Dante's Vacation

It was the time that I look forward to every year.  The week where the grinding, grueling juggling act known as work/life balance gets neatly tucked away and where I am finally able to pretend like I don’t have a care in the world.  Our yearly trip to Myrtle Beach for a full week of sun, surf, and siesta.

Yes, nothing but long days on the beach with my family and quiet nights overlooking the moonlit ocean with my better half.  Work crises, over-inflated bills from the utility cartels, and verbal sparrings with local politicians all a distant memory.  A basic requirement for my mental health as well as the physical well-being of those who wish to test my patience on a regular basis.  In short, a complete psychological recalibration activity so I don’t wind up the lead story on the 6 o’clock news.

Although in complete Zen-mode once we get down there, actually setting course for the week away with three kids can be a task in its own right.  The shopping and preparation, packing of half dozen suitcases, organizing toys and games for the pre-teen to post-toddler age groups, the logistical brain-teaser of jamming it all into one car, and finally the actual drive down there.  It’s all enough to test anyone’s threshold of insanity.

Once on the road, however, I aim to ditch all remaining semblances of sanity and aim to achieve my maximum “Road Renaissance”.  Better defined as the genetic re-awakening of the male driver’s innate ability to filter out screaming, fighting kids from the backseat of the van.  An alternate universal plane of consciousness located within the deepest recesses of our minds.  I’m pretty sure that it’s in the same vicinity of the brain as all of the body’s other autonomic functions…respiration, heart-rate, and “the football game is on so I cannot hear a single word you are saying”.  It’s the primordial gift that is really something to behold.  A true marvel of the male physiology.

Once we arrive though and the unpacking gets finished, my body immediately begins to reset itself.  Add a “Mexican cocktail”, a little Bob Marley, and lungs filled with warm ocean breezes, and all is suddenly right with the world again.  Real world responsibility becomes a comedic afterthought to our provisional salt life.

Later that evening, with tired kids long in bed and promising hopes of long, restful days on the beach for the week ahead dancing in my naïve little head, I finally mellow out enough to drift off to the conscience-free world of placid coastal slumber…

However, at 4:00am, we were awoken to a noise.  A rather loud and obnoxious noise.  I reached over to turn off the alarm, but quickly realized that it wasn’t my clock.  It wasn’t the soothing early morning sounds of the Carolina surf and certainly wasn’t Marley’s “three little birds…singing sweet songs of melodies pure and true”.  It was DEFCON 5…it was the Armageddon…and it was in our condo.

I looked over at my stunned wife as I hastily jumped out of bed.  “Man the boats, we’re under attack!”

I ran into the hallway to try and assess what was happening.  With one eye open, four hours of sleep, and the residuals of the previous evening’s nightcap still swirling through my foggy capacities, I wandered through the darkness of the condo in an effort to seek out the location of the siren…and systematically destroy it by any means necessary.  Like clockwork, I was also met in the hallway by terrified children screaming at me to make it the siren stop.

Just to recap, there were deafening sirens, utter confusion, and screaming kids.  Complete sensory overload.  If I had a hammer, I would have pounded every inch of wall until I found the source of the siren in order to make it stop.  Better yet…I might have just simply knocked myself unconscious with it.  Really, it was a coin-flip at that moment.

Eventually, we found the culprit though.  It was the fire alarm for the entire building.  Someone on the street must have yanked it and there was no way to make it stop.  As I stood amongst the pandemonium, and with my head on a full 360 degree surveillance swivel, a realization suddenly dawned on me.  My inner-madman even giggled a bit.  This was nothing more than a single episode in a long line of Griswold moments that constantly seems to stalk our family outings. 

“Why don’t we just forget the itinerary and play it by ear, like normal people?”

“Honey, we’re not ‘normal people’.  We’re the Griswolds.”

