Can you believe that this year was my 7th beach week with Elizabeth’s family? That’s just a crazy way to put things into perspective. A little part of me always feels like the new guy around Elizabeth’s extended family, but the data are very clear. I’m not the new guy, I’m just part of the family.
Anyways: another summer trip to Rehoboth Beach has come and gone. I’ve always thought it would just be tremendous blog content to try to do a blog diary from the beach. The only problem, of course, is that you never quite know when you’re going to have time to write at the beach. You might find yourself at Dewey until deep into the night. Going to write from the beach? Good luck with a bunch of sand in your brand new laptop (sidenote: I just bought a new laptop! My old MacBook gave me 9 of the best years of our lives together, but it was time to modernize.). And god only knows how you fit all of the day’s antics into a pithy few paragraphs. It’ll be tough enough to do this recap post without drilling down too hard.
So, in the spirit of wanting to enjoy my time at the beach, here’s a recap ex post facto, broken down into a few categories.
Travel
Getting to and from Rehoboth Beach can be a challenge, but it’s also part of the lore. This year beach week fell from July 19 to 26, but I started a string of mid shifts on July 25. Elizabeth and I had been at the beach for a full week in 2024, so we decided to make a very long weekend of it this year – flying into DCA on the night of the 18th, flying back to OKC from BWI on the 23rd. In May or June, Elizabeth made a spreadsheet showing when we’d be there and asked her family to fill out when they’d be there. Nobody did, most likely for the simple reason that nobody had figured their own plans out.
A few days before we left, Michael texted Elizabeth and me and asked for our flight info in. Once I sent him the screenshots, he booked flights in and out for the same day (honestly brilliant work. In doing so, Pam picked him up in DC and dropped him off in Baltimore. He also managed to crash on Unit 501’s couch the entire time without getting called out for it).
Elizabeth did work on the day of July 18, which worked because the direct flight on American Airlines didn’t leave until later afternoon. We had an insanely innovative dinner picked up on the way to the airport:
Our flight landed in a thunderstorm. Honestly, Elizabeth did a pretty good job not freaking out. Pam and Michael picked us up at the airport and Elizabeth made the drive from DC to Rehoboth in impressively little time (even more impressive because she was driving through downpours at times). The 1:00 am arrival might honestly just be the move.
Moira’s First Beach Week
This was the first year Winston brought his girlfriend to Beach Week (not to the beach, though. Winston uses the heck out of that condo with his friends). It wasn’t Elizabeth and my first time meeting her in person – we overlapped for a very fun couple of days in Telluride this past winter – but I think this was her first in-person exposure to various parts of the Fairchild family. Unfortunately, Moira’s time in Rehoboth was even shorter than Elizabeth and mine; she works for a Senator and needed to be back to work by Monday.
I thought Moira handled the “meet the extended family” hurdle quite well! That’s not a small hurdle in a family as insular and outgoing as this one. There was only one slight snafu – she did have to make a visit to the hospital on Sunday. No biggie, right? It turns out that she had an allergic reaction to the acai bowls that we had gotten for breakfast that morning (Hungover Nolan thought maybe they’d be easier to keep down than crepes. Hungover Nolan is a dipshit.). At first the reaction was mild, but it eventually progressed enough that Winston had to take her in for an exam, a bunch of Benadryl, and some world-class antihistamines.
If it was me and this happened, I would slink my way back into DC and pray that nobody from the extended family remembered me. But Moira came back in time for dinner that night before leaving! It was a true Michael Jordan Flu Game situation – much respect.
Spelling “Drink” With a “U”
As I alluded to in the previous section, the Fairchild family + Nolan tied one on pretty good on Saturday night. Some people could blame Winston; after all, it was his pregame mojitos that really set the tone. You could blame Lyndsey; she was knocking them back at dinner that night to really establish the run. You could blame Terri; after all, she’s the one who handed me the shot of what tasted like pure mouthwash at the Dewey Beach Country Club (don’t let the name fool you. It’s a dive bar through and through). You could even blame the band at the Bottle and Cork for being too damn good.
Yeah, maybe everyone who hit Dewey that night deserved a little bit of the blame for the fun that ensued. But I’m sure Elizabeth would agree that the two people who were the most to blame were myself and Michael. Of course, there’s levels to that; I had a fun night, wandered in a not-at-all-straight-line back to the condo on the beach, and then hit a regret level of 6.5/10 the next day. Michael, on the other hand, must have regretted much more. But as Ke$ha always said – Let’s make a night you won’t remember.
The Beach Becomes a Jellyfish Sanctuary
If you swim in the ocean at Rehoboth Beach, you’re accepting a baseline level of risk in any year. Elizabeth and her cousins have told me stories of jellyfish from their childhoods every single summer I’ve been in Rehoboth. I’ve always been a get-in-the-water-and-ride-the-waves kind of guy, though, and I’d never had an issue or even seen someone else have an issue in the water.
2025 was a different beast. The first time Winston, Michael, and I approached the water, you could see jellies in the breakers. Later on that first beach day, we chatted with a lifeguard who had just finished applying a vinegar-and-water solution to a crying child with a sting on his leg. The lifeguard said he was responding to about 40 stings a day, and pretty much got stung every single time they had a lifeguard swim trial.
