Modem Wrote:
Made that rookie mistake of going to the beach yesterday. After a year, you kind of get naive, and in your haste to get some sun / swimming in, you totally block out all that disgusting shit that comes with public beaches. It all comes rushing back rather quickly in a rapid succession of annoyances:
1) Parking. I am not paying to park inside the gates at a piece of nature that they have put a fence around. So I have to drive around the side roads until I find a spot.
2) I walk through the parking lot and set foot on a sandy path through the dunes. BAM. My nostrils are assaulted with that horrible smell - kind of like an ashtray that is filled with coppertone. And hot garbage.
3) I arrive on the other side of the dunes, to the beach proper. I only have two words to describe this particularly offensive assault on the eyes, ears and nose: Beach People. They really let it all hang out. Why should I feel self-conscious about my physique around these people? Who the fuck knows, but I somehow manage to. We have a restaurant chain here in the Maritimes called Ponderosa. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet. It's the type of place you may wind up once or twice in your adult life with, like, your grandparents or in-laws or something. I have always found it very surreal, the people in there. I used to joke that you don't really see those types of people outside of the all-you-can-eat buffet atmosphere; I was sure they ceased to exist outside the confines of the steam tables and tray-lines. Not anymore. These people are on the beach.
4) The water. If you are lucky, it's just cold to the point of being painful. If you are unlucky, it's the source of the warm garbage smell.
5) Clean up. Walking back to the car, I smell like Coppertone, sand, ashes, warm garbage, salt, and dead seagulls. And I only came in physical contact with two things on that list. I'm not really still that wet, but I am wet enough to make a waterstain on the car seat. So I have to stop somewhere and change, and try and towel off the fucking sand with a towel that LOOKS sand free, but apparently has some kind of sand cloaking device, and will actually just leave MORE sand on my body.
The beach can really suck.
Bravo!
Just remember, if those people weren't on the beach the ice caps would be long gone.