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Relaaaaaax! Taking It (Very) EasyBy Rick Horowitz
AVON, NC -- What I Didn't Do on My Summer Vacation: Luxuriate in the cooling breezes off the Atlantic Ocean. (There were no cooling breezes off the Atlantic Ocean. The temperature was in the mid-90s all week, and the suffocating humidity pushed the heat index right into triple digits.) Parasail over Pamlico Sound. (Holding onto a towrope while a motorboat launches you a hundred feet into the air over a large body of water is an incredible experience for the right kind of person. I hope to run into that kind of person someday.) Climb to the top of the famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. (It was closed -- I never heard why.) Cast my line into the surf for passing flounder. (I don't have a line. When I borrow a line, it gets tangled. I don't like flounder.) Jog along the two-lane the first thing every morning. (I jogged along the two-lane exactly once; the heat was nearly as disgusting at the crack of dawn as it was later in the day. If I had fainted from overexertion, I could have fallen under the wheels of a bread truck -- who needed it?) Play Bingo at the Anglers Club. (One of the housemates did that. She had a good time. I was happy for her.) See fins in the water. (Some years I'm sure they're dolphins. Other years I'm not so sure. This year I never saw them at all, whatever they were. That didn't mean they weren't out there.) Spend every moment of daylight working on my suntan. (I've seen the same health stories you have.) Read a biography of a Founding Father. (The beach is for reading novels and short stories. This year, the beach was mostly for rereading Eudora Welty.) Swim out past the sandbar. (If the sandbar had broken, I could have been caught in a rip current and carried out to sea, and I wouldn't have had the endurance to swim back to shore. Maybe if I'd been jogging along the two-lane the first thing every morning, I'd have had the endurance. Or maybe it wouldn't have helped me at all -- I could still have been snack food for one of those things with fins.) Check my e-mail. (I didn't take my computer along. There weren't any computer stores in the neighborhood to let me log on to one of their machines every couple of days "just to stay connected." There wasn't even a cybercafe. Somebody said somebody had tried to start one a while ago. It went bust. I found this news strangely reassuring.) Get tired of eating crab cakes and barbecue. (When in Rome...) Spend hours watching the Weather Channel. (There were no hurricanes heading in our direction, or even thinking of heading in our direction. There was absolutely nothing standing in the way of a vigorous round of mini-golf except a complete lack of interest.) Eat chocolate soft serve at the local Dairy Queen. (The local Dairy Queen doesn't have chocolate soft serve. It only has vanilla. Every year we ask for chocolate soft serve. Every year they tell us they only have vanilla. (We know we're not the only ones asking this question.) This year, the local Dairy Queen finally took steps to respond to consumer demand: They put up a sign that said they don't have chocolate.) Get dive-bombed by mosquitoes. (No rain all week meant no standing water. No standing water meant no mosquito breeding grounds. No mosquito breeding grounds meant it was perfectly OK to hang around outdoors, aside from the triple-digit heat index and the hazardous rays of the sun.) Get tired of eating hush puppies. (It's important to eat your vegetables, even on vacation. On vacation, fried corn meal qualifies.) See a shooting star. (One of the housemates did that. I was looking the other way at the time. I was happy for him.) Get antsy to return to civilization. Get bored even for a minute. It was wonderful, every bit of it. I can't wait to not do it all over again. Posted 8/14/01. You'll
never be bored at "Rick's" -- get your fresh stuff right here twice
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Rick Horowitz
