I’m sitting out on the deck of the beach house in 80˚ weather pretending the sun on my crispy face doesn’t sting too badly. The air is blowing in from the water and the waves are gently beating the shoreline about 300 yards from here. It’s Friday and we’re all settled comfortably into a lazy beach schedule: rise when we feel like it, stumble around the house and make some coffee, lay about in our PJ’s until we’ve rustled up some breakfast, and then slowly make preparations for the beach. By about noon or so we’re packed and ready, and we head out to the warm sand.
We got here at the tail end of the brutal heatwave that gripped the East Coast, so our first two days on the beach were a challenge. The heat was intense and the air wasn’t moving so we baked on the sand and were assaulted by clouds of horseflies; the only saving grace was that the ocean was warm and horseflies can’t bite underwater. On Tuesday the storm blew through and cooled everything down, so the rest of the week has been idyllic: temperatures in the high 80’s, a 5-10mph wind blowing from the south, and cool ocean water with 2′ waves to jump around in.
This year we’ve scaled way back on our culinary requirements; in years past we’ve gone the extra mile to source and prepare wonderful dinners. This year we’re all in EASY mode and not stressing ourselves out by spending two hours on a gourmet meal. Lunch is sandwiches in the cooler and bags of cheesy-poofs (we brought seven bags between two families), a spiked iced tea/lemonade mix for the ladies and cold Coronas for me, and various snacks we’d never allow the kids to eat on a regular day. By 3PM we’re lit and the day rolls smoothly on from there.
The house itself is comfortable and appointed well. While nothing is ever laid out how I’d arrange it, this one has everything we need and has enough room for us all to come together and separate when we need space. The kitchen is large and easy to use. And the outdoor shower is large enough to fit three sandy bodies at once.
Few things in life relax me more than a house at the beach; I love the rhythm of the days here and the sounds and smells. I love the giggles of my girl jumping the swells, a manhattan on the deck under the stars, throwing my nephew into the waves until my arms are sore, the scent of salt air on the back of my wife’s neck, the feel of sand between my toes, and going to bed tired and sore and slightly drunk and very happy we are all together.
Sunny weather, 80˚ and a 5mph wind blowing in from the bay. No horseflies, warm water (when we were out of the wind) and perfect gusts for flying kites. A perfect day at the beach followed by dinner in Lewes and some ice cream for dessert.
The house is quiet. The kids are watching some TV while the adults wake up slowly in the living room. We’re all sunburned and sleepy from yesterday’s four-hour beach time. The weather has been brutally hot and humid since before last week, and it included the coast of Delaware. There was also no wind to speak of, so the horseflies swarmed us unless we were in the water (our panicked escape from the beach back to the house must have been hilarious to anyone watching from the neighboring houses). Monday wasn’t as bad as Sunday, though, and the water was cool and refreshing.
Our house is spacious and modern, and we’ve all got enough room to move and not be on top of each other. While it’s not set up quite the way I’d prefer, it’s directly on the beach and only three houses from the end of the row. And there’s an outdoor shower. And air conditioning.
I was supposed to have some work done to the Scout on Saturday morning, but the mechanic failed to hear the words “International Scout” on the phone and realized it was going to be more than a 3-hour job. So we rescheduled for this coming Friday, and I hope they will be able to handle it without any further hiccups. In the afternoon we headed across town to hang out at Will’s house for some barbecue and a bonfire in the backyard; it was great to catch up with him while the girls ran and played together, and we stayed much later than we realized.
Sunday we got up late, farted around the house in the morning—eggs are back on the menu, so life is returning to normal—and got ourselves ready to hit the pool. After some last minute inquiries we picked up one of Finn’s friends, staked out a spot under an umbrella on the west edge and relaxed while the girls played in the water.
The greenhouse is producing a ton of tomatoes, and after a brief blossom-end rot scare I think the remainder of the fruit on that plant is safe. The weather was a lot hotter yesterday so by the time I checked in on things late in the afternoon there were some plants looking wilty. We’re looking at 5 days of hot, sunny weather this week so daily watering will be key to keeping things healthy. The cherry plants are by far the most productive, followed by the roma plant. I haven’t figured out what the heirlooms respond to, because no amount of fertilizing the flowers seems to get them to produce more than two or three fruit per plant. I’ve also noticed that there isn’t as much bee activity in there this year, which is worrying. I think the majority of the production we enjoyed last year had to do with bees discovering the greenhouse while I was stuck in the hospital, while this year I’ve been doing the heavy lifting for Nature.
Speaking of hospitals, I’m waiting on communication from my doctors about our next steps. My white blood cell count has continued to drop. They ran a bunch of rule-the-weird-stuff-out tests and I’m happy to say I don’t have hepatitis A, B, or C, and I tested negative for HIV. Not that I was expecting a different result.
Update: looks like I’m going to be scheduling another test.
Saturday Karean and Zachary were coming over the bridge to hang out with us, so Finn and I went out and did some grocery shopping for lunch and dinner, came back and prepared everything, cleaned up the house, and organized our gear. Finn set up her lemonade stand while I was prepping food, and made about $10 in an hour and a half.
It was sunny and warm so we thought we’d take them to the pool. They have a set of built-in barbecue grilles there so that it’s easy to bring food in and cook it on the spot, so I figured some standard burgers and dogs and a salad would be perfect for the day. It was a little more crowded than our first visit but the kids hit the pool and stayed in while Karean and I caught up under an umbrella. It was great to catch up with them, and we have dates set aside for rock fishing on the Bay, some baseball games, and camping in the late summer.
