The beach is another world. You wake up late in the morning and lie in bed because you can and New York is already on it’s second coffee, the next scandal in Washington is just coming to light ( GSA spends $20,000 on chicken wings at Opryland) and back home a county commissioner falsifies a building inspection report that snowballs into a resignation. It all seems so distant.
You wander out onto the balcony with your laptop which is full of emails but you don’t have to answer them because you’re at the beach. Everybody thinks you’re attending a workshop on creativity-- sitting in a lotus position near the surf while a priestess clad in a white kira plays ancient Malaysian melodies on a bamboo flute.
Back home it’s hot and dry and it makes you jittery whereas the beach is hot but it’s all part of the show. The local residents that I know thrive on heat and are generous normal people with a smattering of zealots that love to surf, hike and shoot hoops in 100 degree weather. I grew up thinking you had to choose between being laid back or being productive but at the beach they believe you can have it all.
Which is how I ended up 800 feet in the air over Bogue Sound in eastern North Carolina dangling beneath a parasail with a big yellow smiley face on it. A parasail? Thank you for asking.
Not wanting to waste a moment of my vacation, upon arrival at the beach I booked (productive) a sailing flight (laid back) with DragonFly Parasails whose staff are all flat bellied and look like they attend high school until you hear them talk about their wives and children. Then you realize they look so young because you’re getting so …ah, mature.
Jason, a sun baked stick thin fellow strapped me into a harness that supports your legs and arms but forces your rear to hang down and out in the air. You stand at the back of the boat on a platform, the captain pushes the throttle to Pretty Fast and the parasail fills and you’re snatched up into the air. The boat falls away from you.
Suddenly you are eye level with seagulls and realize you don’t belong up here. God never told you to do this and the harness that on the ground looked strong enough to lift the state of Vermont, now, in your professional opinion, seems to be thinner, maybe a little aged.
And still up you go further into the air and the boat becomes a speck and there you dangle and sway like hung meat with your rear end pushed out into the air. You feel the air all around you, in fact you’re feeling a lot of air, air in places that normally never get air, places that public law declares should never be exposed to air.
On launch your bathing suit was accidently pulled down.
Way down. And from the looks of everything you really should work out more.
To anyone looking up from beneath they see a moving white celestial orb with hemorrhoids all under a big yellow smiley face. Eye catching.
You drift down near a bridge and a car slows. The driver, a decent Christian father, does a double take and you imagine his sweet little children all pointing open mouthed while their mother swoons.
But it wasn’t so bad. I made a lot of friends while I was slowly reeled back in. Complete strangers in nearby boats waved and cheered me on. And what can you say? It’s the beach and that’s another world.
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