When It Was Not Hot

It was not hot until 8:44 in the morning. Then it got really stinking hot.


The History and Geography of Chincoteague

The island of Chincoteague is a small island accessible by a bridge from the mainland. It houses the town of Chincoteague, which is quite developed and laden with souvenir shops and seafood restaurants to ensnare unsuspecting tourists. The stories by Marguerite Henry, "Misty of Chincoteague" and its sequels, were written about the Beebe family, who lived on the island when it was considerably less developed and farmhouses resided on sprawling acreage now consumed by much more compact residential lots.

The island is protected by the roughness of the open water by Assateague, a much larger island that runs along the coast, sandwiching Chincoteague against the mainland at the southern end. From there, it shoots north for miles, crossing over from Virginia to Maryland for its upper two thirds. The whole of Assateague is a wildlife refuge, protected from development. There's a lighthouse at the southern end (or what *was* the southern end: since it was built in the 1800s, the land has eroded away at the north end and grown at the southern end), and there are a couple of buildings for the wildlife refuge center. A parking lot services a popular sandy beach. At one time, there was a school on Assateague, and, back before a bridge connected Assateague to Chincoteague, kids would have to sail across the water by boat to go to school.

The wild ponies on Assateague -- a breed known somewhat misleadingly as Chincoteague Ponies -- have been there for four hundred years. Studies have determined that the island is sufficient to support 150 of the ponies. To regulate the numbers and secure a portion of the income necessary to support the preservation of the refuge, there is what's known as the Pony Penning every July. Selected ponies -- mostly the young ones that will adapt to domestication easier than the older ones -- are rounded up and herded across the water. They swim from Assateague to Chincoteague when the tide is favorable, penned there, and auctioned off to buyers interested in the breed's intelligence and gentle nature. The first Pony Penning was held in 1924, and it's been held annually ever since. Because the numbers must be regulated for the herd to remain healthy in their habitat, because the cash is required for funding the refuge, and because Chincoteague ponies meet the needs of a great many farm owners, this curious cycle -- caring for the ponies in the wild, then splitting off a few for the Pony Penning -- is an intriguing symbiotic relationship between humans and wild animals. Most symbiotic relationships between humans and animals involve solely domesticated animals.

During the Civil War, the town of Chincoteague was the only portion of Virginia that formally sided with the Union, though scattered small towns in the north had strong Union leanings. Despite the friction that must have existed between Chincoteague and the mainland, only one small skirmish occurred in the area, namely when a Confederate ship flying a British flag sailed in and got close before exchanging the British flag for a Confederate flag. The Union quickly dispatched a ship of their own, and a brief battle resulted in the Confederate ship going down. Strangely, no one has sought to find and explore the remains of the Confederate ship.


The Bus Tour

The 17 of us packed ourselves into four vehicles to drive over to the refuge on Assateague island, thereby minimizing the per-vehicle admission costs. Ticia and Don rode in the back seat of the RinkMobile, which Leen had decorated with red lettering. It said "RinkMobile" on the back window, "www.rinkworks.com" on one side, and "I'm leaving RinkWorks 4evar!!!11" on the other. On the back-right corner it said "RU6," and the rumors that it actually said "RUG" are absolutely false. The stuff she bought to write on the car was this poofy spray stuff that comes out white and gradually assumes color as it dries on. It's supposed to just peel off, and I fully believe that it normally does, but this stuff didn't. Our theory is that it was just so stinking hot and humid that it baked on.

I picked up our ticket, good for 17 people, at the refuge center. Gahalyn hadn't slept well the night before, though, and figured it would be best to stay behind, so we only had 16. Just inside the center, where it was beautifully, wonderfully air conditioned, there was a large map of the United States. Don took a picture of most of us pointing to where we lived. Those of us around the East Coast really had to cram in, and Monkeyman had to have his finger pointed some distance above the map.

So, see if you can follow these logistics with me. The bus was parked just outside the center. We were just parked just outside the center. To board the bus for our bus tour, the bus drove away and down a road to another parking lot. We drove away and down a road to this parking lot. Then we parked and boarded the bus. Then the bus drove up past the center again to get to where the bus tour road was.

Leen's theory is that the bus tour starts at the further parking lot because that way the bus goes by the lighthouse, and our tour guide could say a few words about it. Perhaps, but it still seems odd.

