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What Do Icebergs and Basketball Nets Have In Common?

Let's face it, the Green Tomato is a big rig. Way back in the old days of touring around the country with the band, crew, gear and merchandise packed stuffed into one old Silver Eagle tour bus, necessity truly was the mother of invention, as it always has and always should be in a tour band, and that is where I learned how to drive a big rig. Taking your turn at the wheel was simply part of the routine for those interested or awake enough to want to do more with the idle hours of highway rolling by than to sleep or play backgammon.

I did it for the fun and the challenge, but at times it was also necessary when we would have to make a run from Portland, Oregon to Tupelo, Mississippi with a day off between gigs (I am not kidding about that one). I liked my time at the wheel. I had driven, and even hitchhiked, across the country in my one man band days and as Mark Twain said in one of my favorite expressions, referring once to Huck Finn as "lighting out into the territory".

I guess I am still doing it. The tour bus was kind of like a land yacht, and I had spent many a night alone at the wheel out on the ocean. So, night watches and day time driving across the vast American landscape was an easy transition, plus, there were no sails to tear or storms to navigate through, but then there was a rock band on board and that is a story that I have yet to write. In those days, I not only used to drive the bus down the Interstate, I would actually use it as my "car" when we got to wherever the next gig was. That kind of driving required a bit more skill to park, turn and most importantly back up in tight spaces. These are skills that one thinks will stay with them, like riding a bicycle or driving a tour bus.

So, when the Green Tomato came into my life, I quickly got back in touch with my "bus chops" to be better able to maneuver my "land yacht" around the highways and sand beaches of the Eastern seaboard. I also had the high tech advantage, not available in those bus years, of a rear view video camera, so when I whipped the van around in the driveway of our bungalow by the sea to unload our boards and make camp for the night, I had a clear view backwards of the driveway, the buildings and the fence.

Everything lined up perfectly, and I eased back towards my final stop in front of the bungalow, where the boards on the side of the van would be a yard from the front porch for easy unloading.

"Stop!" I heard Dixon and Andy scream, and I did. A quick check of possible problems in the rear view mirror and video camera showed nothing hitting the van, but I had heard an odd noise right before the boys started yelling.

When I opened the door for a better look, I did not like what I saw. There above me, out of view of the traditional rear view mirrors and high tech cameras, was the basketball goal and net, and dangling from the last strand of netting like a trapped fish, was the center fin of my favorite Stewart long board. "M*^%$#F%@$%^" was the only word that described the scene. The bottom of my board was not a pretty picture and the story of how I separated the center fin and box from the board was not one based on a gnarly encounter with a wave or a reef.

Fortunately you prepare for things like this simply by having an extra board or two and that was the case. We couldn't let a fin castration by a droopy basketball net ruin our first day on the Outer Banks. Though there were no huge bomber waves like you see on web sites of waves out here, there was a waist high wave breaking on a sandbar right over the dune.

It was getting late and that early darkness was moving in, so we made a quick evaluation that my board was not repairable on the spot, and unloaded the new 8'6'' that I had just brought back from California. We suited up, grabbed the new board and the test SUF board and headed to the beach.

It all happened so fast that there were no photos of our first Outer Banks session, but I will report that I spent a good bit of time on the SUF board and though it was never designed to actually surf a wave, I had to try it and with two eyewitnesses who you can e-mail for verification, I actually road a wave on it without falling off.

We surfed till the sun went down and about that time my buddy Jason Slezak, whom I had met surfing down in the British Virgin Islands a few years back pulled in to the driveway/scene of the crime. I showed him the board and he said he had a guy at his shop down in Rodanthe who could repair it. It was on the way to Hatteras and where we were headed the next day to look for more waves. With all problems solved for the moment, we set off for dinner at a little place called Tortuga's Lie. Beans and rice and fish tacos were excellent and the Land Shark was iced cold.

