Thursday, July 20, 2006

Hi Ho, Hi Ho to the beach we go………down the block and around the corner we found the ocean….. normally for us it is not too hard to find.. go east and there it is. We can actually go west, but it takes longer to get there… Thank about that, we can go east and west in our own country and be at the ocean…. There is water north and south too, but not an honest-to-goodness ocean… Well that is our plan for today, look at the ocean all day long…

We rented an umbrella and two chairs for three days so we are ready to do what we came here to do, sit and do nothing. eeeha…. These are some of the things I like to do the most, look at the ocean and occasionally get in it, read a good book, watch other people and make-up stuff about them, and spend uninterrupted time with my wife, Sandy. This is shaping up to be a perfect day.

Our first encounter with the people at the beach was with Luci the Life Guard. She rented the umbrella and chairs. She is a young lady from the Czech Republic here working for the summer. She was very pleasant……..right after that we met a wise guy from Maryland who wanted to know how much we paid for the umbrella and chairs – when I told him he said we could have bought a lot of umbrellas like his for the same amount of money – I rationalized to him that I had a bad back and didn’t want to carry that stuff to the beach. He continued to be a wise guy – after he and his wife went in the water, I ask how it was and he said, “wet.” Lucky for him his wife wasn’t such a wise guy and said it was, “very nice and warm.” Later I would find out they were both correct, it was very nice and warm and wet….

In the every day work world or even at places like church you don’t tend to notice the differences in people’s physical appearance……Wow, but at the beach, you can tell immediately that physically speaking there are all sorts of shapes and sizes of people. No details here, but, the differences are obvious. If you are close enough to hear them talk, then you find out that there are a variety of different temperaments and psyches as well. That is why watching people at the beach is so much fun….

We also saw a parasail ride that looked like a lot of fun to me, but Sandy said she didn’t think is would be that much fun…so we watched that….it is the height of “the season” so there was parasailing all day long – we also saw some Do Do’s (Sandy says they are Sea Do’s, but I like Do Do better so I’m sticking with it). And, we saw a two person surf kayak – that looked like way too much work for me….. The rest of the time, we watched Bob, there were hundreds of Bob’s……people in the ocean….need I say more?

We stayed on the beach from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM….it was super great…

After the beach, we came back to the trailer and got ready for dinner……

I just heard on the news that in the summer time, the population of Myrtle Beach increases from about 30,000 to hundred of thousands…

We ate dinner at a Murrell’s Inlet place called Bovines. It is one of our favorite restaurants anywhere we go. I had flounder and Sandy had crab cakes. The food at this place is worth every penny and the food is accompanied by equally good service. A nice combination….

Day is done, gone the sun and night, night John and Sandy…..