Anyway, our tour guide was a delightful woman, a typically cheery Virginian, who knew a great many things to say along the way about the island, its history, the wildlife, and how the refuge is cared for. Although the animals and birds and vegetation is truly wild, it is closely monitored and cared for. Microchips are put into not just the animals and birds but even butterflies such as the monarch, whose numbers are dwindling due to a loss of habitat in Mexico, an area in their surprisingly huge migration path.

As we passed an area where trees were scorched, she noted that there was not a fire, or at least not a wild fire -- brush and vines and thickets grow so densely that it chokes out light and bars travel routes for the animals, so from time to time they do control burns of the brush around the trees. The trees get scorched but are not harmed by the procedure. At hearing this, Don piped up and said, "In Utah we plant stuff. Here you just burn it out."

Leen and I were concerned early on, when our tour guide said that in the extreme heat, it's a lot rarer to see the horses up close, because they're lying low and trying to keep cool. Not only that, but we were sitting up near the front, so we overheard the conversation when the tour guide asked the driver if she had been seeing the ponies much over the last few tours, and the answer was no. Leen and I were dreading having asked people to pay for a ponyless tour, but practically no sooner had this exchange occurred than we rounded a corner and saw a couple dozen ponies strung out on the road and grazing to either side. They're not at all a skittish breed, despite the refuge's efforts to discourage familiarity with people. They paid the bus no mind, which eased by them, stopping here and there to allow people to watch them and take pictures.

Further along, we drove by expanses of mud flats where flocks of Canada Geese and various types of herons, egrets, and ibises were lounging and hunting for insects. We also saw a tree full of egrets perching in it, which I'd never seen before -- egrets don't tend to perch in trees. I'm not the birder my wife and parents are, but herons and egrets are beautiful birds with their bright white feathers and long, graceful necks. To see whole flocks of them was a gorgeous view.

The road, only opened to the bus tours and service vehicles, is a 7.5 mile dirt road that heads north, ultimately ending about 3 miles from the Maryland border. Even having access to a larger portion of the island than the public is normally allowed conveniently, we still only saw a tiny fraction of the island. At the end of the road, we turned around and went back. On the way back, our views of the ponies and birds were probably even better. Several of the birds were perched on the backs of the horses, which is a pretty comic sight.


The Unamused Child

Also a comic sight, in a trying sort of way, was the woman and her young child in the seat across the aisle from Leen and me. She apparently was an enthusiast of the refuge, having taken the bus tour a great number of times. Her son (as presumably he was) was vaguely interested in the ponies, but overall he could not have been more bored.

Funnier still, Mom hadn't quite figured out that he wasn't excited by her, either. At one point, when our tour guide passed around a painted replica of a Piping Plover, a rare bird that nests on the island (they nest on the ground, and comically short fences around the mudflats act as a deterrent to foxes and weasels getting in and preying on their eggs), the woman squealed, "Oh no, a Piping Plover is going to eat you!!" and pecked the kid's cheek with the bird's bill. The kid did not respond.

Later, "Oh no, look! The ponies are planning their escape right now! When we get to the gate, they're going to run right out the gate and get away!" The kid did not respond.

He never did respond. He was the most singularly unamused child I have ever seen, and I think the reason was pretty apparent.


Lunch

We disembarked, piled into our cars, and headed over to a place called Don's Seafood, which was a GREAT restaurant -- I mean, the air conditioning was fantastic. The food was good, too. We had four square tables along one end of the wall. Cars arrived sporadically, because some had to go back to the hotel first, while others went straight to the restaurant. Logistical details too complicated to explain here resulted in Monkeyman having to drop gremlinn off at the restaurant, then go back for more at the hotel, including Gahalyn.

Leen and I sat with Ticia and Don at one of the end tables in our row of four, and gremlinn joined us later. In keeping with Rinkie tradition, we talked about food, mostly, and Leen and Don in particular talked about their experimentation with the local seafood offerings. Don, I should explain, LOVES seafood but, living in Utah, rarely gets the chance to eat it. So he was making great use of his time, trying all kinds of different seafood dishes, including crab, that the area is famous for. Leen got a huge crab platter, featuring three different types of crabs (blue, rock, and snow), and had far too much for one person to eat, so she offered some to Don, who was only too happy to accept, particularly since he hadn't tried rock crabs before.

As much as Don likes seafood, he is, shall we say, not well-practiced at taking shellfish apart in such a way as to avoid spraying crab juice all over his wife's salad.

