THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508240269
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER CHRISTMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
I don't know about you, but Felix made me very antsy.
It wasn't the fact that I couldn't purchase bullets, as I've never done so and never plan to. It wasn't the waxy weathermen smiling before bunches of blowing sea grass - although they were quite annoying.
What I truly missed was playing in the ocean. With every flutter of the red ``NO SWIMMING'' flags that had vexed me for days, I longed more than anything to splash in the salty froth.
But I stumbled upon another way to feel revitalized by water and ride the waves without plunging to a watery grave - bumper boats.
One sunny Tuesday, I and three new friends - Misty, age 14, Jesse, age 9, and Michael, age 8 - went to Kitty Hawk Water Sports in Nags Head to bump each other senseless. Bumper boats cost $6 per 10 minutes of fun.
None of us expected to get wet, so all of us - except for Michael who had the foresight to wear a bathing suit - came dressed as we were in shorts and T-shirts.
We watched as the people before us steered their boats - fat, colorful rubber doughnuts bobbing on a swimming pool-like body of crystalline water. Smiling and screaming, the people looked like they were having a blast.
And they looked soaked.
We hurriedly kicked off our shoes and boarded our boats. An employee explained that I could adjust the speed of the gas-powered boat by pulling back on the metal throttle to go faster or push it forward to slow down. To steer, all I had to do was move the handle in the direction I wanted to go.
Simple, I thought.
We laughed hysterically as Michael, who didn't quite understand the steering process, transformed into a human spinning top right there on the water. Pushing the handle all the way to one side, Michael howled as he rotated around in circles.
``I thought I was gonna puke,'' he said later, laughing.
The next laughs were on Misty, Jesse and me. We quickly realized that the people before us got drenched not by bumping into one another, but by getting stuck beneath the spray of a sprinkler spouting up water from the center of the pool.
Once I got caught by the watery wrath of the sprinkler, I could not get away. Water rushing down my hair and back, I tried vainly to get away by pulling back the throttle for full power. Bumper boats are a little difficult to steer once the waves start generating. Luckily Jesse bumped me from behind and nudged me out of the waterfall's web.
For the rest of our time, we floated around the pool, gleefully tapping each other with our springy boats. We even got an extra three minutes of bumps because the employee watching the boats was finishing his sandwich.
I was pleased to find out there is no whiplash factor with the bumper boats as there is with bumper cars. You can't really ram anyone if you tried - and believe me, we did.
But you will get delightfully drenched. MEMO: BUMPER BOATS
Kitty Hawk Water Sports
Milepost 16 on the Bypass
Nags Head
441-2756
Timbuck II, N.C. 12
Corolla
453-6900
Waterfall Action Park
N.C. 12
Rodanthe
987-2213
Wet 'N' Wild Bumper Boats
Milepost 6 1/2, beach road
Kill Devil Hills
441-0264 ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by VICKI CRONIS
Misty Curtis, left, 14, and her sister Jesse Curtis, 9, enjoy
bumping each other using the bumper boats at Kitty Hawk Water
Sports.
by CNB