Geezers at the Beach

I thought that I might talk a bit about a recent trip that we took, because it might give you some insights about vacation matters. I'll just ramble on and cover topics as I think of them.

Who? Elaine and I.

What? Spent 3 weeks in an ocean-front condo on the beach.

Where? Ocean City, Maryland.

When? Just after Labor Day.

Preparation: As you probably know already, women pack differently than men. Elaine filled 19 containers of various sizes. I filled 3. I do have to admit that Elaine's fills were mainly things that were needed for the condo: such as sheets, pillow cases, and non-perishable food. And she did also pack necessary clothes items.

My stuff (that I didn't forget) consisted of a few shirts, socks, and underwear, as well as my laptop, books, magazines and binoculars for watching the gulls.... girls?

Over the years, I have developed a check-list for myself, to make sure that I don't forget anything. (Elaine doesn't use one and thinks that my list is "just something a man would do.")

Unfortunately, the only thing about a checklist is that you must remember to find it and use it. (Remember the key point of every memory course... whatever you are looking for, is under something.. so pick it up!) I'll bet that my checklist is right underneath my missing hearing aid.

Moving in: The condo is on the third floor and can be reached by a little elevator. To get our 22 containers into the elevator, I had to make 14 trips, pushing a wheeled holder up a long ramp to get to the elevator. This was done at 11 pm in gale winds. Once in, after a lot of heavy breathing and gasping.. a warm beer helped calm me down a bit.

Since Elaine is in a wheelchair right now, beds and furniture had to be moved to accomodate and in so doing, a heavy picture popped off the wall right over my bed. It's a good thing that it happened then, because if I had had a nightmare and bumped the wall, that damned picture could have injured me. How would I have explained that to the doctor: "A picture flew off the wall and landed on my head." It was a picture of the Titanic..

Provender: Of course, what we brought with us in the way of food was minimal. We would buy the bulk of our food at the local supermarkets where prices are a bit higher than at home; for instance, on the main drag, a dozen medium eggs cost $2.59! Later, I found eggs at $1.59 a dozen at a supermarket on a road going out of town.

Happy Hair: Elaine discovered a store she was not familiar with: HarrisTeeter. They had a clearance table that had Elaine's favorite shampoo at $.99 a bottle. That was a fraction of its price in Baltimore. Elaine bought up all they had.

Broooom!! Our arrival was during "Bike Week" when 100,000 Harley Davidson riders descend upon Ocean City. This made driving our mini SUV a challenge and sleeping kind of trying.

Most of the bikers have been coming to OC for years and a lot of them look like me: chubby, bearded and old. While they cavorted with their fellow bikesters, their wives and girlfriends made the Beach Scene and helped give OC a new name: Cellulite City.

Buzzzzzzz! Since it wasn't safe to be on the road with the bikers, we did not go out to eat this week. Instead, we cooked a lot of good food right in the condo. However, since I do the cooking, smoke detectors feel that they have to harrass me. Just as it was in our Weller Way home, the detector is right near the stove, it has a tendency to go off to let me know that our food is ready.

Yummy stuff: When we did get to go out to restaurants, we went to some favorites:

Outback: Coconut shrimp!
Panda Buffet: Raw oysters and crab legs!
Crackerbarrel: Down home food!
Red Lobster: Unending shrimp!

We brought in a lot of food too:

Waterman's: A couple of dozen crabs!
Market: Big bag of steamed blue crab claws!
Greek Colonels: Creamed chipped beef!

FunFest: One week was FunFest Week in OC. This is when they put up monstrous tents containing lots and lots of crafty stuff for Elaine to buy. She bought some gifts, including some nice things for SuZee, our cat. She also bought a fancy (eternally sharp) knife for a bunch of money. Since I bad-mouthed the deal, she probably won't let me use it. The knife has a 50 year warranty.. neither she nor I will live that long. When I mentioned that to the 20 year old sales lady, she said that we could just pass it on to our heirs.

The only bad thing about FunFest, in my opinion, is that because noone can smoke in any of the tents, they congregate at the entrances... hundreds of them.. and blow smoke.