Insult to injury, a building evacuation and two fire companies soon followed…

Honestly, I couldn’t think of a better way to start our vacation.  I’ll neatly gloss over the part where the kids were deathly afraid to fall asleep for the remainder of the week and how I more-or-less laid awake every night playing fire-watch commander readying for the alarms to sound again.  Amidst the mayhem that morning though, there was one awe-inspiring ray of splendor.  It may have only been through one semi-open, bloodshot eye, but at least I got to watch the sun rise with my family.  Or maybe that was the flashing lights of the fire engines reflecting off of the glass building across the street?  No, no.  I’ll go with the whole sunrise thing.  It sounds much more Norman Rockwell.

The weather that first day on the beach was perfect.  Hot and sunny with a three-foot surf.  I went without sunblock for the morning in order to get a better base for the week’s tanning.  Being out at our pool back home on a regular basis and kayaking our community lake, I figured that I already had a pretty decent base.  No way that I would burn in three hours playing with the kids.  The morning, however, was all that it took.

Even though I had applied and re-applied SPF 30 throughout the rest of that afternoon, I woke up the next day with a brutal sunburn.  I mean like pork rinds bad.  The heat energy coming off of my chest alone could have powered greater Long Island for a week.  Everyone was instructed to stay clear of me unless they wanted me to scream like a three year old girl…and dish out an unconsciously spontaneous round-house like Mike Tyson.

“It's [lu-da-criss] these mortals even attempt to enter my realm!”

Although in agony, I was determined not to let it ruin the rest of my week.  I wound up buying one of those UV protective “surf” shirts to help shield my chest for the next day’s beach outing.  I bought an XL, but it really would have fit my 9 year old son better.  It was skin-tight and bright white to the point where it literally hurt your eyes.  I looked a lot like a big eggroll.

As I threw the football with my son on the beach that morning, I began to have disturbing visuals of being that accidental photo bomb.  The middle-aged guy dressed like a Dim Sum delicacy in the background of some kid’s beach picture.  That one that shows up on somebody’s Facebook page, winds up going viral, and orchestrates the laughter of millions on the Jimmy Fallon Show.

After enduring about two hours of this self-administered ego abuse, I decided that the excruciating pain of having the sun hit my crispy, scorched flesh hurt much less than the humiliation of wearing white sausage casing as a shirt for the next couple of days.  It would SPF 1500 the remainder of the week, applied liberally every four and a half seconds.  Rotisserie-style.

Rounding out the week though, my sunburn did get a reprieve with a couple of rainy days.   Rainy days that came in the form of Tropical Storm Andrea.  By no mere coincidence, the weather forecast stated that the storm was scheduled to bulls-eye right over North Myrtle Beach by the end of the week.

Of course it was. 

This time, however, I did awake to the early morning sounds of the Carolina surf.  An angry surf that better resembled a speeding 6000 pound Cadillac driving into a brick wall.  Coupled with this auditory delight were the sustained sounds of 60 mph winds beating on the window screens all night long.  Every once in a while, you could also catch the distinct sounds of some building’s metal roof flashing rolling down the street.  Lying in bed, I’d raise the occasional eyebrow and give a respective nod of approval at the crashing aluminum as providing variety to the storm’s howling repertoire.

Oh yes, the distant, Reggae sounds of dear old Bob were merely an optimistic afterthought in my own little head by that point.

“Don’t worry (crash); ‘Bout a thing (crash); Cause every little thing (crash); Gonna be alright (crash).”

The final days of our relaxing vacation weren’t a total loss though.  Our two oldest children and I did manage to get a round of miniature golf in between the storm’s departing squalls.  The intermittent, sideways downpours didn’t really hurt any of our golf games all that much.  We did take some liberties on keeping score though.  Gone was the prospect of getting that celebratory “in-yo-face” hole in one.  With the majority of the course thoroughly underwater, we adopted the “horseshoes and hand grenades” decree and deemed it close enough if the ball merely floated over the hole.  It was all about getting them out of the condo at that point.

Although I may have lost a few battles that week, we managed to win the war.  We weren’t greeted by any more early morning fire alarms.  According to The Art of Griswold, that is victory personified.

“Fighting on arrival; Fighting for survival; Singing woy-yo-yo; Woy-yo-yo-yo.”