place along Main Street on the way back:
And they put us upstairs. The breakfast there was really good and I tried the “Steak Benedict” which was some medium rare sirloin tips, pouched eggs, hollandaise sauce and some English muffins… very good. The prices were not too bad either.

Walking back to the boat there was a fresh produce stand so I picked up a few things for dinner:
We got back to the boat and packed up the beach toys, dogs, and towels and trekked on over to where I parked the jeep:
The beach we were heading to was over on the east side of the island by the airport where I could drive the jeep right on the beach. After discovering the $50 parking ticket on the windshield, we were on our way. We went through a bunch of back roads and I had the kids going “Cool… Dad is getting us lost.” You can only get so lost on an island in my opinion.
Now the guy that rented me the jeep told me “It’s always in four-wheel drive so you don’t have to worry about it.”… He’s a lying bastard. I hit the sand and the back wheels start spinning and they dig in and the front wheels are not doing anything except preventing me from going forward. I stick it in reverse and back off the sandy area and just park on the side of the road. I discovered later how to engage the four-wheel drive. Also, the guy did tell me to lower the tire pressure down to 15 psi before going on the beach… however, I have no idea how I’m supposed to pump the tires back up when I get off the beach. I got an idea! How about if they put a 12v pump in the jeep!

The beach was fun. The dogs took off running and were very happy. First place they head is the water:
Unfortunately, they also wanted to go lick everyone on the beach so we had to make them stay around us after awhile:
I ended up driving them back to the boat (all wet and sandy) after they were wore out and then came back to the beach. However, the dogs are so stupid they don’t realize they should not drink the salt water and so they always end up with diarrhea after being in the ocean.
The kids had a good time with their boogie boards:
And then the evil ice cream truck came by with his over-priced ice cream:
And it was even in the shape of Sponge Bob. I hate that show…
We headed on back to the boat about 4 pm and it was hot dog night. Here I am being the master chef with the George Foreman Grill and wimpy boat stove:
I picked up some corn on the cob here and it actually was really good. So here’s our great dinner on the boat:
And yes… there were buns for the dogs. We also picked up a birthday cake in town for Philippe.
I got up this morning and checked the weather. It appears there is a tropical storm forming off of the Carolina coast.
And the path of this thing is coming up our way:
Did I do something wrong? Why are these damn storms taunting me this year? I may end up being STUCK in Nantucket an extra day or two. I have a sewage pump out scheduled for 8:15 this morning. That’ll get my mind off of it.

My plan is to work around the boat today. I’ve got several things to fix and work on. Also, the cockpit carpets are a mess with the black stuff that comes off the docks here. No big deal though. Also, as a side note, never buy the fender whips from West Marine. They are crap. They were designed by a finance guy and not a boat guy.