A Foggy Pause

The rumbling echoes of thousands of bikes crossing in and out of the Outer Banks is now just a sweet memory of another great Bike Week. Now, we're enjoying the ride in the final, brief quiet pause before the arrival of Memorial Day. Although in its anticipation, traffic has noticeably increased as we observed yesterday while on the bike for a good part of the afternoon. We had several errands to run which we incorporate into the ride whenever possible and ended up covering the distance from Kitty Hawk to Manteo and several points in between.

In Manteo, we had to visit the DMV "office." Typically, when you think of DMV, you think of the place that sucks the life force from you as you enter to join the other helpless zombies in their cold plastic seats until your number is called by an automated voice who's almost as thrilled to see you as the automated people working behind the counter. But, not so in Dare County! Here, the DMV is located in the Island Pharmacy in Manteo where you look for the far, right aisle, past the greeting cards, paperback books and towing supplies for your truck - I can't make this stuff up! - to see whether the independent contractor lady is sitting at her desk that day. You're out of luck if it's lunchtime, a Saturday, a holiday or if she's out sick (we found that one out the hard way). Oh, and don't forget to bring cash or your checkbook because that plastic little card thingie in your Mayberry-designer handbag is not accepted here. I make fun but it amusing thoroughly perusing the greeting cards while in line. They have a funny selection of political birthday cards if you're looking for one - like Obama walking with G.W. and telling him we have 100 Brazilian troops helping in our war against terror and G.W. asks how much actually is a Brazilian?

Riding over to Manteo, there were fog banks visible towards the Manns Harbour bridge and north by Powell's Point. Living by the water, you get familiar with these low-lying banks of clouds and they're definitely different than say, a storm front. Coming back towards the beach, another long bank was barely visible on the horizon over the ocean. As the afternoon wore on, the bank came closer and closer until finally several hours later, it was onshore. By then, we were going home, heading south on the beach road. The wind was out of the south and the fast moving fog with its thick cold water droplets was right on top of us.

There are things more pronounced on the back of a bike as opposed to being in the shelter of a walled vehicle. Like temperature, wind speed, moisture and yes, smells - wonderful smells like when the bayberry are in bloom along the road toward Corolla. But, yesterday in the fog, on a relatively warm and sunny day, it was cold and absolutely amazing to be in the middle of which made me wonder about ... fog. I mean, have you ever really thought about fog? How does it form and why? It was probably all covered in a science class in the foggy past of an education but now, with the internet, it can all be learned again. Well, apparently, there are different types of fog, depending on how the cooling that caused all that condensation actually occurred. One type is "sea smoke," which is exactly what the fog banks looked like, and it's created by cold air passing over warmer water. So, maybe air passing over the Gulf Stream off the Atlantic coast is what forms the banks we saw but, I'm not a meteorologist or whatever you need to be to say for sure. I'll just have to keep studying it on the internet or maybe, with luck, someone will just enlighten me with their admirable knowledge of fog.

But, it will have to wait because today is another beautiful sunny day and there are more "errands" to run.

Ride safe and see you on the beach!

Julie