The Stewart Blog

John and I spent yesterday at Assateague and I learned two important things. First, bring a friend to the beach with John. Second, don’t wear a tankini to boogie board in.

The friend is useful for keeping John happily occupied while I read my book. However, the waves were so rough that I would have been swimming alongside them anyway so the lack of a friend wasn’t an issue. I don’t think I’ve ever been in surf that was so pounding and unforgiving. When the waves pulled away, instead of a little bit of sand pulling away from my feet the water carved out a canyon.

We frolicked in the waves, but not for as long as we might have since we were fighting the water the whole time and often getting smashed by the waves. Today my arms are sore from holding so tightly to my boogie board. There were plenty of people at the shore’s edge, but few really ventured beyond knee deep and most didn’t even go that far. A couple of times we did go out beyond where the waves broke, but found there was a pretty strong northwardly drift so didn’t spend too much time out there. I felt a little better about how we handled the surf when I saw a rather large man get knocked down by the waves when he turned his head for a moment.

The tankini brought about its own set of problems. First, the skirt kept flipping up and every time I stood up after riding in and I had to smooth it back down. Or rather peal it away from my back and flip it into place. Next, when the waves are pushing you along the sea bottom, it isn’t nice to have your top slide up so your belly can grate against the sand. Finally, when I went to the bathroom later and started to pull the bottoms down an entire beach worth of sand threatened to fall out. So I had to go take an unplanned shower to deal with the issue. Next time, I’m wear a regular suit, even if it is my purple one which John says makes me look fat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 4:00 pm and is filed under AWS, Travel, Family . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.