Why I Love the Beach

If you've been following Caputo's Corner...and you need not have been following long to know...I just completed a long weekend getaway to Ocean City, MD and my Aunt Carol's house in Ocean View, DE (just outside of Bethany Beach).  The beaches of the Delmarva Peninsula are some of my favorite places to go on the entire Eastern Seaboard.  My colleague in the blogosphere Gretchen (who was just recently added to the blog roll) wrote up an excellent post chronicling the weekend.  I had to leave on Sunday so I missed the minigolf, but I stayed through Sunday.  The title of this post is "Why I Love the Beach."  I can pretty much sum that up in one photo. 

Yes, folks, that is the Atlantic Ocean.  Don't be fooled by the tranqulity of this photo, though.  The surf was quite intense.  My friends' condo was on 83rd Street.  On Friday and Saturday, the undertow took us all the way up to 86th Street before we got out.  If we had stayed in there long enough, we would have ended up in Ocean City, New Jersey!  The waves were massive.  I did more than my fair share of underwater barrel rolls and drank more mouthfuls of seawater than I'm willing to admit.  My shoulders have also been rewarded with a nice base burn for my efforts.  No matter.  It was awesome.  We even played a rousing game of ultimate frisbee on the beach (our team won of course). 

When we were not playing in the ocean, we had lots of fun as well.  You can't go to Ocean City (or any other beach resort town for the matter) without eating...a lot.  Our first stop was at BJ's on the Water, home of the famous canoe race.  The canoe race is next week...that's the subject of an entirely different post all to itself.  Unfortunately, a massive rain storm curtailled any outdoor plans we had that night, so we went back to the condo and stayed in for the night.  On Saturday, we went back to the beach, and then we went to pirate-themed restaurant Dead Freddies.  YAR!  We had to wait about 45 minutes to get seated, but that would have been the case regardless of where we ended up.  Weekends at the beach are always packed.  According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong of course), Ocean City hosts between 320,000 and 345,000 vactioners each summer weekend.  If you want a seat in one of the local eateries, be prepared to either get there early...or wait a very long time.

Also on Saturday, as I mentioned in a previous post, we ended up at Seacrets.  Ummm....crazy I think is the right word here.  For those of you who have never been to Seacrets, it's about 10 different bars in one place.  The floor is covered in sand, and there are at least 2 live bands going at the same time.  If you go during the day, you can even be seated in the (shallow) water!  We went at night so the rafts were closed, but the bar(s) were still kickin'.  The cover band in the main hall was from Philly...strike one right there.  They were OK, but I'm not really a fan of the over-the-top crowd pumping tactics these beach bands tend to employ.  Let your music get the crowd excited.  If I had a nickel for every time I heard somebody on stage scream, "GET YOUR DRINKS IN THE AIR!"

Sunday was departure day, but not until I got another 2 hours on the beach at 83rd Street.  Sunday was the one day of the week the undertow did not carry us 3 blocks north, but that's the unpredictability of the ocean.As much as I love the beach, I would not want to live there though.  It's a place where the name of the game is fun...and nothing else.  However, if it becomes anything other than that, it loses some of its luster and excitement.  I always want to be excited to go to the shore.  Besides, I have a lot going on here at home...lots of good things that I have to look forward to here west of the Chesapeake Bay.  The beach will always be there for when I'm ready to return.  For more details on the trip (including what happened after I went home), check out Gretchen's post.  I'll be back later with some more NFL lockout analysis.