Travel Reference
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to get stuck in the deep sand on either side, while at the same time positioning the car in an
alpha-auto stance that more or less screamed, “You have every right to join us, but we were
here first.”
We had become so practiced at unloading the car that it took us barely three minutes to
grab the cooler, chairs, umbrella and backpacks that constitute the essentials of our Vieques
beach experience. Five minutes later Michael had identified our campsite
du jour
(located
by some unfathomable Zen process of divination), and within ten minutes we were lathered
up with sunblock and fully prepared to do absolutely nothing for several hours.
When I say absolutely nothing, that's only half the story.
I do nothing. Michael does a lot. What he considers leisure, I consider a workout.
He stands around on the beach a lot, looking out to sea; he goes for long, strenuous
walks; he endlessly arranges and rearranges his towel, ensuring that no particle of sand has
had the gall to land upon it. He goes for swims; he reapplies his sunblock exhaustively;
he repeats. And at some point during this marathon he summons up the energy to unfurl a
couple of large black garbage bags he's brought with him and collects litter on the beach.
Frankly, I'm exhausted just telling you about it.
In the meantime, I've barely moved a muscle. Literally.
Here's my drill.
We arrive. I kick off my flip flops and unfold my beach chair while Michael sets up the
umbrella.
If I've remembered to wear a swimsuit I take off my shorts.
I position my chair under the umbrella. If we've taken the time to stop for sandwiches
at the glacially-slow but very good sandwich shop in Isabel, I lovingly devour my
Cubano
(thin-sliced ham on bread so toasty-crisp you'd swear it was spray-starched). If we didn't
bring sandwiches I munch on a bag of chips and a few pieces of luncheon meat (turkey or
ham) we bought at the
colmado
on the way down.
After lunch, I stand up—reluctantly, it must be admitted—to re-apply sunblock to Mi-
chael's back. Then I sit down again and rummage around in my backpack for my book.
The ensuing hours are about as close as I ever get to heaven (with a few exceptions that
don't constitute suitable copy for a PG audience).
In my opinion, the luxury of not thinking is vastly underrated, particularly if you're a
chronic over-thinker like me. Sitting on the beach in Vieques with a good book (or Kindle)
affords me the extreme pleasure of turning off my brain, at least the self-defeating, always-
worrying lobe, to a degree that I never achieve anywhere else, under any circumstances.
I can't tell you how much I love slipping between the covers of my book for a com-
pletely oblivious couple of hours, only to look up and discover that the sun has catapulted
itself appreciably westward, the tide has rolled out, and Michael has turned a slightly dark-
er shade of chestnut.
Now that's a day at the beach.
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