Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - Just Beachy

Finally! We've had such a cool summer this year; it's about time we had some temperatures over 80 F here. To celebrate I took the little ones to the beach. We had a blast. It was Zipper's first time, and he just loved running along the edge of the water. Too bad I forgot to bring the sand toys. The boys kept trying to play with other kids' toys.
 
There was a couple of goofy things though. We arrived at the beach at 10 AM to find that the beach doesn't open until 11 AM. Boooo!!! And the really goofy thing is there was a couple guys out on a little barge in the water whose primary job seemed to be to tell people this to keep them out of the water. So why didn't they just hire a lifeguard instead? [Shadowangel shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head]
 
Of course there's all the usual odd beach regulations. But the strangest one is that you aren't allowed to swim with a T-shirt on. The lifeguards are hollering through their bullhorns that it's ok to wade in the water with a shirt on, but if the shirt is getting wet, it has to come off. And the purpose of this rule is...? I put shirts on my boys because they are very fair-skinned and I don't want them sunburned. This is a problem?
 
I wish I had the guts to do this, because I can legally do it in NY state: I'd go to the beach wearing just a T-shirt (and some bottoms of some sort). Then when the lifeguards yelled at me, and I took the shirt off... Ha ha ha, I bet they'd reconsider that rule pretty quick!