Vacation 2007

Originally written August 07

Right, I know what you’re thinking. What dafuck does he need a vacation for? He hasn’t had a job in over three months. And that is correct. In my defense, I will say that this vacation was booked and paid for before that bloody day in May. It was already a done deal. And yes, I did feel more than one twinge of guilt as we started to head down. But truth is, the Little Weight has been getting a bit heavier these last few weeks. And a few days of staring at the bay, hearing seagulls, waves lapping off the piers would do me a world of good at this point. I needed to see the water.

So off we went. It was us, and our friends John & April. J&A are truly great folks. We’re all about the same age, married with no kids, common interests, and yet enough different interests to make it, well, interesting. We’ve vacationed with them for years now, and I highly advise going with another couple or group for vacation. It’s great to get Tara time, but it’s also great to have another guy to do guy stuff with, fart around, make fun of the wives, etc. And I enjoy the group dynamic as well. The 4 of us get along great.

Before any trip is the inevitable buying of lots of stuff you won’t eat, and loading the car up with stuff you won’t use. And sitting in traffic as you make your way down. Let me tell you, 2 people playing the name game is boring as hell. Me an’ Tar were like kids before Xmas the night before, too excited to sleep We were both jonesing to get to the bay. For years we’ve rented a series of places on the bay. We get to Ocean City, MD, get the keys to the place and head on over. Some sort of Murphy Law of Traffic states that the closer you get to a destination, the slower the Goddmaned traffic travels. Apparently yelling at old people to drive the speed limit yields no result. Hell, they probably can’t hear anyway. You could check in from 3 on, but we didn’t get there till 4:30. As we pull up, there’s only one of our 2 spots available, and we see people moving inside. Thoughts of double-booked start to creep in. Visions of a battle royal to determine the winner spring to mind, as I tuck a pair of knucks into my board shorts. Turns out, it’s just the cleaning crew, late, and doing a half ass job. As we start to bring our stuff in, I am sure I hear one of the cleaners use a foreign tongue to the others to say step on it. Right away, the place is hot. We wait for the cleaners to leave, to see they really did a half ass job. Tar had to vac the living room again. There were drink rings on the glass tables, it was a bit unclean and humid. But, hell, the bay sure looks sweet right outside the back. We clean the place up, and find a fan to bring the cooler air to the back of the house. I really believe you could put the 4 of us in any hellhole on the water, and we’d have a blast. It’s not where you go, it’s who comes with you. And we could have a great time even in a van. Down by the river.

The place really isn’t that bad. J&A graciously give us the room that overlooks the bay. Sweet. A few hours pass by, and the sun sets right in front of us. You can see the fire orange make a line from across the bay right to our place. We watch, and it truly is something. I look up and down the docks, to see others sipping a drink, watching the sun go down. The first night we just hang, soak the place in. Our stay will only get shorter from here, so might as well enjoy. For the record, we never did turn the TV on the entire time we were there.

The next morning I am up early-7 still counts as early in the workaday world, right?-to do something I got hooked on last year. Blow. Just kidding. I really meant to say going for a run. And I hate to run. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I can’t run unless I am chasing something (hockey ball, ice cream truck, dog) or am being chased by something (it, the dog with a hose, KGB). It’s boring as hell. I can’t really run either. I prefer intervals. Kevie the health expert will now give you some advice. One of the best ways to lose weight is to do intervals, and you can do intervals on just about any form of cardio. Warm up at a comfortable pace for 2-3 minutes, than sprint for a minute. Casual pace for 2, run for one. It stokes your metabolism for hours longer than just a run. So for the remainder of this post, run=intervals. As long time readers know, I have a SummerSongs mix on my iPod. One of the reasons for this, is solely for this week, for this activity. Running to the boards, than on the boards, with the ocean to my left just totally clears my head. Calms me in a way that no other thing can. It somehow puts me in a better frame of mind and mood than can last for days. I’ve never taken any drug, but I can’t imagine one having a better effect on me.