Entertainment?: Next to these tents are amusement areas. A ferris wheel, shooting galleries, Dodg-em Cars, Merry Go Rounds, and a weird and very scary piece of equipment that shoots people in little gondolas way up in the sky as though they are being shot by a massive rubber band.

The Hubcaps: Our favorite group, Carroll County's own Hubcaps was there inside the big tent one night. Tickets were $5 and $10. (Blood, Sweat and Tears was in the big tent another night, but they charged $20 and $49.) Elaine didn't want to get a ticket; instead, she sat near the back entrance and could see and hear them very well. She said that they did not do their usual schtick. That is probably because they would have to pay royalties.. and maybe they can get away with not paying them in Carroll County.

Delish: The food tent held many delicacies. One night, Elaine had a crab fluff and I had little fries and fish. Another night, we both had crab soup in bread bowls. Yingling beer was $3 for 10 ounces; light beer was $3 for 16 ounces. (At one time, Yingling was garbage beer and unsellable outside of Pottsville, PA.. now they advertise Nationwide and charge a lot more for a six-pack.) I think that IPA (India Pale Ale) is far and away the best beer made today. Much better than the versions made by the Brits years ago.

WalMart? What's a trip to OC without a visit to their WalMart store? This year, instead of counting the number of people with massive tatoos, I decided to count only those who did not have them. I only counted 5.. but they probably had theirs covered by their shirts.

What other WalMart can you go to where everybody is yelling at the top of their lungs? Strange people down there.

Home away from Home: We rent the condo from a good friend of ours, and we have to care for it as though it were our own home. So, when I fell asleep at the table, tipped it over and saw the glass of tomato juice sail through the air and onto the carpet, I became a little excited. Immediate action allowed us to get the spill completely cleaned up and undetectable.

Pills: As an old dude, I take a lot of medication. One of my pills is minute. A little yellow pill that blends in perfectly with the weaves of the carpet. (Yes, I spilled my pills.) I never did find 3 of them and hope that the vacuum cleaner got them before our host steps on the little squishy things.

Anger: Early one Sunday morning, we heard a knock on our door. It was a maintenance man who said that the guy in the condo under us was getting water into his bathroom. The maintenance man found that the spigot and faucets in the bathtub were loose, perhaps allowing some water to get in and spread down to his appartment. He said that he would caulk the area.

Meanwhile, a man with a very angry red face barged in and started yelling about his ceiling and put his face right up against mine. The last time an angry face got that close to me, it became dented in a few places and it almost happened again this time. However, I restrained myself. After caulking, the guy was getting more water, so it probably wasn't from this apartment at all.

Anyway, after this, I was hoping that we wouldn't have any other problems that would upset this guy.. guess what.. on the last day, while we were packing to leave, the toilet overflowed. Elaine and I spent a long time with a lot of towels getting the water off the floor.. and then we spent hours trying to unclog the drain. I didn't see the guy's red face again so I guess he stayed dry.

Oil Spill? When I went down to the beach to get some shells for Elaine, as I do each year, there were none. Where were the shells? The sand was flecked with black, just as I remember from when I was a kid during WWII. Tankers were sunk in the Atlantic by German submarines and spilled oil created tar in action with the sand.. and it spread out lightly over all after a while. This was like that.. and where were the shells? What is going on?

When we first got to OC, the surf was monstrous. Could it have squashed the shells?

Weather: Later, while remnants of hurricanes were storming up the Atlantic in the form of torrential rains, the weather channel kept showing Doppler Radar pictures of all this wetness coming up the coast. At one time, we had a Flash Flood Alert, a Heavy Rain Alert, a Tornado Watch and something else I can't remember. Over and over we were alerted about and shown pictures of the 12 inches of rain that we definitely would get. It never showed up. Not a drop until the last day that we were in OC.

The Last Day: As we battled with a rogue toilet, torrential rains buffeted OC. I made the 16 trips (remember, we made purchases) down the elevator and out into the storm and into the car. Everything got soaked, especially me. (I'm paying for it now with a very painful back and wheezing lungs.)

But, all in all, as usual, we had a great time. We were especially glad that my beautiful granddaughter, Bridget, was able to look after our cat, SuZee for the time that we were gone. SuZee told us that Bridget treated her very well.

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