Just This:

Beach Vacation

On a freezy January day such as this (eighteen degrees, light snow), when the onrushing chaos of life seems ready to overwhelm and swamp you, it is good to think of times when life was warm an calm. To wit: nine days ago, when I was in South Florida, sitting on the beach. Yes, it is a little ridiculous to be nostalgic for a vacation that ended roughly sixty-seven hours ago, but what’s the point of going to the beach if its effect wears off the second your plane touches down in chillier climes? You’ve got to carry that time around with you like sand in your socks. So in an effort to sustain my mental tan and to perhaps share a bit of sunshine in your direction, I give you Tyler’s Daily Beach Vacation Schedule:

9 a.m. Alarm goes off. Snooze.

9:10 a.m. Snooze.

9:20 a.m. Snooze.

9:30 a.m. Snooooooooze. Oh how I love vacation.

9:36 a.m. Roll around in bed, weigh options, decide to get up. Put on sandals, shirt, shorts, walk down to beach, buy newspaper, walk back. Conditions: seventy-eight degrees, gentle breeze, light scattering of giant puffy clouds.

9:51 a.m. Make coffee (vanilla nut, cream no sugar), eat breakfast (grape nuts, blueberries, yogurt), read paper (South Florida Sun Sentinel). Oh, Beetle Bailey, you are never funny, and yet I read you every day. Why is this?

10:11 a.m. Apply suntan lotion. This is a tricky task, because you have to be very careful to get every damn nook and cranny, or else later there will be little spots of fire scattered about your body in places like: ears, knee-pits, outside of arm pits, tops of feet.

10:17 a.m. Pack beach bag: Bottle of water, bottle of Gatorade, zip-lock bag of ice, two books (Flags of Our Fathers - a fascinating account of the battle for and famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, and a theatre history book, bleah), cell phone, room key, and latest episode of ESPN the Magazine complete with the past week’s worth of newspaper crossword puzzles taped inside for maximum efficiency. I only do crossword puzzles when I’m on vacation, but I do enjoy them.

10:24 a.m. Set up beach chair in ideal spot, align to sun, lay down. Conditions: 81 degrees, breezy, giant puffy clouds still lounging about. Waves moderate.

10:25 a.m. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

10:26 a.m. More of same.

10:34 a.m. Dig into first crossword puzzle. Since I only do this once a year, it takes my brain a while to get back into mindset of combined trivia, grammar, and “oh ho, you clever crossword editor, I see where you’re going!”

10:41 a.m. For example, “Mars or Mercury,” three letters. What? How do you get “planet” or “neighbor” or “rock” down to three letters? Impossible.

10:42 a.m. Oh. “God.” Editor, you so clever!

10:59 a.m. Reminder of why I don’t like people: A family sporting deep south accents (South Carolina, somewhere just northwest of Charleston, says my inner Henry Higgins) sets up shop literally three feet from my beach chair. Mom, dad, aunt, two kids. It’s not like the beach is that crowded, y’all, whah dew yew haive tew bee so stewpid? Top among the honey-dripping conversation pieces that I am unable to avoid overhearing:

Wife: Now, where we are, is the sun further away from the earth or closer?
Husband: What?
Wife: Because of the tilt of the earth, you know, is Florida closer or further away?
Husband: Well closer, ‘cause it’s warmer.
Wife: Oh. Right.

None of this, however, has an appreciable negative impact on my life because, well, duh, I’m on the freaking beach.

11:30 a.m. Finish crossword puzzle, go for walk on the beach. It is good and necessary to take a nice long stroll on the beach. First, if you don’t, your butt will go numb, and it is surprisingly hard to relax with a numb butt. More importantly, however, you must walk because you are in South Florida, where the beach is basically just a giant zoo of people. Penned in on one side by the road and the other side by the ocean, they have nowhere to hide as you stroll leisurely along the shore, observing their grand variety and (mostly) natural splendor. Today’s exhibits:

260-pound European gentleman wearing a fur coat and a Speedo. Oh, wait, that’s not a fur coat, he just hasn’t shaved his back since 1946.

Two super-swarthy South American guys throwing a Frisbee back and forth. One is sporting a shoulder-length shaggy mane of dark hair that makes a certain percentage of women fall out of their flip-flops. He clearly knows this, and feels that it gives him license to do ridiculous things with the Frisbee, such as spinning it on one finger like a top and while doing this, no kidding, kissing it. Someone please explain any of this to me.

