Last minute blog for September

Last minute blog for September

Wow, I can’t believe today is the last day in September.   The month of September brought a lot of ups and downs for my family.  We did our first Walt Disney World family vacation. 

 

 

We had a lot of fun hanging out with Mickey and all his friends.

 



A couple days after returning from our vacation my grandma of 87 years passed away.  She enjoyed a nice long life, but it was still hard to say goodbye because most Sundays Addie and I would spend time with her at the nursing home she was living in. 

This past weekend my buddy Jeff came over from Pittsburgh to cheer me up.  We enjoyed a nice single speed ride around Canton on Saturday morning.  I learned that Jeff has bad luck riding in cemeteries.

On Sunday morning we did a TT in Deerfield, OH.  On this morning Jeff was all about business taking the top step on the podium.  Nice job buddy.

I also had the pleasure of standing on the podium with my beautiful Addie girl as we wrapped up the stoker / kid series title.

 

I want to give a shout out to Amber and Arryn for taking some great photos at the TT on Sunday.

Below are more pictures from Sunday’s TT. 

Thanks for reading.

 

My WV List: #2 What I'm NOT going to miss

MY LIST MY RULES.

Sorry, I might make you mad*

 (*see last statement).

OK, prepare yourself, the top 10.

1) I'm not going to miss these $^@@*$(




2) Worst meal I've ever had by far, in my life (yeah I'm lucky I guess): "pizza" from colasessano's pizza.  It wasn't pizza.  It was fried dough with 3" of cheese and ketchup.  I've never not finished my meal...or left food on the table.  Trust me.  Horrific.  Go to Morgantown Brewing (GET A BEER PRETZEL!), or Chicos (probably my favorite place to eat in Morgantown).  If you want pizza, go to Mountain State, Pizza Al's, even Yesterdays has good pizza.

3) I will NOT miss the drivers.  THE WORST.  YOU CAN'T TAKE THAT LANE I HAVE A GREEN LIGHT.  Even worse if you're on a a bike.  I fully developed and honed my road rage while in WV.  err...so I moved to Massachusetts?  [hand to face]

4) SO MANY BRAKE PADS.  I never, ever replaced a set of brake pads on my bike before I moved to WV.  I went through 3 sets while I was here.  On 2 bikes.

Less than a season.  Ugh.

6)  It's too hot.  I'm way, way too much of a Yankee to be able to deal with the heat.  One August, our power bill was $175 because of the central A/C.  Yeah, I'm a big ole' baby.  Loving this 30 degree weather up here in Mass already.  Had my window fan on all night, it was amazing.

7) The politics.  As this blog is not a political one, I will leave it at that.

Wait.  I don't like politics anywhere...whatever I'm leaving it.

8) Football weekends.  Now that I've moved, I hoped I won't end up on some sort of hit list for saying this.  But come on.  It's pretty miserable for those of us who don't like standing in parking lots, getting plastered, or not being able to drive anywhere.

I'm especially bitter about this because I paid $363 a year to park in a vastly over filled parking lot, and one day, I came out on a Friday evening at 4:47, and I had a tow truck pulled up behind my car.  THEY WERE GOING TO TOW ME IF I WASN'T GONE BY 5 SO THE FOOTBALL FANS COULD PARK.

I can't think about it anymore.

Forget about going to the hospital.  No room.  All football fans.

Really?

Classic

9)  IT'S CALLED SODA.  IT'S A SHOPPING CART, A BUGGY IS SOMETHING YOU PULL BEHIND A HORSE.

10)  This.

[I hope you find this list as comical as I did.  And for the record, as I writing it, some of the stuff actually made me miss WV even more.  Except the mother $#&@^$@ god $#%^ stupid @#$ house centipedes.  And the unbelievable window sticker]

My WV List: #3 Ocracoke

Yeah, FINE.

Ocracoke isn't in WV.  It's in NC.

But this is my list, and like I said at the beginning, I can do whatever I want.

If not for WV, I would have never even heard of Ocracoke.  If not for a couple west virginians I would have never ever even thought to go.

If not for Ocracoke, I would never have fallen in love with surf fishing.  And I mean, head over heels in love.  Obsessed is probably a better way of describing it.

It was also Carly and I's first vacation together, and something that we look forward to so much.  We used it as part of our honeymoon in 2011.




It also rekindled my love of the ocean in general.  I always liked the ocean, but being from New England, I never really got to enjoy it that much, because in Maine the water is always FREEZING, and New Hampshire is hardly any better.

And let's be honest, I never ventured further south than that (unless we were visiting my grandma in WV).

We went to the outer banks first in March of my first year of graduate school.  It was fun, but not overly so.  It rained a lot and the fishing wasn't good...but it was good enough that we wanted to go back.

Instead of Kitty Hawk though, we decided to stay at the NPS campground in Ocracoke.

It was a whole new world.

Ocracoke is so much better than the rest of OBX (in my strong opinion).  Way less people, no chain stores, no chain restaurants, better beaches, better fishing, warmer water...it's just better.

After our camping trips in 2009, and 2010, we rented a place to stay in 2011 with our good friends.  The fun factor went up about 20 fold.

And this year we rented a place with my sister, and it was equally amazing.  And we took Gus.
            

Now, that we've moved from WV, our trips to Ocracoke may be over, or severely put on hold.  Carly says "I'm sure we'll go back", but I wonder if we will.  Or rather, I wonder when we will.  It's no longer an easy 9.5 hour drive, it's a long 14 hour drive (with heavy traffic).

That makes me really sad.  I know there are lots of other places I could go, but Ocracoke has become familiar and I really like that.

I will always associate WV with Ocracoke and vice versa.  WV was the gateway for many "first" experiences in my life, and I am very thankful for that.

And won't forget.