I put the mix on, and head out covered in sunscreen. It’s the combination of the smell of sunscreen and the ocean air, the sounds of the birds, the look of the houses and the tunes that relaxes me. (In case you’re one of the Johnny Come Latelies to this site, the SummerSongs are songs that were either big hits during the summers of my youth or songs that just remind me of summer. Sprinkle in some Buffett and a ton of surf songs, and you get the idea. A lot of the songs that I had on my jukebox here on MySpace are those very songs.) I hear a few songs the summers of the 80’s. A few instrumentals that I scoured iTunes just for these runs. I’m not a motard that wears a watch, so I approximate my intervals; no big deal if I’m over or under. And I swear I can run for longer. My mind escapes to the summer when Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) was the huge song, and I heard it as we rolled into Wildwood, NJ. Keep Feeling Fascination as we were screwing around in the astro-turfed living room in Wildwood. It’s cool to hear the old songs, but it’s great to hear a surf instrumental that I loaded in January. That tune now will forever evoke OCMD 2007.

Running on the boards is much more fun than the streets leading up there. Once you get to the boards, you have to pay attention. People are everywhere; some walking, some running. Families spread out, and you have to avoid them. Kids run out of nowhere, and bikes and tram cars are around you as well. As much as my mind will wander while listening to the SummerSongs, I have to be aware of my surroundings. I know that doesn’t make sense, but for some reason it works. Plus some of the boards do a really cool optical illusion if you look at them just right.

With doing intervals, sometimes it’s possible to keep running up to the same group of people. Suddenly, I fear I go from anonymous runner to homicidal stalker. I think these people think I am toying with them. I might run past a group, then as I walk, they pass me, then I run pass them again. I wonder if they think I am the slowest runner they have ever seen. It also sucks when I get on a cycle with a true runner. One day, for a few intervals, I would run right past this guy. As I slowed, he would run by me. As I intervalled, I would pass him. I finally felt weird, and let him get ahead of me. I would interval right up to him, but never pass him. I’m sure that guy is writing about me right now on his MySpace page.

The reward after running the entire length of the boards (about 35 or so blocks, a little over 2 ½ miles) would be an awesome view of the inlet (http://www.ococean.com/oclive.html, but it hasn’t been working the last few days). I would unwind there for a bit, as there was always a killer breeze. I would catch my breath, and take my time walking back down the boards. This was a golden time; the hard part was over, now I could just stroll, ocean now to my right, yet another song on the iPod. I would often grab a bench and sit for a bit, just people watch. Watch the ocean, dozens of umbrellas flapping in the breeze. A Los Lonely Boys song came on, and I vividly remember a mother playing with her child on the beach. My mind acted as a VCR as every new song came on, another new image attached to another SummerSong. Peace. Calm.

Along the way back, I pass a few webcams I have bookmarked. (http://www.oceancitycam.com/ and http://www.kiteloft.com/beach_webcam.asp) For weeks, I constantly checking these cams, jealous of all those who were there. Finally, it was my turn to be that guy on the screen. Somebody was going to be jealous of me now. Or think like I run with a stick up my ass, either way…

On the way back Sunday morning, I stopped to pick up some crab bait. Being the total out of towners, we brought crab traps. Crab bait is apparently the gnarliest of chicken leftovers, Really, who came up with chicken necks being great crab food? I come home, and we load the cages. The full timer to our right, and the owners to our left look and roll their eyes. They know we’re not catching anything. But what do we care. It gives the illusion of doing caveman work (“We hunt and kill food for our tribe.”) Other than that, the days are as lazy as a Sony rep. We sit on the deck, fishing boats and jet skis whizzing by. We have the Sirius on (hope the neighbors didn’t get too offended by Stern. Or Hair Nation) We read books, magazines, the shore newspapers. To feel mad intelligent, J&A brought down easy crossword puzzle books. Now, I’m not saying these puzzles were ridiculously easy, but I wish I had dated girls this easy growing up. You’re hard pressed to have a more than 7 word answer. And shit gets repetitive. The clue “part of a house “was used in just about every damn puzzle. (BTW, it’s ell, a word I never freaking heard of.) And the creators sure had a hard on for Elke Summer, because “Elke” was an answer in just about every other puzzle. Still, you could at least get a bit of a sense of accomplishment knowing you finished a puzzle that was on a 4th grade level. Take that, Foxworthy.

