By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea.....

Roomie lives 3 blocks from the ocean.  Coming from the desert southwest, this was about as perfect an end to my New York sojourn as I could have imagined.  She's the Weather Goddess - bright clear skies and big big waves on Saturday and then a lightly overcast Sunday made it possible for us to bronze our bodies and then cement the tan without over-doing it.  Can you tell that we spent every weekend of our teen years perfecting the process?  Memories of buses to the beach and kisses under the boardwalk kept us chattering away like magpies.  We laughed at the 20-somethings who arrived as we used to do, in small groups looking for the spot on the beach where the rest of the gang was hanging

See how neatly they are lined up, all in a row?  Soon after I took this photo, three more girls arrived.  There was no room in the line-up for their beach chairs, and they were forced to create a second tier.  That was fine for two of them, who opened their magazines, dug their toes into the sand and relaxed.  The third girl was unhappy.  She wanted to be with the bigger group.  She sat in the sand, smooshing herself between two of the chairs until their inhabitants shoved her legs away.  It's unpleasant to watch a pouting young adult, but she was like a train wreck holding my attention. She walked to the front and tried to face them, but her chair was in the second row and the sand was in her suit and she was unhappy.  None of them swam, so she couldn't steal a chair.  Her attempts to initiate conversations were stymied by the neck wrenching required by those in front.  Shades of high school...... some things, I guess, never change.

The chairs that G'ma and Daddooooo brought to the beach in my childhood were upright, with wooden arms and plaid plastic woven backs and seats and they weighed about 50 pounds.... or that's what they felt like as we schlepped them across the sand.  Our beach umbrella had a wooden pole and heavy metal spokes holding the striped canvas top.  Today's beach goers have much lighter and brighter equipment

Aluminum poles and lightweight reclining chairs and boogie boards and is that underwear on the back of the chair?  I was too afraid to get closer to see for sure.

Roomie has the perfect solution for holding the beach blanket in place

The flip-flop ratchets up and down to grab the blanket, and the yellow base has a spike which anchors the contraption.  We were the only ones with such fancy accouterments.

The next day was cloudier, but the breeze was gentle and the sun still felt warm on our skin.  We made friends with the family who had settled nearby, and Mike-the-Dad managed to figure out how to attach the string and the tail to the kite I'd received from Daddooooo in 1972.  It has lived in the trunks of my cars for the last 30-some years, and I've never taken it out of its pouch

It fell into my way when I put my suitcase in the trunk on my way out of town, and I shoved it into my carry-on on a whim.  Mike's kids, Jesse and his girlfriend/older sister Maya

were able assistants, and Roomie, MTF and I enjoyed watching the bright colors against the grey sky.  The thank you's and gymnastic demonstrations and giggles and hugs brought sunshine to the gloomy day. And now, they are semi-famous here in The Burrow.

After 5 hours of girl-talk we were ready to leave.  The soft sand, the smell of the salt water, the families sharing picnic lunches, the lifeguards .... I was 5 years old again, riding on Daddooooo's shoulders as we made our way down to the shore for fishing