The Return of the King

About a month or so ago, my man The King, a fellow Bourne Braves intern, sent me a facebook message. His family was getting a house on the outer banks of North Carolina for a week, and he invited me to come by.

Now, as odd as it is to join someone else's family vacation, I was excited to see my homey again.

They were arriving a week ago Saturday, sometime in the afternoon, which was perfect. I had national anthem auditions that morning at the stadium, so the timing looked like it would work out just about perfectly.

I printed directions off MapQuest that morning. They estimated the drive to be more than 5 hours, and the directions involved NO interstates. I decided I could be smarter than MapQuest. All I had to do was take a right when I left the stadium. MapQuest said go left, I was going right. Easiest thing in the world.

Well, I decided to buy a couple CD's for the drive, so I went left out of the stadium to get to Best Buy. Then I got out of Best Buy and went the same direction. The astute observer would notice I was now going MapQuest's way, not my way.

Turns out if you drive through Maryland, Virginia and some of North Carolina without taking the Interstate, you encounter about a million stoplights.

Who knew.

So, I finally get out there, and I get a text from the King. Their connector flight had been delayed, and they were going to be arriving about 2 hours after me. Not a big deal. They told me I could go pick up the keys and gave me the address for the rental company. The address was some number on the Croatan Highway.

Now, the outer banks are not a very wide place. There isn't a lot of room for highways. I drove around for about 45 minutes looking for the hwy, up and down Highway 158 and across a bunch of cross streets. There was no Croatan Highway. I texted the King, and he said it was on the Intersate and East Belmont. I had noticed that 158 split the roads East from West, so I went on the East side and drove until I found Belmont. I took Belmont back to 158, and BAM, there was the office. Fantastic. Ancient name for the big local highway. Sweet.

So I checked out the office. It was closed, but the keys were supposed to be outside somewhere. There was a big red mailbox thing, and I opened it, and it was filled with phone books and magazines. After thoroughly searching the box and all around the rest of the premise, I determined that the keys were not there.

I called the King, and he talked to his parents, and they were at a loss. We hung up in a state of confusion. A couple minutes later, they called me back, and suggested the keys might be at another branch of the rental office, a couple miles down the highway. I got back in the car, drove down the highway and found the new office. There was a similar big red mailbox thing, but this time the keys were inside.

BOOYAH!

So, I went back to the house. It was amazing. I walked in the front door, and there was a pool table, just hanging out. Also on the ground level was a garage, a bathroom, a big bedroom and a mini-fridge.

The second level was four bedrooms, two with big beds, two with bunk beds, and there was a hot tub on the deck.

The top room had the kitchen, a dining room, a big great room with a big tv and great surround sound. There were also big decks on each level of each side of the house, there was a pool in back and the ocean was across the street.

So, I went downstairs and shot pool until the King and his parents showed up.

It's kind of anti-climactic, but we pretty much just hung out for the weekend. We watched a bunch of college basketball, and a bit of Rock of Love and some Curb Your Enthusiasm. We shot some hoops, played a lot of pool and Sunday night we sat in a hot tub drinking Leinenkugels until 2 in the morning. It was a pretty good time.

I could only stay for two days, which was a drag. The Kings parents are really awesome. They're all good people.

I hope it won't be another couple of years before I roll with the King again.

P.S. On the way back I took my "I'm smarter than MapQuest route", and it saved about an hour and a half.