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North Carolina Trip Part 1

Published by Chris | Filed under Travel

small ass Continental JetAugust 18- I leave for the Austin airport for my 8:30 am flight on Continental Airlines. I chose Continental because I’ve always had good experiences with them. My first flight left on-time and I was on my way to Houston to catch the second leg of my flight to Raleigh. When I arrived in Houston I had to hustle over to terminal B to make my other connection. Turns out terminal B was the farthest terminal from where I was and had to catch the little tram thing to get there. When I get to my gate I realize that the flight has already boarded and basically they were waiting on me. When I get on the jet I had to take a second look to make sure I wasnâ€™t on the wrong flight. The jet was for sure the smallest jet I have ever been on. It was three seats wide. Probably the max amount of passengers for this size jet is something like 30. The way the seats were set-up was: one seat then aisle and then two seats. My seat was one of the one seats by it’s self. I could barely fit into the seat. Not because Iâ€™m big (which Iâ€™m not) but the seat was small. Luckily the flight wasnâ€™t full so I had kinda had my choice of small seats. We finally get up in the air and in route to Raleigh. Of course no foodâ€¦just peanuts. To give you a idea how much room I had, I couldnâ€™t even open my laptop in my lap. Well, I could have opened it but I couldnâ€™t get the screen opened all the way. So, I put in my earphones, put my Ipod on Genre-Country and tried to fall asleep to Merle, Willie, David Allan and others. We finally arrive 2.5 miserable hours latter. I get on over to Thrifty to pick-up my mid size rental car which turns out to be an ok car (Dodge Stratus Coupe).

Tucker “rock on dude”Now, the first part of my trips begins. Iâ€™m in route to Wilmington, NC to hang out with one of my best friends and his family. The trip from Raleigh to Wilmington is about 2 hours drive. On the highway I got with a group of cars that was doing 80 â€“ 90 the whole time. So, I made pretty good time. I make it to Wilmington and meet my friend Joe at his house (where Iâ€™ll be staying). He gives me the grand tour of the house and introduces me to his youngest son Tucker who has grown a lot of hair since the last time I had seen him. Heâ€™s only 3 but has hair down to the middle of his back. He has a t-shirt
that reads, â€œIâ€™m not a girlâ€. Anyway, I see the rest of the family Kaysie (Joeâ€™s wife) and Andrew (oldest son, 13). Additionally one of my other friendâ€™s sonâ€™s (Aron) is there for the week to hang out with Andrew. The first night in Wilmington Joe, Kaysie and myself go downtown for some Sushi and brews. I have never been downtown Wilmington before. Itâ€™s damn cool. I’m shocked at how much goes on there for a city thatâ€™s only 75,000 people.

The next day we take a family outing over to Bald Head Island to meet up with another friend Kevin his wife Laura and their 2 year old daughter. Kevin grew up in NC but left around the same time I did for the riches of California. Coincidentally he was in NC visiting at the same time I was. To get to Bald Island from Wilmington we take a car Ferry and then a passenger ferry thatâ€™s run by the Bald Head Island association. Bald Head Island is a kind of Exclusive Island that you can buy/rent a house, condo. Additionally it doesnâ€™t allow cars so we had to rent a big Golf Cart to get around on. The golf cart turned out to be a lot of fun. We hung out most of the afternoon at the beach and then went to Kevinâ€™s house for a BBQ. After eating drinking just about everything we packed up the golf cart and headed back to the ferry dock to catch the 9:30 ferry. We missed it so we had another hour to wait for the next ferry. More time to drink. We catch the 10:30 passenger ferry and instead of taking the other car ferry we drive around the peninsula to get back to Wilmington.

Lisa and AronThe next day Joe and I head out around noon to explore Wilmington. We check out a record store where Joe gets some new â€œBro-down Hardcoreâ€ CD. Then we walk around a bit and decide to check out some place to get a drink. We stumble upon some bar/ restaurant thatâ€™s down below street level. We order wings and beers and donâ€™t leave for the next 4 hours. The beers were good. Turns out the bartender knows just about all of the same people that Joe and I grew up around. Joe gets into a bit of trouble because weâ€™re gone so long without letting his pregnant wife know where we are. Theyâ€™ll get it all worked out. After the bar, Joe and I head back to his house to pick up Andrew and Aron to go get some food. Aronâ€™s mom and step dad are going to meet us at the restaurant so that they can get Aron and take him home to Kernersville. After being at the restaurant for 2 beers (15-20 min) Aaronâ€™s parents show and eat and drink also. After dinner we go back to Joeâ€™s and have a few â€œnight capsâ€. The next morning Iâ€™m off to Raleigh to visit my brothers.