seperate vacation

For Jim and me, though, the whole point was not to know exactly what was coming next. We didn’t dread the unexpected; we welcomed it. We worked it right into the agenda, by sketching out a basic scheme (head down to Cape Lookout with tents, fishing gear and boat) but making sure to keep all the details as vague as possible. That way, something surprising was bound to happen. The Plan was so broadly—might I say brilliantly—conceived that anything that happened was a part of it. No matter what came nest, The Plan was running like a fine watch, and everything was right on schedule. When The Plan went plunging wildly off the tracks, well, that’s exactly what we hoped would happen.
In this case, the unexpected took the form of weather. For about a week before we left Virginia, the weather reports from the Carolina coast were a trifle on the damp side: A huge low pressure system was stalled in the area, producing heavy rain, localized squalls and thundershowers. The morning before we were supposed to leave, we decided to postpone the trip. It was only prudent, we figured. It took us about three hours to recognize the utter foolishness of prudence. Life is short and uncertain, and if we didn’t go now, we might never go. We’d both be 65 before we knew it. Besides, we just felt like it.
It was warm and sunny when we left home, but by the time we reached the coast, it was apparent that every once in a while the weatherman gets it right. We were driving directly into a vast and majestic electrical storm. Immense panoramas of evil darkness, roiling with menace. Then, quite mysteriously, we drove right out of it. By the time we reached the water , it was no longer raining.
We off-loaded the boat and settled her in the water. The vessel was a 12-foot  flat-bottomed dory that Jim and his brother had built by hand in Oregon. She had a sail that could be unfurled in event of wind, but everything was dead calm now, eerily calm, and it looked as if we’d have to row the four miles across the sound to Cape Lookout.
“You gon’ drown, boys!” an old guy bawled, sitting in a nearby pickup wasting his life. “It’s gon’ squall, ain’t you heard?” We pushed off anyway, hoping the storm would hold its breath till we got across.