Duck Week, An Introduction

I mentioned that tubing the Shenandoah was partly a redemption for flaking out on my married friends in order to go to Carolina's Outer Banks for Duck Week.  You may be asking yourself, "What is Duck Week?"  Well, here's your primer. 

Every Memorial Day weekend and the following week, Mormon singles from Boston to Miami (and a shout-out to my CA peeps!) congregate in Duck, NC.  For those that haven't been, it's not a complicated thing to understand.  Imagine Spring Break in Daytona Beach, FL.  Now move that atmosphere to a more remote location, make nearly everyone young working professionals, and make them Mormon.  Sounds pretty dreadful, right?  Sounds more like after-hours speed-dating at an accountants convention at Disney World.  Add Extra Quirkiness + Heightened Expectations - Booze - Age-Appropriate Behavior + Potential Visit to Sugar Shack = Duck Week Snog-a-palooza.  At least that's the reputation that it has acquired over the years.  It has the potential for fun, adventure, and relaxation without the rotting smell of desparation that accompanies any event branded as a "singles" getaway.   

So many people roll their eyes and whisper about the meat-market feel of the week.  I've long suspected that the ones complaining about the meat-market sensation are those whose beef is left in the cooler.  In my experience, I haven't found it to be anything near so slutty.  In reality, only a small portion are looking for the weekend hookup, and an even smaller percentage of those actually get what they're looking for.  So I don't understand what the complaining is about.  I say live and let live.  If someone came to lay on the beach and relax, let them lay on the beach and relax.  If someone came to kayak and chase wild horses on the sand dunes, good for them.  Why should it make any difference to me if someone showed up to Duck looking for some road beef?  Bully for them if they get it.  That's the real beauty of the Duck experience:  you can find whatever you want there.  Especially if tankinies are your thing.  I find them mildly ridiculous, but there are other options available for all beach-going tastes.  It is entirely up to you what shape your vacation takes.  With that in mind, I made the decision to attend this year, and I'm oh so glad I did.  

   

Adopting Lazy as a Life Theme

I've avoided writing about any of my adventures of the past month partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I've been having difficulty knowing where to start from.  So we're gonna tell these stories in reverse, Memento style.  Today's installment:  Saturday tubing on the Shenandoah river.

The genesis of this trip came mostly from my guilty conscience.  As a nice treat for Memorial Day the week before tubing, I decided to hang my married friends out to dry.  I had planned to take a 3-day road trip of unknown destination with Dirty Harry and his wife, but the Wednesday night before our departure, I decided to scrap our plans to join the rest of Eastern Single Mormondom in the annual spawning run to Carolina's Outer Banks.  I knew I would need some decompression from that trip, not to mention some redemption.  So in hopes of cushioning the flakiness, I floated the tubing idea to Dirty Harry before I left.

Now, do you remember last summer's retreat to the Shenandoahs for the waterfalls?  The need to get out of the city and commune with nature.  Sometimes the need for Mother Nature is brought on by too much work and the humming vevuzela that is the city.  Other times, the need is brought on by too much vacation or a schedule packed too tightly with fun.  I can't be the only one to need a vacation from my vacation.  That's what this tubing trip was about.

So I invited a handful of folks, who in turn invited a few more.  We ended up with a pretty good group of about 14 to head out to Front Royal, VA.  There, we would float a three-mile stretch of the laziest river you've ever seen.  If Jeff Lebowski were a river, he'd be the Shenandoah.  It takes three-plus hours to float the three miles.  In that time, you relax.  You jabber about things that don't matter with people that do.  You forget your cares, your stress, your name, your nationality.  Your swimsuit, if you're into that.  You drink in the sunshine and any tasty beverages you may have tied to your tube.  Turning over on your tube without falling in is the only concern, and if you do fall in, the water's warm and inviting.  It's the perfect amount of time to relax without getting bored.  And afterward, you catch a great barbeque joint on the way out of town.

I made one poor decision on the day, and that was in my choice of dessert.  But I feel comfortable in knowing that it was a choice that I couldn't have avoided under any circumstance.  Even knowing then what I know now, the universe would have warped space-time to bring us together anyway.  So, in keeping with the lazy day, I laid back and rode the slow, easy current of fate as it carried me into the arms of a sundae called The Fat Elvis. When debating between a simple rasberry softserve dipped cone and a sundae called The Fat Elvis, there really was no debate, right?  Right.  That sundae really tied the day together, man.

Reality Check

Sometimes the constant blaring of celebrity gossip shows and cable "news" punditry can whip us into frenzies over a whole range of issues that just don't matter.  And then a single article can slice through the din like a razor.  Such was the effect of this New York Times article about North Korea.  I strongly recommend you read the article in its entirety.  It affected me powerfully.  I like studying political systems, but I'm not even interested in the academic comparison of Socialism to Capitalism after reading this.  All I want to do is gather my family around me and thank God for them, and that we're free to argue over whether to grill bratwurst or hamburgers this summer (Answer:  both).