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Easily amused Life in the Northbound LaneBy Rick Horowitz AVON, N.C. -- For excitement this year, we turned right. Let the rest of the world's vacation population scale cliffs and run rapids. We know what the trends are. We're more easily amused. For us, for here, a right turn was the height of adventure. For a dozen years or more, we've been recharging our summer batteries in this pleasant little town on this skinny little island poking out into the Atlantic. One big beach house and a gaggle of old friends -- it's hard to beat. We read. We eat. We read some more. We eat some more. We walk on the sand. We talk about reading. We talk about eating. We eat some more. Very high energy. Not that there aren't wild and crazy things to do here. There are all sorts of wild and crazy things to do here. We just don't do them. People windsurf here; the guidebooks say Avon has some of the best windsurfing to be found anywhere on the East Coast. That's nice. And don't forget parasailing. From our own kitchen window, we can actually see actual people drifting gracefully through the air, suspended hundreds of actual feet above Pamlico Sound. They couldn't get me up there with a tranquilizer dart. We have our own pastimes. We have our own habits. If they're not quite as thrilling as other people's pastimes, other people's habits, we can deal with that. And yet... And yet, every now and again, there's this gnawing feeling (I'm speaking for myself now) that we should be breaking loose, that we should be doing something...new. Something different. For me, for years, that gnawing feeling has bubbled to the surface in a single phrase. Turn right. We never turn right. Our house is at the absolute northern edge of town. When we pull out of our driveway to go shopping for groceries, we turn left, and head south. We turn left to pick up a newspaper at the local convenience store. We turn left to track down the perfect crab cake or a crunchy plate of hushpuppies or a piece of local pottery. We turn left whenever we journey to the rest of Avon or beyond -- to Buxton, to Frisco, to Hatteras. But there are also towns to the right. Salvo. Waves. Rodanthe. We zip through them on arrival day, too intent on our final destination to even think of stopping. And we zip through them on departure day, so early in the morning that nothing's even open yet. But from the moment we unpack our bags till the moment we pack them up again to head for home, we hardly ever think of visiting those places. "I want to turn right this time," I'll announce at random moments in random years. Nobody objects. Nobody has to -- they know I'll get over it soon enough. "I mean it -- I really want to turn right this time." They've heard that before, too. And then this year, with a week of old favorites already under my belt and another week still to come, I finally said the words. "I'm turning right. Today." "You're turning right?!" They were positively aghast. "I'm turning right. You can come along if you want to, but I'm turning right regardless." I had one volunteer. (The wedding vows say nothing about "turning right when he's obsessed with turning right," but somehow...) And to the total wonderment of our friends, we climbed into the car, rolled boldly down the driveway with signals flashing, paused just long enough to revel in the unknown, and turned: right. North to adventure. Which meant lunch. The first place was closed on Mondays. The local guy who'd recommended it hadn't mentioned that. The second place had fancy tablecloths. We weren't up for a place with fancy tablecloths. The third place was full. People were waiting and the service looked slow. So much for adventure -- we turned around and headed south. Door to door, we were gone for barely an hour, and we spent the rest of the week turning left again, just the way we'd always turned left. But I felt strangely satisfied. At least we'd made the effort. And who knows? Now that we've done it once, maybe we'll do it again. In another dozen years. Posted 8/24/99. Do this again soon! Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!
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Rick Horowitz