She, on the other hand, was a little too good at flinging straw wrappers into my water. After one miss (because I moved the glass on her) and one miss that was all too close (because I moved the glass on her again and she almost compensated correctly in anticipation), she scored the third time (I didn't move the glass at all, and she faked me out by not faking me out). But it was ok, because this was merely inferior retribution to when I blew a straw wrapper squarely into her cheek at lunch the day before (which was itself retribution for when she skimmed my nose with her straw wrapper and hit Leen on the other side of me). I ultimately got the last dig in that night when I tricked her into looking the other way so I could pounce hug her. Mwahaha.

It only took a long time to get our check, and then we headed back to the hotel to regroup for our expedition to the beach on Assateague.


The Weirdest Shop

Following logistical acrobatics too confusing to relate, it was determined that one car's worth of people needed to stop at a store on the way to the beach to buy beach gear. They were, in alphabetical order, Gahalyn, gremlinn, Maryam, me, and Monkeyman. So while the other cars headed for the beach -- later I heard great tales about how helpful people were at lugging the (heavy) cooler and beach chairs and so forth down to the beach -- the five of us found a truly bizarre shop on Maddox Rd. to shop.

Everything, by the way, and I mean everything, is located on Maddox Road. The hotel, Maria's (Saturday's lunch stop), Subway and McDonald's (refreshingly the only two food franchises in the whole town), Don's Seafood, the bridge across to Assateague, and this stupid shop. Ok, the conference center was on a road off Maddox, and the bridge to the mainland was on Main St. But considering the large number of crisscrossing streets that service the town of Chincoteague, it's truly bizarre that all the businesses seem to be located on the one road.

Anyway, this shop we went into was creepy and unnatural in some surreal, undefinable sense. There were a lot of bathing suits and towels and cheapo trinkets tourists will buy, like these keychains with tiny cheesy rubber (or plastic?) sandals on them. Emblazoned on the sole of each one were names (you know, "Michelle" or "James" or something -- you can always find everybody's name but your own on these things) but also other things like "I (heart) Matthew" and "Flirt" and "Bad Girl." gremlinn and I joked that they did "/b wk: 1" and wrote down whatever the response was.

The designs on the T-shirts and towels were disturbingly incongruous. There were these nice pretty designs with the word "Chincoteague" and ponies on them, and interspersed betwee them were babes and beer designs, and one rack had those tasteless unfunny "funny" gag sayings. The changing room, I discovered when I tried a bathing suit on, had huge posters of bikini-clad women plastered over the walls. Let me tell you, a changing room is not a place I want to see huge posters of bikini-clad women plastered over the walls.

The people working at the shop were anything but the typically congenial Virginians, nor even the typically bored teenagers that sometimes man these things. All three (two attending a single cash register, which I didn't quite understand, and one attending the changing rooms) had foreign accents I couldn't identify. The one *actually* working the cashier, the only male, looked like a surfer dude without the cool. He was, we discovered, the slowest cashier in the universe.

"Is this it?" he asked me. "Yes," I said. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he reached over to take the bathing suit I was buying. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he pressed a button on the cash register. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he pressed another button on the cash register. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he pressed another button on the cash register. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he pressed another button on the cash register. "Do you want a bag?" he asked. "Yes," I said, stupidly. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he reached for a bag. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he opened the bag. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he put the bathing suit into the bag. Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly he gave me the bag. Quickly I snatched it and got the heck out of there.

The problem was that Monkeyman had struck out twice on finding a bathing suit of the right size, so we helped him find something, anything, that might work. We wound up with two potential winning suits, which was a mistake, because, alas, they both fit, and Monkeyman couldn't decide which one he would prefer. So he had the rest of us vote on which suit he should buy. As it worked out, I had the tiebreaker vote, so I cast it, not realizing until later (though I could have deduced it from the tied 2-2 vote) that MONKEYMAN HAD CAST A VOTE OF HIS OWN. Worse, my tiebreaking vote went against his, and he wound up buying the one he didn't want and regretting the decision later.

My bafflement at MM being unable to decide which suit to buy but perfectly able to decide which one to vote for quickly gave way to the realization that I can get him to do absolutely anything I want just by getting a friend to outvote him on a course of action he wants to take. I fully intend to exploit this knowledge for evil at a future date.


The Beach

In stark contrast with the heat and humidity we found everywhere else, the beach was refreshingly comfortable. When we arrived, I found a place to change and marched down to where our gang was camped. Sadly, I had already missed two Rinkies almost dying. wintermute had apparently been knocked silly by some nine giant waves in a row, and Sara had been sloshed up and down the beach by the onset of waves and their subsequent undertows. She later repeated the stunt for me, almost losing her shorts the second time, and I pointed and laughed -- in a responsible and safety-conscious manner, of course.

