Pony Island Stomach Flu

The words in the title will double as the tags for this post.

I'm up because I had a nightmare about my cat getting attacked by a dog and now I can't get back to sleep.  I should be headed to work right now but I spent much of yesterday barfing/trying not to barf and fighting a fever with ice water and the show Hoarders, which in turn inspired me to lie on my bed staring into my closet thinking, "Am I a hoarder? A pre-hoarder? Are boxes of crafting materials and computer parts just the beginning?"  It was the fever talking, I'm sure.

So I'm left this morning feeling... well, so you know how when you wanna eat a mango in a hurry, you just slice off a piece and then use your teeth to scrape away the fruit from the skin? And then there's always a little bit of mango left on that piece of peel but you toss it down and cut off another piece and go through all that until you have in front of you a seemingly-wasteful mango core and a bunch of gnawed, gnarled mango peel.  I feel like that pile of stuff. 

What I'm trying to say is that I won't be in cyberpedagogy class tonight. I think I'm done barfing but I've still got a fever and everything feels bad.  What I will do though is post here and post my Photobet on Prezi (eh, what there is of it.. explanation pending) and I will participate on the Ning in our discussion of tonight's article and I will post my own article to read for next week.  The internet is a very useful thing.

SO.

Take a look at this map and click on each blue placemarker to read the exciting narration of my weekend's adventure:


View Pony Island Weekend in a larger map

You might need to zoom out to see it start to finish.  To fill in the gaps, I flew on Thursday to DC where G picked me up at the airport and we drove to Richmond.  The next morning we set out for the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we rented a kayak and camped on a little island with nothing but raccoons and sentry seagulls (for the first night anyway).  The next morning we kayaked SO. FAR. and got SO. SUNBURNED. I might post a picture of my current state... or maybe not. Just trust me, it's bad.  We thought we were doing pretty well til we were suddenly rolled by a very large wave and all our stuff went overboard and we went overboard.  I remembered hitting my head and being under the boat, under the water, and it was surprisingly quiet and then WHOOOOSH!

I took a deep breath and the above-water sounds were deafening for a moment and then I think I laughed a lot.  I found myself holding onto our pack, one of our 2.5 gallon water jugs, both of our paddles, my camera (in a ziplock), and the map (also in a ziplock), while G righted the kayak and we tried to assess our situation.  We seemed so close to shore, but the constant and multi-directional waves and the current were making it utterly impossible to make any progress. I learned that I can't really swim in chucks.  I started to feel tiny tendrils of panic creeping up from my stomach as I became totally exhausted fighting the water, but then (cue Baywatch music) G managed to get himself back into the kayak and make a couple of passes near enough to me that I grabbed our rope and he pulled me over and hauled our stuff into the boat and I finally managed to pull myself in and then somehow we were on Pony Island.  WTF.

"My hat!" cried G. "I loved that hat!"

"My camera!" cried Me. "The rest of my photo project was on there!"

Then we both fell asleep on the beach for a while (this surely contributed to our terrible sunburns) and then realized where we were and went off and found some wild ponies and got really really close to them.

And then we had to get off Pony Island and people looked at us like we were crazy, but it was significantly easier and less eventful than our arrival.  And then: PBR, boiled peanuts, icecream, Indian food, fireworks, towel pillows, deep sleep, homeward bound.
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Then: barf.

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Now: So about the Photobet.  I have a new camera in my possession and I intend to finish the project in a very timely fashion, but I've at least loaded the photos I took before the day I left for DC into Prezi and here's the progress, sans paths or layout, the letters are just arranged in order so far, with gaps: 

Digital Photobet on Prezi

Geezlouise, this has taken a very long time.  I kept stopping to lie back down.  I'll post my article for next week to the Ning later today.  Back to bed again.