We never ended up catching any decent crabs, though we sure fed them well. It was a bit of a struggle especially since my bride threw an entire cage into the bay, never bothering to hold the string to tie it to the pier. Sploosh, the whole thing went in the drink. (For an idea of how that looked, go watch the fisherman on my front page throw the anchor in the lake, then realizing it was never secured.) We came up crabless, but we caught dozens of starfish. I had never really seen a live starfish, so it was cool to see their little tentacles retracting, and its central mouth/stomach thing closing. We threw them back (“because it makes a difference to this one” If anyone gets that reference, please let me know). And I gotta say, these starfish sure were kinky. It looked like they were in all kinds of kinky positions as we pulled them off the bait. It was almost like that dice game made of pigs.

Sunday, J&A had their friend Aaron come down. Aaron’s a cool guy, good sense of humor, easy going. J&A are beer geeks. Aaron is a bigger beer geek. I on the other hand am a beer drinker. Sometimes I don’t need to know the type of hop, amount of fermenting to like a beer, alcohol content to drink a beer. OK, maybe I’m lying about that last part. April had brought down a cornucopia of beer to do a tasting. And Aaron knew about every damn one of them. I mean this guy was an encyclopedia of beer. In a way I was jealous. The same way he was knowledgeable about beer is the same way I used to be knowledgeable about the music biz. You could see his passion. Three months out of the biz, and I could see I lost so much. I really respected the way he knew his shit. It was kinda cool to see again.

So one night we had gone out and gotten a couple of bottles. This can lead to no good. Me and John proceed to get pretty tuned. In an outside-on-the-deck-throwing-pretzles-and-ultimate-fighting-and-breaking-chairs kind of way. My fuzzy recollection has it that it started when we took a bunch or pretzel sticks out of the huge plastic tub. We put the tub at the edge of the pier, sat on the porch, and tried to throw the pretzel sticks back in. (Have some rum and vodka, and this will all make sense.) So let’s just say if we were seeing double, we were both aiming for the wrong one. Because, according to what the wives say, there were pretzels everywhere. Deck, porch, neighbor’s deck, etc. Somehow that evolved to me tackling John on the deck. And that lead to me somehow breaking the plastic chair I was sitting on. We took pictures of me reenacting the chair breaking. It’s past 2 now, so I am sure the neighbors are pissed. We probably think we’re whispering, but we’re probably screaming like drunken hyenas.

The next morning when the wives got up, they see the pretzel massacre that was on the deck. They didn’t recall eating pretzels outside, so they horked my camera and saw the pics, and two videos we took while we thought we were taking pictures. D’oh! Anyway, it was the good kind of harmless high jinks that you need to have while on vacation. Well, the neighbors might disagree. Like I said, the guy to our right lived there full time, and I suddenly realized that that must suck sometimes. Here’s a guy that worked all his life to get a place by the ocean. These houses are fairly small, so I am sure there is some sacrifice involved. He finally gets it, only to have the house next door be a summer rental. We talked to the people to our left-while they were still talking to use before the ‘pretzel incident’. The house to our left was owned and split by two NY families. I say NY cause that had that fucking annoying NY accent. The NYers told us the week before, there had to be 20 people in our house. I felt so bad for the full timer, who probably thought he was getting away from it all, only to have yahoos like us make asses out of ourselves.

The next days were more of the same. Sunny days on the deck. 80s hair metal songs. Crossword puzzles. Early morning runs, which by the way were far more pleasant that the early evening runs, if ya know what I’m sayin. Midway through the week, we got news of a family situation that would require us to leave early. The plan was to leave OC Sat, and go to Rehoboth, DE Sat night, where we had a room reserved. Now, we would have to leave Friday. We were selfishly bummed, but we knew we would have to come back home. So that day we met up with our across the street neighbors to play our second annual mini golf game. We played at the same course I had already beaten Tar at earlier. Mini golf is big to us. Every summer we get out and play as much as we can. And in 9 summers, I can say I have never lost the Summer Series. There was a summer or 2 we tied, but I have never lost. I had beaten her here already, so the stakes were high. We break it up to guys vs. girls. I was a bit concerned because my neighbor’s son has a cast on his arm, but he did fine. So who won the battle of the sexes? Well, the term utter domination is rarely used in sports these days…. I had another Tiger like performance, which iced the boys win, and a big 2 wins on the same course. Ah, if only I had skills that actually made money.

