Over the weekend, Lee and I spent a few days at the beach. It was my birthday present to myself, because I love the beach, and it didn't look like I was going to get to visit it this summer unless I took matters into my own hands. (Not counting the trip I took with Kellie to Florida, but that was more of a shrimp-focused trip than a beach-focused trip.)
Because I am not yet at the point in my life where I go to sleep each night in a big pile of money, I booked 2 nights at a pretty affordable hotel about 20 minutes inland. My basic plan was to get there Friday night, spend Saturday at the beach, check out Sunday morning and then visit the aquarium before heading back home. When I made this plan, it didn't really occur to me that I had given myself only one day in which to complete all of my beach-related sunbathing and frolicking.
Friday night we arrived in the midst of the most intense storm I'd seen in some time. At one point, there was even hail. Welcome to the beach! the hail said as it bounced off the hood of the car. After I went inside the hotel and checked in, we sat in the car and tried to wait out the worst of the storm before we carried our bags in. I called my brother and asked him to check weather.com and tell me what the forecast was for Saturday, my One Shot at lying on the beach. He said that the chance of rain was only 20%, so I was hopeful. I hung up the phone and explained to Lee that we had to get out to the beach as early as possible the next day, so that we could maximize whatever sunshine the day might have to offer.
The next day, we rolled out of bed at around 10am. I looked out the window at a gorgeous day. The sky was clear blue, and the sun smiled kindly down at me. Don't worry! I have many hours of searing, beach-friendly UV rays planned for today! I felt comforted. I didn't even mind that we were going to have to go to Target to buy Lee a new bathing suit before we could go to the beach. While he took a shower, I pulled my hair back into a braid to keep it out of my face during all the great times I was going to be having on the beach. About an hour later, we left the hotel to get some food.
About an hour after that, we had finished eating. It was already noon and we still had to go to Target and get dressed before we could head to the beach. I glanced anxiously out the window. Still here! the sun shined down. I'll be here as long as you need me! Lee and I headed out into the sweltering (yet glorious!) heat to get him a bathing suit. After another 45 minutes, we were back in the hotel, and I began the arduous process of suiting up and thoroughly sunscreening myself.
Around 1:30 I was finished. I looked adorable, and sun-resistant. Meanwhile, Lee had turned on Animal Cops Philadelphia, which I sat down to watch while he finished getting dressed. Around 2pm, he was also ready, but at that point the Animal Cops had found a neglected husky with a big open wound around his neck from a makeshift rope collar, and I was sobbing. Obviously, we had to wait and see if he was going to make it. I was getting nervous about the time rapidly slipping away, but the sun was still peeking around the curtain, so what was there to worry about? Not a thing! answered the sun. Well done on all that sunscreen, by the way!
We finally left the hotel at around 2:30 (I think the husky turned out to be ok) and drove out to the beach. I had never been to this particular beach before, but I assumed it would be like most of the other NC beaches I had been to - pretty low-key, not too crowded, mostly just houses and ice cream shops, and plenty of parking and beach access. I hadn't really considered the fact that a small beach in close proximity to a city might be a little more intense than that. The island was really only wide enough to accommodate about 2 streets and 3 rows of houses, and every inch of it was covered in people and cars. When we stopped at a stop sign, overtanned bikini-ed young ladies with tramp stamps clambered over the hood of our car in order to reach similarly overtanned and drunken young men with tribal tattoos. Also, there was no parking.
After driving around in circles for a little while, we managed to find a parking space that someone was about to vacate. Unfortunately, it was a metered spot and we only had 2 quarters between the two of us. This situation called for an embarrassingly heated conversation with me on the side of "I'll just use my debit card to get a parking pass from that machine over there" and Lee on the side of "That machine probably doesn't apply to the metered spots, therefore my car will be towed and we'll be arrested and live the rest of our lives in jail." (By the way, that little bit of neurotic pessimism is proof positive that he and I are meant to be together forever and always.)
Once we finished arguing, the sun shined down on us with benevolent approval. We trudged out onto the (similarly crowded) beach and settled down. I took off my shorts and tank top and layed down with my book, while Lee looked out over the hazy sea. Twenty minutes later, when I looked up to watch some toddlers splashing around in the waves, their water-logged diapers expanding in their adorable little swimsuits, I realized that my faithful friend the sun was trying to slide inconspicuously behind some clouds. Huh. Where was he going? Peace out, sucka! was the last thing I heard from him that day. I think his farewell may also have been accompanied by an obscene gesture, but it was hard to tell, what with the glare.
Not long after that, I felt a water droplet land on my shoulder. I looked around, curious. "Did you feel that?" I asked Lee. "No, what?" he said. "I think I felt a raindrop." Another one hit my arm. "Seriously, you don't feel any rain?" "No, I don't feel anything." Two more trickled down my back. "Ok, it's definitely starting to rain, Lee." "What are you talking about?? ... oh, I feel it now."
Five minutes later, an hour after we had arrived, it was pouring on the beach.
For a few minutes I looked around, thinking about all we'd been through to try to get to the beach that day - the shopping trip, the sunscreen process, the bickering over parking - and wondering if we could just wait out the rain. Then suddenly I felt something snap inside me, and I burst out laughing. "What?" Lee said, looking at me anxiously. I think he'd been waiting for some sort of outburst on my part, but this wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting. I laughed even harder, looking and feeling like a damn nutjob, sitting in a bathing suit, on a beach towel, in the pouring rain.
"We... we...." I tried to speak. "What?? I can't understand what you're saying!" He looked incredulous. "We... took forever getting here..." I was gasping now, and I could barely see through my watering eyes and the raindrops collecting on my eyelashes. "We took forever to get here... and now... it's raining!" I couldn't stop laughing, and now I was crying, too, rocking back and forth on my beach towel in hysterics. At this, Lee started laughing too, and I wiped the salt and rainwater from my eyes and looked around the beach. People were huddled on their towels and blankets, under boogie boards or umbrellas, trying to avoid getting rain in their faces. A few yards down the beach a large group of beachgoers had sought refuge under the fishing pier.
I looked out to sea and started to calm down. The horizon was blurred where the ocean blended with the stormy sky into a uniform steel gray, not the view I'd looked forward to all day, but beautiful in its own right. After we'd both stopped laughing, and I'd stopped crying as well, we decided to just gather up our things and head back. We squished into Lee's car (which hadn't been towed after all), trailing sand behind us and sliding on the seats, lubricated by water and sunscreen. As we turned the car back toward the hotel and I watched the windshield wipers struggle to keep up with the downpour, I felt more relaxed than I had all week.
No comments:
Post a Comment