Beach Bodies

One of the cool things about growing up in Virginia is that family vacations to either the mountains or the beach were just a hop, skip, and a jump away in either direction. Every summer as a kid, I could count on camping somewhere along the Appalachian (usually with friends; my mom and sister were never really into camping) or going to the beach.

While Ocean City up in Maryland was arguably closer to our home in Northern Virginia, my family usually preferred to vacation in Virginia Beach on the opposite end of the state. The cool thing about Virginia Beach is that in addition to the obvious oceanside recreation, all along Atlantic Avenue is a pretty solid boardwalk. Not quite Coney Island but all the super fried food, neon lit carnival games and rides, and haunted houses lined the beach. I can count the number of times I went to the county fair as a kid on a single hand. Virginia Beach had all that covered.

But if I'm going all the way to the beach, I'm get as much sun, sand, and surf as I can possibly can. So every morning, I would wake up super early and get out there in the water getting absolutely battered by the waves all day. The waves at Virginia Beach were never particularly surf-friendly so it was a lot of just riding the tide in. By night, I would the boardwalk was my playground. I was never much good at stuff like skeeball (still love it though) but air hockey and video arcade cabinets were definitely in my wheelhouse.

By the the time I reached high school, my dad had progressed enough within his career to take us a couple times a year to the Caribbean; he had always wanted to visit the tropical getaways that the James Bond movies of his youth had taken place. So Virginia Beach got swapped out for the Bahamas, Jamaica, Haiti, the Grand Cayman Islands, Cozumel. The waters were bluer, the waves calmer, the sand whiter. Also, the bars didn't care if you looked remotely close to eighteen but that's a whole different set of stories. Being older, that meant I was largely left to my own devices as we visited the more tropical locations which more than suited me. I learned how to snorkel but also would go off and hike through jungles and explore the shantytowns on the islands; the wealth divide is striking in the Caribbean when entire economies revolve around tourism and illicit banking (second largest industry in the Bahamas for all the wrong reasons).

It also wasn't until high school that I finally made it to the Pacific. On a trip to California I took a detour to Manhattan Beach. Even though I didn't have my swim trunks readily available, I stripped down to my boxers (This is where I should probably point out it was relatively deserted) and dove in. The water was fucking cold and being downstream from Los Angeles it was pretty fucking dirty but I didn't care; I was finally in the Pacific Ocean.

The coldest waters I ever went in though was the Mediterranean Sea. The waters were frigid while the sand was blazing hot so you would come out shivering only to have to hotfoot it back to the beach blanket before you lost the soles of your feet. The say the Mediterranean has a higher iodine count in the sea salt than most waters back in America; apparently that's supposed to be healthier for your skin but I couldn't honestly tell.

The beach has always been this sort of actively therapeutic getaway. Sure, you're active when you're vacationing in the mountains or countryside but you're really going there for a quantum of quiet; embracing the forests or the deserts meditatively. When you're at the beach, yes, there's the soothing sound of undulating waves and scent of sea breeze but you're really going there to get in the water as much as possible. And that should be a more than a once a year pilgrimage.