A (first) day at the beach

So, we made sure we were mostly packed for the trip on Saturday, as we knew Sunday's schedule was brutal. 7:00 am bike ride, 10:30 mass (9:45 arrival for musicians), brunch at a friend's house, followed by our granddaughter's b-day party, and finally, delivering the dog to the friends who are watching him for the week. (It turns out he probably could've stayed at home, but instead he hung out with his sister; they hadn't seen each other since she left the litter in January of '04; we got him a couple weeks later. The sister belongs to one coworker, both parents to another.) And Saturday I didn't end up getting the grass cut, so I had to squeeze that in between mass and brunch, on a pretty hot day. Despite all the activity scheduled on the day before we left, it ended up being a fairly stress-free and thoroughly enjoyable day for us.

Monday we got out a little later than we usually like, but the 5-year-old bypass around downtown Columbus kept that from being the traffic nightmare it would have been before. We arrived at my wife's parents' house in plenty of time to help with dinner. It was a pretty nice evening with them. The only minor glitch we had was realizing we should have packed a separate bag for this night, but we just fished what we needed out of our suitcases rather than dragging everything in, with a resolution to pack smarter before leaving Ocean City.

The drive across the Chesapeake and to the ocean on Tuesday was uneventful. A much later start than we planned, but the mrs. didn't sleep well the night before so made up for it a bit in the morning. What the hey - we were on vacation. If we got to the beach a little later, it might just mean we could check in when we got there. As usual, the wife was nervous going over the Bay Bridge, and then her bladder insisted on a short break in Salisbury, but as it turned out, our room was indeed ready for us to check into when we got there. And we were within a block of each sister's condo.

Even with the later-than-planned arrival, we had most of the afternoon at the beach. I swam in the ocean, eventually tiring and walking the few blocks back. It's been entirely too long since I last swam. In the evening we had a wonderful dinner prepared by our nephew's girlfriend. The highlight had to be the just-spicy-enough gazpacho with a cantaloupe base, roasted corn, and sweet red pepper. Then we pulled out Catch Phrase, the guys increasingly amused and the wives more frustrated over what became an embarrassingly one-sided scoresheet: 9 games to none, and it's been a really long time since I've been called a certain noun that starts with "f" and ends in "ers," but nobody wanted to quit until the individual games began growing one-sided at the end. The ladies would regain a measure of satisfaction the following night with a 2-2 draw.

As we settled into bed that night, the mrs. said that she'd already had a wonderful time, regardless of how the rest of the trip went. I pretty much had to agree.