Beach Week. We’ve looked forward to this week every year for the past decade. My mom gets a beach house (First Wave) in Nag’s Head, NC and my siblings and their families come to spend some “quality” family time together. Since I had just come in on the red eye from Seattle, Jenn drove this year. It’s funny; the journey isn’t nearly as long when you’re sleeping. And since we left later than usual (around 3 hours), we had to change our initial stop to the Weeping Radish brewpub (http://www.weepingradish.com/). Weeping Radish used to be a family favorite German restaurant when it was located in Manteo, but now it takes care of business on the road to OBX. The meats and vegetables are all local, and the beer has gotten more mainstream. I had a BLT (gotta love bacon) with their IPA 25, a specialty beer brewed to celebrate their 25th anniversary. It was a good stop, and we made it to the beach before the rest of the family (3 hours later and we’re still #1!). 
I have my favorite “beer related” activities for the week. My first is Chip’s Market, the local beer store that endorses fighting beer snobbery. It is right next to the pottery place that Jessica made a beautiful psycho fish, so I went in and got my beer for the week. There are a lot of cans (more environmentally friendly) that I’ve never tried (SKA Mexican Logger, Carolina Sky Blue, Mother Earth Sunny Haze, etc.), so I picked them up for the week. They also had some unique bottles, including Mother Earth Tripel Over Head (a Belgian Tripel aged in bourbon barrels), Uinta Crooked Line Series (Cockeyed Cooper barrel aged barleywine and Labyrinth black ale), and several new “Hatter” IPAs from New Holland (Black Hatter, Rye Hatter and Oak Aged Hatter). The place is my favorite on the strip, and allows me to drink quality ales amidst the Miller Lite.
Next is Outer Banks Brewing Station (http://obbrewing.com/), our normal first stop that we managed to make for lunch on Wednesday. This was a real treat this year, with the four “big” kids sitting by themselves and ordering (although they were a little stingy with paying). They have grown up so fast. Mom and Dad had gone off for a much deserved quite lunch, so the rest of us were here at OBBS. I got the Cuban sandwich with their Sledgehammer and Tongs Strong Ale (pretty potent). They also make their own sodas, and I got to try their Ginger Beer (very sharp, just like they make in the Caribbean).
Finally, there’s beer day. The goal is to drink a beer an hour while the sun is up. That would be 5:51AM until 8:20PM, or 16 beers. Sounds like a lot but over the course of a day it is no more than one an hour, and if you stay with light beer it really is more of an endurance test of staying hydrated with water than fighting drunkenness. This years’ event was postponed due to mini-golf in the morning (drinking, driving, and kids in the car is NOT cool), but we worked on keeping the spirit alive during the day. We switched to bud light in the afternoon to help my sister Dana from having to take her beer home (no need to thank us). Our lesson learned was to not wait until the last day of beach week, and perhaps increase the challenge a bit (if 16 beers is no problem, would 24 be out of the question?).
Again, it was a great week. I’ve been away from the office 5 of the past 7 weeks, so I’m looking forward to getting back to a routine at work. I’m also looking forward to spending more time with the kids over the summer. This past week reinforced for me that I need to stay involved as both of them get closer and closer to being teenagers. - 5785/11035"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?" - Stephen Wright
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