Otherwise normally shaped fifty-year old man, completely bald, laying face down on a towel and wearing not just a Speedo, but a 100%, real deal, constructed-of-three-square-inches-of-material, thong. Why? For the love of all things discrete and Midwestern, why?

A deeply focused black gentleman with an absolutely ripped physique wearing a red Speedo and repeatedly doing stationary back handsprings. I didn’t ask. I mean, would you?

Two old mafia guys staring out at the sea and arguing about something. Sure, sure, I can’t prove they were in the mafia, but when they’re rocking a) Classic New York wiseguy accents b) Giant Italian-sausage-fed bellies, c) Old mafia guy sunglasses, d) Ostentatious gold chains despite shirtlessness and e) Complete disregard for everyone around them, I can only come to one conclusion: A pair of made guys soaking up the hard-earned Boca sun and arguing about who wacked who in the old days.

Middle-aged mom (complete with husband and two young girls) whose bright yellow bikini is working very hard to prevent her man-made breasts from exploding out into the world and suffocating everyone within a ten-yard radius. I’m not being lewd here, I swear. It’s just that when someone has subscribed to the “Please Apply Those Watermelon Halves Directly To My Chest Even Though I’m Five-Two” school of aesthetic enlargement, it’s hard not to notice.

Oh, and also: sun, sand, waves, warm breeze, shells, blue sky, and a perfect view to the imperceptibly-arcing line of the horizon. Again, I think that “Ahhhhhhhhhhh” sums it up perfectly. It’s not poetry, but it is truth.

12:30 p.m. Pack up sandals, walk a block back to the hotel room for some lunch. Munch a turkey sandwich by the pool, read a book, enjoy a little shade. Reapply suntan lotion, back to the beach.

1:15 p.m. Post-lunch nap. It may seem like a waste of vacation time to spend it in a state of unconsciousness, but I disagree. This is that nap that you want to take every day at work but because you don’t live in Mexico, you can’t. Well it’s my vacation, and I’m taking it.

1:55 p.m. Wake up briefly, examine beauty of world, assure self beauty will still be there in fifteen or twenty more minutes, go back to sleep.

2:15 p.m. Eh. Maybe twenty more minutes.

2:35 p.m. Wake up, gleefully do nothing. Maybe read a little, maybe stare at the ocean. Relish complete and total lack of: Traditional January weather, unfinished dissertation, job applications, need to Figure Out Future, Get Life In Order, etc.

4:30 p.m. Pack up shop, wash off sandy feet at beach shower, walk a block back to the hotel emitting loud squeaking sounds from feet. Listen, the only way to get the sand off of your feet is to use the beach shower and then step directly into your flip-flops with wet feet. You can try to dry them off first, but this will result in you looking like a one-legged guy trying to dry the spring on his pogo-stick while standing on it. And you probably end up stepping barefooted in the wet sand anyway, so just live with the delightful “shwip-schwop” sound of wet flip-flops. And remember, the retirees staring at you in utter annoyance are actually thrilled: you made their day by giving them something else to be irritated about.

4:45 p.m. Change into running clothes, stretch, strap on the iPod, and go for a nice three-mile jog. Now it may seem ridiculous to exercise on vacation, but consider that I just spent the better part of a day being joyfully, aggressively motionless. Also consider the seaside nature of the route:

Yes, all those little green dots are palm trees. In addition to the general physical and mental benefit, there are a lot worse things to be doing than jogging along the Atlantic Ocean on a lovely summer-esque evening, listening to a wonderful reading of A Tale of Two Cities on the iPod.

And that is pretty much how the days go. After running, it’s shower, dinner with the girlfriend, and catching up on all the movies that I haven’t seen (The Holiday: predictably bad, despite some good actors; Inside Man: One of the better bank-robbery movies I’ve seen; The Sentinel: As dumb as SWAT except featuring the secret service), and then off to bed.

The next morning, lather, rinse, repeat. And life is good.

Oh, beach vacation, you are the stuff of relaxing dreams, like a five-day full-body massage complete with crossword puzzles and a gentle breeze. Right now, the world is cold and cloudy and filled to the absolute brim with stress and work, but I know, beach vacation, that like a war wife, you are out there over the horizon, waiting faithfully for my return, your sandy, salty, warm arms outstretched, ready to embrace the tired, pale husk of a human being that I will be next January. Until then, my love, I will keep your picture taped inside my head, and look at it with fond remembrance when the thirty-nine degree rain is pelting my spirit. Ahhhhhh….