So now Thursday night became our last night in OC. I call this Last Night on Earth. LNOE is the last night you will be in a certain place. It could be on vacation, maybe a business conference, or weekend getaway. The point is you don’t know when or even if you will return. So you better have a good time like it’s the Last Night on Earth. Thurs night was our beer crawl night. I don’t think I have to explain the concept to this crowd. Sure, the beer selection wasn’t as diverse as we might have liked, but we still had a good time. You know you’re in for a good time when the first place you go to has old school video games. Tron. Yup, with the lighted blue handle. I haven’t even seen this game in a good 20 years, so to see it again was another great summer flashback to the 15 year old Kev, rocking the Jams, pumping quarter after quarter into the machine. I had grown rusty, and it took me a while to get through the first level. Goddamn tank game gets me every time. And I had just started drinking, so my reaction time was the best it was going to get. It was a blast to play again. Especially now that I can drink while play. They also had Dig Dug and other old school games.

We take pictures at every bar. We hit a few more, played a bowling game at one. Good times. Until we noticed flashes. We had just made it to an outside bar, and we saw another flash. It was lightning. We were a good 20 blocks or so from home, so we ducked into an Irish bar-as just about everyone else did, to wait it out. Grabbed the bus back, hit 2 more bars, then went back home. I guess it was after 12 now. The storm had passed. Everyone went to bed. I went out to the pier. Further north, I could see orange lightning further up the island. It was me and the guy 2 houses up from us, just standing outside, looking for the flash. It was eerily peaceful in a way. I had seen this guy just about every day. His kid or grandkid was at the end of their pier almost every day. I’m sure he’s a local. This guy would often be sitting right behind him. He was outside every night, always a bottle nearby. He really struck me as some guy who has the life. He finally went inside. I stayed out a bit longer. After all, he could see this anytime, I had to leave in the morning.

Leaving is never easy, especially when it’s earlier than you planned. I knew we had to go, but selfishly wanted to stay as long as possible. This going back home was harder than other years. At least when I was at Warner, I knew what I was returning to. 500 emails, 50 of which might be relevant. New releases on Tues, call on Thurs, etc. I knew the drill. But one of the selfish reasons I didn’t want to return was because I didn’t know what I was returning to. The Little Weight had gone away for a week, but it came back Friday. It’s quite the dichotomy to leave a place you one day want to live at full time, for a life where you don’t even have a job to work towards that goal.

I wondered what the people did next to me to afford a bay house, 2 jet skis and a boat. I wondered what Mo the fulltimer next door did to buy his house. It was a week of flirting with that end goal, to the old reality of not having the means to work towards it. I still knew I was better off that some down there. There were tons of shit jobs I saw there, being worked by kids who barely spoke English. On those morning runs, I would see them, manning their carnival games, empty. There were bored as shit, and talk about a dead end job, unless you’re a kid. And when they did have people playing those games, they used Borat English. “Yaa number horse seven is having the lead! Ga-mesh.” A lot of the waiters and waitresses are clearly foreign. I would pass an amusement park, where someone’s job was to actually push kids around in small motorized inner tubes. Shoot me, just shoot me. Even if it’s a summer gig. I guess the guy at the mini golf has a nice gig. At least he has shade and can read, and what is there to bitch about when you’re mini golfing? Pencil not sharp enough? The occasional lost ball? Your husband’s dominating style of play?

This vacation was clearly running away for me. For a week, I wasn’t poring over Monster emails, or freaking about bills, or doubting my ability to land The Job. For a week, I saw that ultimate goal, and totally got lost in it. I consciously forgot about the uncertainty that is the reality for now. I sat there, looking at that boat, thinking if this was the time to sell my soul for a job that at least paid me well for the privilege. Maybe flirting with all of this would make me grow up or settle for a rat race 9-5 unchallenging job. If it got me to that house on the water, it certainly couldn’t be bad. On the other hand, I would be a complete bear to be around.

All in all, a good, needed time. The water did me good, even if at times it was relaxing and teasing at the same time. No Summer Rental type adventure, where I win the big race by using my pants as a sail to the boat. No One Crazy Summer type adventure; so no young Demi Moore running around, but also no annoying Bobcat Goldthwait running around either. No sunburn. Lots of sunshine and good memories, and total escapism. At least one a week, I wonder who is in that house, and if they watch every sunset.