I've said it before, but turning it on just once this week made me wish I'd driven more around the island this year. Where, don't know. After arriving, I didn't want to go anywhere else. From Cracker's new Turn on, Tune in, Drop out with Me (video) today, I got good lost for once.

I'm shopping in town for our homemade Agrarian fortress
You're texting: Corian, granite or tile kitchenette in the gun nest?
Well we'll find a little meadow high up in the Cascades
Baby we won't ever come down
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me.

I love the beach and distrust it. I call the trip the most relaxing week of my year each year, and that's true. But relaxation and satisfaction are two different things, and to a great extent each year, the week leaves me wanting. As much as I may escape here, as much as I may hate to go home at the end of the week, as often as I may threaten to leave whatever job for some seasonal island work, there are no answers to be found when there are no true responsibilities, there are no people, there are no choices. There's nothing, really, to be gained or lost.

So, important people in life, I've brought them here or I've kept them away. I've hidden the escape factor or laid it out there. No matter. The situations have ended up the same. Happiness at home or away turns out to have nothing to do with place and everything to do with people and choices. Even if choices are far off, there's a certain management that can be done to treat the possibilities fairly and openly. There's a responsibility in life to care before you ever get in the car or arrive at the big bridge and fruit stands. They're locations, and that's all.

I've put too much faith in those locations, I know. Whatever ways I can hope to come here and then run magic or fight fate, the beach freezes the skinny from the ocean and burns the pale off the sand.  There's so much beauty around, but participation, as wonderful as it may be for a time, isn't conversion. If you want someone else, want someone else. Underneath the pier, the best place to go, turn around and come back, the tide's doing the same, in another direction. Has to be more?

This is how you begin a vacation.

You wake at 5:30 and are out the door at 6:30. You make it from D.C. to the island side of the Wright Bridge in five hours. Your drive includes clear skies, the usual peach frozen yogurt by roadside, a talking Exxon gas pump, no real traffic, and few speed traps. The one pull-over you see on the highway involves a cop in an undercover black Challenger.

Arriving, you and your little brother get burgers at Five Guys, fast even. You find a quality bluesman playing outside K-Mart. You see The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and you believe Denzel redeems it. You hear from the manager at your apartment building that crazy weather has attacked your windows, but they're having them replaced today. You hear from Comcast that they care about your appointment in a week. On the car radio, you find the island alternative station, the one that turned you on last year to that Wilco song you'd never before, and you hear the voice of that really amazing girl who lived in your dorm freshman year and who's famous now. You drive 30 down the beach road with the windows and roof open. You find the old go-kart place is still around.

Waiting for the rental keys, you park and walk through the wooden mall by the dunes, past the waveboards, past the badass kites and cheap flip-flops and branded island merchandise until you find the new store out back where you buy the shirt that says, "Optimism can take you anywhere," and the design is weirdly good enough to pull it off. You find your brother buying lemonade down the way at The Fudgery, and a kid hands you a sample. You take this as a sign to buy fudge.

You pull in the driveway at the house, unload bag after bag over the sand, greet the ocean on the porch, and alternate between drinking a Blue Moon and trying to capture the drive before you forget it.

Blogged here three years ago about the restaurant closing. The fam was very happy to have their hush puppies, fish and bread again a week ago in Wanchese. The warm bread was instant sense memory for me. The restaurant has reopened under new old management — the Daniels family back at the helm, the Virginian Pilot says.

There was a Corona bottle around somewhere. Couldn't find it.

Today was five and a quarter hours back, only about half an hour more than the trip down. Heard that Wilco deep cut again, and it turned out 92.3 The Tide had the song in rotation. That station did us well for an hour of today's drive, and the Outer Bank's 99.1 The Sound continued its good work to help us out of town. Hard to be upset at driving away to Positively 4th Street and friends.

(Final note, probably, on Glad It's Over: Casey wrote and helpfully ID'd it as a B-side, and we agreed it should've been on the album. He also pointed me to the studio B-side cut of The Thanks I Get. After hearing the song once on a Sunken Treasure listen, the song didn't jump out at me as unfamiliar when it showed up in the VW commercial with the tow-truck driver and the other one. But listening to the studio track, I'd definitely never heard it before. Spoke well of the song.)

The week ended well, with a return to Fisherman's Wharf (mini-post coming later), two dinners with the cousins, one of those dinners with sound-caught fish, certainly no terrific fireworks display from law-abiding relatives, a beach rescue, an almost kitesurfer, and a 4th night with friend and colleague Kristin, her cool friends and their accomplice red convertible — Kitty Hawk fireworks, house party briefly with a shirtless man in jean shorts and an American flag cap, at least we know we're free, and Kelly's club stylings that apparently started sometime after the cousins ate dinner there earlier that night — before getting up early today to drive off. The buried driveway made for long packing, but sandcrabs fleeing suitcases were good times.

Missed a barbecue this afternoon, but caught the 9th of the Yankees saving Mike's victory and began to return life to normal. How normal: New water filter, new shower curtain, groceries. Tomorrow's final day off is necessary. Ryan Adams' Follow the Lights EP is substituting for sand right now. It move, like the lyrics say, like the summer breeze.