And that was that for me getting in the water! Elizabeth insisted on a lot of beach time between Saturday and Wednesday. I spent almost all of that time under an umbrella (getting sunburnt anyway, but it faded into a nice tan in the end) reading a book I’d picked up at a used bookstore about World War I and the Zimmermann Telegram. The book drew the Harding brothers like moths to a light. Elizabeth’s cousins’ children are getting older too, so I spent some time throwing a football and digging for sand crabs with them.
I am now perfectly ready to not sit on a beach again for another 360 days.
The Horse Game National Champion
Look, I’ll be blunt: 2024 was not my year when it came to the horse game. I didn’t win it a single time. For someone who considers their “grand prize of four wins achieved in seven games” accomplishment in 2023 as legitimately one of the greatest athletic feats of their life, this was a bitter pill to swallow.
It didn’t take long to get into the saddle. Jessica and Joel had put together a surprise birthday party for Zoe with appetizers at Stingray and a trip to Funland after on Sunday night. Unfortunately, Winston had to take Moira back to DC after dinner, so they both missed Funland time. They missed a classic night, to be honest.
The first horse game that I sat down for didn’t feel good. Things were progressing slow on my end and Elizabeth took a huge early lead. But right when she fell back to the pack, I caught fire, managing to narrowly edge out fierce competition (probably) for the final spot. 1 game in, and the horse game drought was over! I figured I’d sit in for one more while we were all there, maybe root for Elizabeth if I fell behind and heckle other players. Instead, what followed was basically the boardwalk equivalent of Secretariat at the 1973 Belmont Stakes – a slaughter of the most gargantuan proportions. The demons of 2024 were exorcised and I was once again ready to turn pro in the horse game.
The Charlie/Nolan Annual Bike Ride
It’s a tradition that started in 2022 and has now bled through four consecutive years – Charlie Harding and I renting bikes one morning before everyone’s awake and taking them up into Cape Henlopen State Park. We took them for a spin on Monday this year because Elizabeth and I were planning on celebrating our anniversary with brunch on Tuesday. Cape Henlopen has a couple of cool spots with some World War II history that you bike past. There’s Herring Point:
And there’s Fort Miles (potential wedding venue? Could be the move, state of Delaware!
We only paid for a 2-hour rental, so Charlie and I planned on turning around once the clock hit 9:00. By that point, we were impressed to discover that we’d basically ridden all the way to the town of Lewes up on the mouth of the Delaware Bay. At that point, might as well go all the way around the loop, right?
There were only a couple of complications, most notable among them being my awful route-finding skills while sitting on a bike. On the plus side, Charlie and I got to admire many gorgeous vegetable gardens from the trail, chat about long-distance bike racing, and we managed to avoid getting killed by traffic when cutting back through Rehoboth Beach. That was an impressive feat when you consider the length of the honk the truck gave us.
Charlie and I ended up finishing the roughly 20-mile ride in almost exactly 2 hours. It gave us a whole thing to feel smugly superior to everyone else over for the rest of the day. It gave me a reason to eat three crepes in one sitting. And it gave us a leveled-up tradition to look forward to in 2026.
The Anniversary of Our Anniversary
Elizabeth and I got married two years ago on July 22. It never really registered with me that for the foreseeable future, we’ll be in Delaware for our anniversaries. Being the romantic that I am, I’d looked at hotel/meal reservations in Lewes for a one-night vacation-inside-the-vacation. Elizabeth said no. You have to admire her cold-blooded practicality. We did end up getting brunch at the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel on Tuesday, which I guess was almost as fun.
Pam also threw us another anniversary party similar to last year’s. There were speeches and there was a ton of food and Elizabeth played our wedding video for everyone to enjoy. Who wouldn’t enjoy it? Archer also convinced a big group of people to finally play laser tag with him after 2 or 3 years of asking me. I’m convinced he was cheating, though I don’t know how.
Someday soon, perhaps as early as next year (3 years!), our wedding and anniversary will be old news and we won’t do big celebrations for it. But that didn’t stop us from having a good time here.
I Become an Ice Cream Legend
Shortly before leaving for the beach, I was yapping about Rehoboth Beach to my coworkers and mentioned Kohr Bros ice cream in passing. When they naturally asked what that was, I explained – that it was a beachfront ice cream stand where an ungodly sum of money buys you a giant cone with a delicious soft-serve swirl (paying the extra dollar to get it dipped in rainbow jimmies, of course). I happened to look at the Kohr Bros website as I was explaining this phenomenon and discovered that there’s a coffee flavor and you can do a coffee-caramel swirl. That became a top Nolan priority for the weekend.
Well, one night we went to Kohr Bros off of Rehoboth Ave to get my coffee-caramel swirl, only to discover that this location didn’t have that machine. I was slightly put out by this, of course, but recovered my aplomb sufficiently to ask them to then give me the most disgusting flavor combination they could imagine. The employees were only too eager to make their manager’s favorite – half orange cream, half mint. I am now able to confirm with the utmost authority that it is indeed a truly horrifying flavor profile.
The next day Elizabeth and I went to a different location on the boardwalk to get the swirl. As we were waiting, one of the employees asked me “How was the combination last night?” And that’s how I learned that:
A) Kohr Bros employees rotate to different locations.
B) I am now a legend in the Rehoboth Beach ice cream community.
Conclusion
It was a good year in Rehoboth Beach! 35 people or so turned out to celebrate, share way too many buckets of Thrasher’s, and sit in beach chairs. It’s always good to see Elizabeth’s family, and I know it’s her favorite week of the year. 51 weeks from now we’ll do it all over again.
