2 posts tagged “new jersey”

Beach!  Birthday!  It was good!  All of it!  I need to get a card reader to make up for my camera's weird broken deficiencies down in the Times Square area-ish today and hope to also check out the 7-11/Kwik-e-Mart and will bring you pictures of each.  Hopefully.

Either way, on Friday the Hipster met me at work and we inventoried all of our crap for the weekend.  There was a lot of it.  A damn lot.  Suitcases, beach bags, purses, plastic bags, whatever.  We pared down what we could and hoofed it over to the subway and miserably hellish PATH station to take us out of Manhattan to meet Sarah in Hoboken.  Sarah!  Who I hadn't seen in a month!  Bizarro!  We pit-stopped so Hipster could get a hot dog at Grey's Papaya since we'd recently watched a documentary on hot dogs (?????) and felt it necessary to break the fourth wall.

It was awesome to be back with Sarah again.  U COMPLETE ME.  The drive down to Long Beach Island was very swift and Bob Dole assisted with only minor pit stops to get pizza and a bathing suit (she conveniently, um, forgot her luggage.  So we were running a little behind schedule here).  We stayed at a shitty beach 'motor inn' which had decent cable and comfortable beds on my parent's dime so there wasn't much complaining to go around.

My actual birthday went down quite well.  The haul was good (some awesome presents including a subscription to Reason, a t-shirt that says 'Brooklyn' in Arabic, jewelry, a carton of cigarettes and a giant bottle of vodka!  Thanks Sarah!) and the weather was better.  I bought the two of them motivational donuts to get out of bed before noon and we headed down and spent the rest of the day at the beach.  Where we subsequently turned from good looking, thoroughly thoughtful people into red- faced idiots and forgot to re-apply sunscreen after swimming or standing in the surf like an old lady trying to get better reception for our Blackberry (shut up).

Hilarity did not ensue but sunburns, deliciously raw sunburns on various splotchy parts of each of our bodies, did.  We made a pact to not tell anyone where they were burned if they hadn't brought it up (I have a theory that sunburn doesn't hurt until you know about it) but just putting clothes back on was signal enough.  Even my NEW POSITIVE THINKING was not enough to overcome the pain radiating from the back of my legs.  Yowza.

We resorted to being pretty lame since we didn't actually know where anything on the island was and ended up at a twenty- four hour dinerish type place called Chicken and the Egg which I continually called Chicken Town, Egg Shack, etc, even (especially) to our waiter's dismay when he continually corrected me.  The next day we finished our trip with more Chicken Time, some light shopping and a detour to my mothers' friends' house (they summer on LBI) to receive more presents and hamburgers.

Although we got caught up in return traffic and made Sarah go thru the Lincoln Tunnel to drop us off at the building (carrying bags back with sunburns would've been ridiculous) it was a good trip but would've been better if it were socially acceptible to drive long distances naked.  Hopefully in the next few days my burn will subside into a nice tan and I can settle in to my endless, mind numbing work routine once again.  Awesome.

So in light of last year's birthday debacle (whereby all friends forgot it and I ended up hanging out by myself on my first weekend off since February, a way suckier scenario than it would be now) I'm extra charged up to do something awesome this year.  In fact, I think I might just be turning 21 again.  22 seems a little over-rated and realistically I should probably start shaving these years off early.  Not aging is something to celebrate.

Since I don't have any rolled over vacation time, available money or resources to do something reallly awesome where does one go?  Down the shore, of course.  July 7th conveniently falls on a weekend this year and since they moved up the Transfomers movie release to the 3rd I will be obligation free. 

I got Sarah and I (and whomever else ends up showing up, right now there is a low body count) a room at the always classy Mariner Inn on Long Beach Island.  I say always classy because Jersey beach motels are usually the epitomy of "pay a lot for really really shitty conditions" but it's two blocks away from the beach and I'm pretty sure there's a bed so it'll work fine for us.

I've never been able to put my finger on what the appeal of the beach is.  I would never lay around in the sun all day here even if I had a sun deck and a swimming pool and both would be a hell of a lot cleaner and cheaper than A) Jersey B) ocean.  But every year I go back and every year I get a wicked sunburn and love it anyway.

Finally!  Something to look forward to other than receiving cheese via the Internet.