We got sugar back on our menu on Saturday, which led us directly to bacon. Most bacon is filled with nitrates as preservatives, which we’ve always tried to avoid anyway. Some of the nitrate-free bacons have turbinado sugar added along with celery salt for their preservative properties, which meant even when we could have pork we couldn’t have bacon. It’s a cruel, callous joke. But Sunday was a banner day: I woke and made 4 lbs. of hash browns and nine links of bacon, and we had a fatty, starchy breakfast of VICTORY. Next up we get chocolate, which is awesome except for the fact that most chocolates have other stuff we’re not allowed to have in them, or are processed next to gluten and soy. I’m just going to pour the cacao and sugar directly into my mouth.
The rest of Sunday was slow and easy. We did some shopping to find Finley a new case for her iPad but struck out at all five stores we tried. Her focus was solely on a PopSocket, those round things that mount to the back of a phone; I think this was because she’d seen them on her friends’ phones and HAD TO HAVE ONE. So we dragged ourselves home, hit up Amazon and found her a case and the PopSocket she wanted and ordered them for delivery. After that I took a nap for about two hours in the afternoon; I was wiped out after navigating the newer, brighter, more confusing Target and crashing from the onslaught of starch and pork fat.
I got an email letting me know I could review my student course reviews while I was at the pool, and in a free moment I looked them over. Frankly, I was dismayed by the polarized feedback I got from the class; there were some folks who seemed to appreciate the class and some who had nothing good to say. Strangely the thing that got me the most was people complaining about having to print out their work each week and how expensive it was; this from students bringing $5 Starbucks cups into class on a regular basis. It’s a good time to step away.
About a month ago, Brian blew one of the cylinders on the front brakes of his shiny new Scout and decided it was best to just upgrade the entire thing from drums to discs instead of fixing the old technology. We local guys traded emails around to organize a work day, and settled on April 6. I loaded up Peer Pressure with some basic tools, stopped over to Bennett’s house to pick him up with a load of specialty tools (brake tools are exotic and having the right ones is the difference between a great Saturday and a miserable weekend), and then we headed across the bridge to Brian’s house. There we crawled over his new Scout ooohing and aaahhing at the shiny metal and clean mechanical bits before jacking it up on stands and breaking the wheels down.
Having done mine last year I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the process but getting his drums and backing plate off (he has a Dana 27 axle, the smaller cousin of the Dana 44) required removing the hubs. I’ve pulled several hubs off—the wrong way—so watching over Bennett’s shoulder on the passenger side was super handy. After he’d gotten halfway done I went over to the driver’s side and with Brian’s help we got that hub off ourselves. From there it took a little test fitting to put the caliper mounts in the right place, and suddenly the rotors were installed and in place. We kept joking that everything is much easier to work on when it’s not covered in 40-year-old grease and there isn’t rust falling in our eyes.
When we’d gotten the rotors and calipers on and the brake lines swapped out, we bled the system and Brian took it out for a test. It was still pretty spongy so we bled it again, and then a third time. It never did get as strong as a Scout II, which has a full size brake booster, and nowhere near the power of hydroboost, but it’s stopping straight and it feels good. It’s really a beautiful Scout. The guy he bought it from had excellent work done, and it’s about as close to a new Scout as I’ve ever seen. The engine (a 4-cylinder) purrs and there’s no oil on the engine at all.
By this time it was about 4, and even though I’d brought my radiator and a flush kit I knew it was too late to start on that. We sipped some beer and shot the breeze until about 5, and then packed up to head back home.
Bennett hasn’t been able to run Heavy D (his D-series pickup) because of a blown hub left over from some adventures at Pinelands, and mentioned that he was running up to Barnes IH for a replacement on Sunday. I remembered I had a spare I pulled from the Traveler we found in Mt. Airy back in 2013 and told him it was his for the taking. We also talked about the lovely ’66 Mustang sitting in his garage waiting for new brakes and I told him to name the date so that we could set up another work party.
Peer Pressure ran like a top the whole way out and the whole way back; about 160 miles. I did throw a quart of oil in her before I left and that made a huge difference in the sound and feel of the engine.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Small victories can sometimes add up to a larger result, and that’s how I feel about the past weekend. I don’t feel like I got any one big thing done, but I made a lot of progress on several fronts. My FitBit tells me I walked 15,000 steps and 64 floors of stairs, and I sure do feel that in my legs today.
First, we had Christopher come in from New York on Friday night, which was great; he’s always fun to have staying with us and a great excuse to get out of the house and do interesting things. Unfortunately, Baltimore was boring this past weekend so we couldn’t take him to an awesome exhibit in D.C. or an art happening here in Baltimore, so we settled for K-Pop Disco Theater Barbecue on Friday night. Saturday was windy but sunny so I took advantage of that to pick up some supplies at Lowe’s to repair the garage lights and the greenhouse door.
Jen’s eye was hurting (she scratched her cornea on Friday) so she took a nap and Christopher, Finn and I drove to Second Chance to walk through the warehouse and poke around at the merchandise. I was there to look at doors to replace the one between the blue room and the new bathroom, and found a beautiful 12-panel French door in almost the right size as well as a full-light door in exactly the size. Jen was asleep so I punted until later. Then we hit Housewerks and poked through the odd merchandise there, stopping to admire a porcelain autopsy table parked outside.
That evening we drove into Baltimore for dinner at Peter’s, our old neighborhood haunt from my Canton days. Jen had read they suffered a fire last year but had reopened this spring, and we were lucky to get a parking spot around the corner and seated in half an hour (no mean feat for a popular restaurant with 18 tables). As usual, the service was excellent, the food was delicious, and we left sated and happy and went straight home to bed.
Sunday I continued working on the garage light (the light switch had gone bad), the greenhouse door (fitting a storm door handle to aluminum channel took some engineering) and then the greenhouse footer, while stopping to help Finn set up a jewelry stand out in front of the house. Mama and I were skeptical but she wound up selling two necklaces for $8. I think she’s on to something.