A Hot Day At The Beach

It was a very hot sunny Saturday at the end of June when my friends and I decided we should take a ride down to the Jersey Shore. Since we hadn’t started our summer jobs and we had no responsibilities at the time, we thought it was the best time to take advantage of a good situation. I reached out to our friend Sean whose family has a house down at the beach. Sean and I have known each other since middle school and played lacrosse together. Sean was happy that we reached out to him since he was starting work the following week too and wouldn’t have much time to hang out. We immediately started planning what we needed to bring with us to the shore.

There wasn’t any traffic going down the Garden State Parkway, which was unbelievably amazing. It took us approximately 2 hours to get to Sean’s house. The weather could not have been better. It was sunny without a cloud in the sky, but there was a slight breeze. Thankfully, it was not at all humid. In our planning, not one of us thought to bring or use sunscreen or any type of lotion.

Since Sean lives down at Ocean City, we took his lead and followed him to where he likes to set up on the beach. I couldn’t wait to get in the water to cool off. The water was warm and the sun’s rays were sparkling off the surface. The waves were wild and we were having a blast.

We set up the spike ball game and proceeded to play for hours. Never realizing that we were starting to get more than a little color on our backs and shoulders. We must have been quite entertaining because we started to have people watching and cheering and egging us on.

We all raced back into the water, because like I said, everything is a competition. By now we were getting a little more color on our face and shoulders.

We were so busy riding the waves, that we never realized how far we strayed from our spot on the beach. We walked along the seashore to get back to our chairs and blankets. The weather was perfect; however, we still did not realize that we all were burning up.

I never want a good time to end, so off I went back to the water, taking an inflatable raft with me and got on the raft and chilled. Floating on the raft was so comfortable and relaxing.

Somewhere far off I was hearing yelling and couldn’t imagine what all the commotion was going on about. When I looked up, I saw that everyone along the shore was calling for me. I must have dozed off and was drifting out to sea. I was totally exhausted when I got back to the shore. I also was burned to a crisp.

We all were pretty burned by the end of the day.

The moral of this story…….. wear sunscreen and don’t fall asleep on your raft because you could float out to sea.