Sometimes even just a few days at the beach makes a difference. Maybe it’s not enough to get a real break from the daily onslaught of reality and unreality, but staring at the ocean for a couple of hours over the course of two days, walking along the edge of the surf, watching the sun set over the sound, or stargazing after sunset can make a difference. Especially if you’re with an old friend you don’t get to spend a lot of time with and you’re down toward the southern end of Long Beach Island (NJ), in Beach Haven, and the weather is perfect.
That’s how I spent two days last week—beach time, me and Marge, towels, chairs, sand, plenty of sunblock. Can’t post pictures of restaurant food because we never went out! Can’t recommend any businesses because we never did any shopping! The most we did was buy a few groceries and drive down to the end of the island because I’ve only been to LBI once, when I was a child.
Being together with Marge felt like the old days. Back before I got married, she and I had lived across a fire escape from each other and would often put together our dinners by “I have some of this, you have some of that …” We did the same thing at the beach.
We had also spent a lot of time in clubs with bands. A lot. These days she’s a Dave Matthews fan so at the beach house we were constantly doing a battle of the bands between DMB and Frank Turner (with and without the Sleeping Souls). I think I won but she certainly did educate me on the depth of Dave’s music and the guitar stylings of Tim Reynolds. (We even had a little Frank moment on the beach when I was wearing a Be More Kind shirt and ran into someone who said, “I don’t believe it! Frank Turner!”—a highlight of the trip.)
The best part of being on the beach was watching the surfers. I’ve been to California plenty of times but I never saw better waves than were breaking at Beach Haven while we were there. The surfers took full advantage, morning and evening. I could have stayed for days just to watch them.
But work and the real world called. And I answered. Thought about putting a little sand in my suitcase so that when I got back home it would spill out on the floor and I would feel beach a little longer. But I knew that then I would just have to pull out the vacuum cleaner and I wasn’t eager to get that far back into reality. I can’t say this enough: If you get an opportunity to go visit the ocean, even if it’s just for a few days, take it. Beach. It’s worth it.