The waters were gorgeous, though. An incoming storm had chilled the waters and churned them all up, so they were breaking extra hard against the sand and sloshing up above a nominal sandy ridge they normally stay below. Though chilly, one got used to the water temperature pretty quickly, and it had nothing on the deathly cold waters of New England beaches. It was so much fun just standing where the waves broke and feeling them churn in and out and again. I didn't get in further than the top of my legs (which meant standing on bare sand until the next wave came in, it was that rough), but as I was wading, Monkeyman blew by me in a blur and plunged heedlessly into the turmoil, all four limbs AND HEAD flailing randomly about. Those waves totally owned him, and scarcely 30 seconds later he slumped, bedraggled and exhausted, onto the sand. Later, he dug a hole in the hope of reaching China. He got about as far as a couple feet above sea level and stuck his head in the hole, upside down, right when an unexpectedly large wave barreled into him, filled the hole, and dumped sand up his nose. In a responsible, safety-conscious manner, I pointed and laughed.

I wrote "RinkWorks" in the sand, complete with the red streak, and Ticia sculpted visages of Stephen and Mia, and Monkeyman sculpted a visage of a monkey. Ticia wrote "RU6," and a French girl was lingering by, trying to figure out what we were writing. Back where our stuff was parked, the American flag and the Union Jack had been carved into the sand, and both Dons buried themselves in the sand.

Nearby, some women (Leen and I assumed they were French; I heard that Sara said they were Greek, but I don't know) changed into their bathing suits right there on the beach, unconcerned about top exposure and only nominally concerned about bottom exposure. Nobody noticed but Leen and Selah, which is pretty funny. They were not arrested, despite explicit regulation against nudity on the beaches. Back in the seventies, there was a nude beach on Assateague (I'm not sure if it was the one we were at), but Playboy did an article on the place and caused so much attention and traffic that the town passed an ordinance against public nudity that the refuge honored, even though the way I understand it they didn't technically have to. So there were signs saying "Nudity Prohibited" around, including on the bus tour road, where there was no beach anywhere in sight.

Issachar and the others finished their competitive reading of The Eye of Argon, which continued to amuse, as much as it befuddled strangers nearby who overheard. Afterward, gremlinn and I started flinging his frisbee back and forth, with ahmoacah joining in quickly after. I was concerned at first, because my first few throws were way off base, but my frisbee rustiness more or less wore off. Despite the fact that my interests are mostly not physical in nature (gremlinn's too, probably), that was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. There's just something cool about hanging out on a beach and running around in the sand chasing a frisbee like a retriever, and that's not even taking into consideration the absolute best part, that it was with people I can talk to every day but almost never do anything else with. The frisbee went in the water a couple times, once thoroughly enough to get caught up in a couple of cycles in the breaks before it washed up enough to retrieve. Afterward, gremlinn and I took up positions right by the water, raising the stakes: when ahmoacah threw it at either of us, we had to try that much harder not to miss catching it. gremlinn had two tosses of considerable note: one, the absolute shortest pass, where he dropped it into my hands from the height of millimeter or so, and one from considerably further where he covered his eyes, threw it, and managed to get it right at me without my having to move an inch in any direction. Other throwing techniques were less successful -- he had an upside-down, over-the-shoulder toss that the wind was just not permitting.

When Issachar announced he would have to leave shortly, we took the opportunity to hurry through the required group pictures, which had Monkeyman buried in the sand. By this time, TalkingDog and his brother had slipped away unnoticed, so they were unfortunately excluded.


Back At the Hotel

Upon our return to the hotel, just about everybody had to take immediate showers, because we all had sand in places sand shouldn't be. Dry clothes were never so welcome. Issachar stopped by to say bye, and I gave him a Manly Chest Bump when he wasn't expecting it, so we had to redo it. Selah and Zay stopped by our room to say bye, and as we exchanged parting words, Zay deadpanned, "Well, thanks for coming," and it had the whole room in stitches.