Over dinner we talked about what else - surf. The forecast was calling for a beautiful day, but not much surf, thus a mission change was initiated and we decided on an aerial reconnaissance session before the plane continued South to Florida and fly the whole length of the Outer Banks with Jason and his friend Lindsay on board for local knowledge and a bird's eye view of waves and fishing spots. We would all meet up back at First Flight airport in the morning. All in all a good first day on the Outer Banks.

Flying for Fun above the Outer Banks

It was still cold the next morning but clear as a bell as we headed to the airport. I flew, and the rest of the gang got situated in the rear of the plane. Being a thoughtful pilot, I asked of course if everybody was okay with bumps and steep turns, as wave and fish spotting sometimes requires non-airline maneuvers. I got a thumbs up from all passengers and off we went. Jason provided local knowledge and Chris took photos and movies. The thing that got my attention, like the day before when we flew down from New York, was the high concentration of large beach homes so close to the shoreline in the populated areas along the Banks. They all look like accidents waiting to happen and backdrops to Jim Cantori on the Weather Channel, and I flashed back to the flight I took over the entire Gulf Coast from Pascagoula to New Orleans right after Katrina when I basically saw the backdrop to my entire time growing up down there obliterated like a computer generated scene in a disaster movie. Jason told me about a house that had just fallen into the sea during the last storm and one on the brink, which laid up the beach near Avon. Then, suddenly, we were over deserted beaches that looked like they must have when Sir Walter Raleigh's "Lost Colonist" saw them over 400 years ago. Jason told me we were now over the National Park boundary and I just thought that some of the dangers those first settlers faced were still battling their modern day descendants. Yes, there is definitely a little ying and yang along the Outer Banks.

Well, we flew the shoreline down to Cape Hatteras and back and were contemplating a landing at the Real store where Jason worked and my board was going to be repaired, but one of our passengers wasn't quite up to the movin' and groovin' at 500 feet and I felt it better not to prolong her agony with a water landing in choppy seas. My karma will get a boost for that.

We bade farewell to Captain Bill and Dixon and a couple of fans from Virginia who had flown down to the monument for the day with their baby girl who was flying before she could walk. She had the eyes of an adventurer.

We watched the Caravan circle the Wright Brothers monument before heading South. Our work in these parts was done and it was time to break camp and move on down the road. Andy and I went back to our cottage to pack up and planned a rendezvous with Jason at the shop in Waves (yes, that is the name of the town) after lunch, but another damage demon greeted me at the cottage. When I went to load up my Light Speed trail bike, the rear tire looked, and worst yet, rolled like a pretzel. This was not good. I figured that someone had backed into it at the restaurant. Anyway, it was unrideable. I was running out of toys. I called Jason and asked if he knew a repair place, and he told me just to bring it to the shop and he had a guy who could look at it. So Andy and I strapped on the broken toys and caravanned out of Kill Devil Hills over Oregon inlet.

I watched the miles of beach front pass by itching to deflate my tires and get on that beach, where beach driving is the regional pastime, but that would have to wait for my surfboard/bike pit stop. Also our aerial reconnaissance had shown us some possible surf action down near Salvo, which we would check out after the visit to the shop.

Our stop at Salvo Pier only produced some "ankle slappers" and there were few encouraging signs as we scanned the beaches north and south. The local posse said that at least there was a spot where we could take a sunset paddle and off we headed towards Cape Hatteras and Slash Creek.

Well, it was cold out there in the Creek and we kind of looked like some aquatic circus or an alien assault team paddling through the marshes of Cape Hatteras. The local boys were obviously much younger and used to the temperature and just jumped on the boards in sweats. I have even in recent years either adapted to the colder waters of Long Island in the fall (my actual last surfing day last year was Thanksgiving at Turtles under the Montauk lighthouse). Either that, or the older I get, the more I am getting in touch with my Newfoundland genetic heritage. There was an Arctic air on the Outer Banks that afternoon and I suited up, eager to try out my new Patagonia 2mm wetsuit with the wool lining. It worked great as we paddled through marshes, over oyster beds, through an RV park and under a bridge.

