PADDLE OUT in Postcards 4

We have this awful tendency to isolate on holidays. This year I told G, not suggested shame on me, that he could choose what to do about fireworks. After a bit of poking, he picked the Ocean Beach fireworks.

Gathering our militancy, first thing in the morning we drove the car down to downtown OB and found a parking spot one block from the beach. It was a 2 hour parking zone, but we cheat using my handicapped parking permit. Much to our dismay, G discovered that there was no public transportation going to OB this holiday. (That’s a poor decision by the MTB.) So we took a cab back down around six.

Yes, I laughed at us.

We walked the block to the sand and were armed and forewarned against almost everything. We got the beach and bay chairs from the car. We had coats, wore levis, tennies and socks, and I had a sweater and an old flannel blanket too. After we settled in, there was a wonderful beach entertainer waving two sticks and a hoop to create long, marvelously big bubbles the size of our car. The kids next to us sounded German, and the family on the other side were Hispanic. Children ran everywhere leaping at the bubbles, leaping in the surf too. Babies and children shrieked. There wasn’t a peaceful inch anywhere. It was delightful.

Just after the sunset, long lines of surfers began filing onto the beach. I had expected this. Surfers usually paddle out to the end of the pier to enjoy the fireworks directly overhead. Then more followed. Pretty soon hundreds and hundreds of surfers using all sorts of flotation devices filed down to the waterline. I laughed at the man with the big dog and the kayak. I had no idea how a bunch of young ladies would get their very large blow-up, swimming pool out past the surf line. There was even one inner tube that looked like a flamingo. I asked what had triggered this great paddle out. Something on the internet one of the young men told me.

We enjoyed the fireworks. They weren’t spectacular, but they were ours. We waited a little for the first masses of humanity to leave. The street was closed, so we could walk right down the middle to the car. There were a few marshmallows being thrown here and there. It was nothing like the mass marshmallow battles that used to be held in years past….the mess took a week to clean up.

The masses drove north out to the freeway creating a massive, many mile, gridlock. We drove around the block and headed south. Zig zagging further south, at last we were able to reach the top of the point and turn north around the traffic. We followed two other cars…all of which turned into our complex. Like minds.

Best of all, dear G let me get eight hours of sleep.

Blurry cell phone image of the surfers near the pier end.
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• Himself: Cell photos: G
  Worked hard and magiced up two nice steaks from the freezer.


• Herself: Had a glorious time pricing and shelving books.


• Reading: Bishop.


• Gratitude’s: That the fireworks adventure was so much fun.