The rest of us were staying another night. Some of us were hungry, and the rest of us should have been. After too much deliberation, we settled on a place called The Village. Leen didn't recognize it by name, but when we arrived she remembered it as being a place that was very expensive, $15-$25 a plate. After all that decision-making to get there in the first place, this could have been frustratingly disastrous, but a place called Not Just Salads, which we had heard about earlier in the weekend, was just next door, so we just walked over there. This was a great place -- a burgers and cheese fries kind of deal. I got a grilled cheese (I wasn't that hungry) and a birch beer, which Don had been introduced to only the previous day at Maria's. Birch beer is a bit like root beer but with a subtle, slightly stronger twist to the flavor. What's bizarre about it is the smell, which is eerily reminiscent of Ben Gay, or maybe it's vice versa.

The conversation naturally evolved into famous being hilarious, which is not the least bit unusual but sometimes surprising for people just meeting her in person, as her sense of humor doesn't come across online as well as some do. And then, perhaps equally inevitably, the conversation turned to Silly Things You Can Do With Your Hands, which had us standing up and meandering around the area we had staked out and demonstrating one goofy thing after another. This would have had the other patrons of the restaurant and the staff gawking at us oddly had there been any of the former or any visible sign of the latter. Considering all the crowds we ran into all weekend at places to eat, it was a welcome relief to find an empty place we could breeze through for the final meal of the RinkUnion.

Upon our exit, Monkeyman, Ticia, and I climbed on things and tried to tightrope-walk (slackrope-walk, Sara interjected) along the thick rope draped between the posts lining the path to the restaurant's front door. Climbing on things ROCKS.

Back at the hotel, wintermute picked me up and spun me around. I don't know why.

A trip to the ice cream place two buildings down from the hotel ensued. I went along at first, but it was hot inside, and the line was long, and I didn't want any ice cream yet anyway, so I walked back to the hotel, intending to return later with gremlinn and ahmoacah, who also wanted ice cream, just not yet. I found the two of them just starting a Scrabble game, and I joined in. We initially tried building a 4x4 square of words on the board but found it too challenging to build without breaking the normal rules of Scrabble, even after sharing ideas about how to go about doing it. So we gave up on that idea and instead played a game where only words connected with RinkWorks in some way were permitted. For example, "OAT" was used. "Arr" was used, due to its association with the new Pirate language setting in RookChat. "Foam" and "DOG!" and "Pate" were used. There were three separate instances of "Leen," each with a different number of E's, and the consensus was that the best word was wintermute's (who joined the game in progress), namely "RUVI." Except for allowing the playing of disconnected words, the normal Scrabble rules applied, although we didn't bother to keep score, and we might have traded tiles once or twice when it was convenient.

After the game, gremlinn, ahmoacah, Leen, and I went to get ice cream, and ahmoacah and Leen both discovered that "Caramel Nirvana" is mocha ice cream with chocolate-covered espresso beans and does not have caramel in it. I got cotton candy ice cream (I hate to get kinds I can get anywhere, even if I prefer them) in a waffle cone (which they make on site -- mmmmm). Shortly after returning to the hotel, Leen retired for the night, and I wasn't going to stay up much longer.

I apologize for not coordinating our goodbyes better. We were too zonked to plan our exit in a sensible fashion. It wasn't apparent to us until we were actually turning in for the night that we'd have to leave on the earlier side of the morning and that we'd miss seeing people who weren't quite up yet. Nothing exhausts me like a RinkUnion, in particular a hot one like that, and it's just too hard to be intelligent at the end. But, hey, there's always next time, right?

Despite all the things that almost went fatally wrong -- the initial unavailability of the conference room, the seemingly probable absence of ponies on the bus tour, and so on -- everything ultimately seemed to go pretty right. Disregarding those I missed who weren't there (and there are always some missing from every RinkUnion), I think RU6 was the best so far. I found myself more eagerly involved than usual in the particular activities (sometimes I'm not as personally interested in the Sunday fare, while at other times I'm too exhausted to appreciate them fully), and, unlike many in past years, I actually got to put in good Quality Time with people, time when I'm not too busy coordinating and organizing to hang out with people on my own. Some of that is surely due to the smaller number, but not all of it. If I can figure out what happened right at this one, I'm going to do my utmost to make it happen again next year.

That said, I don't see myself doing another RU that's not near an airport again, at least not without a good reason, which, I guess, Chincoteague was. We managed, but it's inconvenient to coordinate transportation that way. Monkeyman took Maryam to the Salisbury airport, for example, starting around 4:00am Monday morning. It's a good thing Canadians don't need sleep.

Once again, my eye is cast westward for next year's RinkUnion, but as that's been the case for the last two and finances have forced me to return my gaze to the east, I suppose it's best not to make any assumptions about where it will be.