We had come to Outer Banks hoping for big waves for the other boards in my quiver, but were forced by the elements, or lack of them, into the creek system for a sunset paddle, which is the simple beauty of a paddle board. For me it always comes back to trying to just get more time on the water the older I get, and now the paddle board allows me to get out there whether there are waves or not.

You can be hanging on for dear life on an overhead wave, praying to the surf gods that you can run far enough to the rear of the board to keep the nose above the surface as you drop down the face of the wave or you can be cruising at sunset in a creek on the Outer Banks.

We made it back to the dock, just about the time the sun was setting, and as I paddled back I had that sense of place that only exists on salty pieces of land that force themselves out into the ocean, where they really shouldn't be, and somehow establish a beachhead in the land of King Neptune.

These intruding amalgamations of rock, sand and coral usually have some kind of connection to shipwrecks, reefs and large waves, which probably explains the reason that surfers and pirates usually share a common love for these outposts. Sable Island, the Florida Keys, the shoals of Nantucket, the barrier islands of the Gulf of Mexico, the Alan Peninsula south of Tulum and the Outer Banks all possess that sense of fragile earth, which conveys the feeling that though you might be on land, you are still out in the middle of the ocean, and there are times when the ocean reminds those trespassers who the landlord really is. Fortunately, our weather luck was with us as the sun set to the West of Hatteras. We were met at the bridge by wives, girlfriends, kids and dogs of my fellow paddlers. After packing up and posing for photos, we discovered that it was way past five o'clock and time to be somewhere, like cocktails and dinner. Local knowledge had us heading for a spot called Dinky's for what turned out to be dinner and a show.

After all that paddling in the cold fall air, it felt like a "boat drink" kind of evening. Tomorrow, I planned to spend the day alone on the beach, then take the ferry over to Ocracoke, and that was just enough of an excuse for a "bon voyage" party with the Real gang. I had been hungry about five hours before we sat down at the large table in Dinky's restaurant, and had visions of steamed shrimp, crab dip and boat drinks swirling in my brain, but as I gave my order to the polite waitress a problem presented itself. Dinky's served only wine and beer. HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT vibe splashed over the table like a rogue wave, but then the waitress informed me of a long forgotten old southern tradition which allowed for cocktails in places that didn't serve cocktails - TA DA! - the old brown bag law.

For those unfamiliar with this term, it is some kind of throwback to prohibition or bible belt morality that allows you to take liquor into a restaurant that doesn't sell it. It seems way too complex and convoluted to me as I am in the habit of selling people what they want to eat, drink, wear and listen to. In any case, once I was informed of the rules, I dashed for the Green Tomato and retrieved a bottle of Haitian Rhum Barbancourt Five Star from the cabinet that I had stashed, along with a couple of bottles of California pinot, for just such emergencies and the party was now properly fueled. Pitchers of tonic and large slices of lime appeared as we cracked open maybe the first bottle of such rhum to ever be shared in Dare County. Dinner followed and it goes without saying that one would order the catch of the day out here in the middle of the ocean. You could tell that the tuna on the plate had not been too many hours from wigglin' in the Atlantic.

Along with the party supplies, I had also retrieved my iPhone from the van and showed the movie of our surf adventure from Tortolla neither Jason or any of the other Real gang had seen. It was one of those cultural shift moments of the first decade of the 21st century where a group of faces are gathered around a small screen watching home made videos. Yes, friends, the future is now and if you can't e-mail, download, file share, text or Bluetooth, then you had better step to the sidelines for the future is all around you and moving at light speed, even on the Outer Banks. Dinner finished, numbers and addresses exchanged, we said goodnight and promised to meet up again this winter in warmer latitudes.

I found my room I had reserved above the marina next door and watched a local fishing show on TV with the charter boat fleet visible out my window. I prayed to the surf gods for waves the next day, read a little of the new Jim Harrison novel, "The English Major" and drifted off to sleep on yet another salty piece of land.

Stay tuned for the final exciting segment - J.B.

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4