A Day At The Beach

Contrary to published reports a great white shark did not beach itself in Atlantic City on August 6th. That was just me taking my shirt off to go swimming. Seriously, I don't tan so much as I burn. I'm a mutt who has German, British, Irish, Scottish and even a little bit of American Indian blood in his ancestry but it's the U.K. parts that come to the fore in my physical appearance. I'm pale, hairy and covered in freckles so you can understand why I tend to stay out of the sun. Getting sunburned is never a pleasant experience but on this occasion it was definitely worth it. Besides, the weather was quite nice and there was lots of cloud cover so it turned out to be rather minor which was a pleasant surprise.

Now I can say I get it. I understand the allure of the beach for those that live or grew up near one. Now I'm talking about a real beach here, not one like I've written about going to before with the family that was created at a lake near here. I'm talking about a proper beach at the ocean. My wife is one of those people, she is from Lima, Peru which has a lot of beaches close by. She's told me stories of walking thirty to forty minutes to get to the beach with her brother and cousins when she was young. I never really understood what would draw you to walk that far, to be in the heat, to get sunburned (okay they didn't get burned), to put up with crowds and bugs and everything else that goes with it. Until now that is.

While on vacation visiting my mother-in-law (amongst other relatives) we took a day trip to go to the beach in Atlantic City. I thought it would be nice for my wife since she hasn't been to a beach to swim since she came to the United States over eleven years ago. That's saying something since like I said, she grew up living very near the beach and used to go all the time, especially when she was young. My own experiences with, as I refer to it, a real beach, were confined to a vacation in North Carolina when I was about ten or eleven years old and one in Spain where I was on leave for a week while I was stationed in Germany in the U.S. Army. For the former I was an undersized, scrawny, easily sunburned (yeah I know I'm beating this point to death) and massively insecure kid and for the latter it was winter and the water was freezing cold so I didn't get to swim. In other words, my exposure to the beach was very limited at best.

We met up with a friend of my mother-in-laws who was in from Peru visiting her sons that live in Atlantic City and once together we set off for the beach. I thought I'd swim for about twenty to thirty minutes, get out and cover up while relaxing before getting back in the water for a bit with my shirt on and my bald head covered. That didn't happen. Instead, something wonderful occurred. As I said, the weather was great, lots of clouds, not a lot of the sun beating down on us. After I got in the water and waded out to chest level I really began to enjoy connecting with the water, determining whether to dive under individual waves or float over them. My son was learning to boogie board and he was having a blast. Later he started following my lead as I taught him everything I had just learned. My wife was also enjoying her time in the ocean water once again. We were getting used to the strong pull of the water as in came in and out, from different angles, over and over and over.

Basically I felt the connection to nature. As much joy as I saw on my son's face as the wave caught him on his board and propelled him forward I know it was showing just as much on my face as I went further out and stopped attempting to battle the waves and instead tried to move with them. Now I understood why people want to live so close to the beach, why they want to spend a lot of time there, why they enjoy learning to boogie board or surf. It's a natural thing to want to spend your time and do things there. Now I get it. The joy I felt was worth the fatigue that came from resisting the tide, it was worth getting bitten by flies, worth the fearful shame I had of people seeing my pale, overweight body without a t-shirt on and absolutely, positively worth the sunburn. Nor did I care that I smelled of the ocean when we went to go eat afterwards. None of that mattered because I felt my family and myself  bond with the sea.

If you think I'm being melodramatic for the sake of the story well, you are wrong. If you don't believe me I don't care, you weren't there. I was. I simply advise you to get yourself to a beach and find out for yourself. Make up your own mind with real life experience. With any luck you'll have a similar experience to mine, something to remember and share with your family. Now I want more, I just have to find a way to make it happen more frequently, something not easy in a landlocked state like Oklahoma. It's doable though, now that I get it.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

AC/DC tickets too expensive?

When word started spreading a few months back that AC/DC was to release a new album and start a tour before the year was over I was very excited. You see, AC/DC is one of those groups from back in the day that I never was able to see in concert most directly because they never came around anyplace close to where I was living. When you’re young it’s very easy to think that it’s no big deal if you can’t see a concert, you’ll just catch the band the next time around. That certainly backfired for me before with groups like The Police since they took over 20 years to tour the “next time around.” The more I thought about AC/DC the more I came to believe that this is it for them. By the time they finish this tour, take a break and relax, they most probably will decide it’s time to end this chapter of their lives. When you look at their age, combined with how long it’s been between their current album (Black Ice) and their previous album (2001s Stiff Upper Lip) it doesn’t look good for the future. Of course in a few years they may decide to do it all again, who’s to say?

So I sat their thinking about all of this and decided that now was the time to see them in concert. There may not be another chance so I needed to take it while I could. My wife even agreed and said she’d go to see them with me. Somehow I just knew that they would play here in Tulsa. It just made too much sense what with the new BOK Center opening up and booking all sorts of national tours to fill their seats. Why not AC/DC? The first leg of the tour was announced and unfortunately they were not coming anywhere close to us. Still, I knew it would be a long tour and that I’d just have to wait patiently until the 2009 dates were announced. My faith was undiminished. This would be the year.

Then I started hearing rumors of how much tickets for this tour were going to cost. It was incredible, astounding, unbelievable, ridiculous and a whole lot of other big words. Interestingly enough, the price would not increase the closer you got to the stage. No, the price would be the same if you were front row or in the highest of the nosebleed seats. I’m still internally debating how much sense that makes. After factoring in all the extra fees (don’t get me started on this topic) that come with the opportunity to buy a concert ticket nowadays I knew the price would exceed $100 per ticket and most likely be in the $115 range if not more. Given the downturn in our economy and the recent fiscal crunch in my own household I started thinking that the only way I’d be able to see AC/DC was if I was able to win tickets, not an easy or enjoyable prospect to say the least.

Ah but luck decided to shine her fair light upon me. We were a bit behind at work and my manager let me have a few hours of overtime. I consoled myself with the thought that at least it would pay for half of a ticket and decided to have faith that more overtime would be forthcoming the following week, so then leaving my reservations behind I jumped into the ticket buying stream with full force. My reward was to receive decent seats in the middle left which should afford a very nice view of the stage. Best of all, I did receive enough overtime to the following week to pay for the tickets. My faith was rewarded and life goes happily on. Now I have something to look forward to these next 3 months or so. A light at the end of the rainbow so to speak.

There is no way possible that I could justify taking money out of the household, away from raising my baby, to fund this attempt at reliving my youth, at seeing a group I never had the chance to see when I (and they) were quite a bit younger. Indeed I could not have afforded buying these monstrously overpriced tickets without the overtime from work and quite honestly I don’t know if I will ever do so again. To spend so much money when there are other things that the money could be better spent on seems to be so self indulgent that it makes me feel as if I am doing something wrong. Then after some (quick) deep thinking I have come to see the truth of it all, that this is living. This is enjoying life and making memories and that’s what it really is all about. Sure I could invest the money in something for the house, an extra payment for the car or some other form of drudgery but seriously where’s the fun in that? It comes down to the fact that there are times where you have to have some fun doing something instead of planning to do something. And that is what I have chosen to do. It’s the right thing for me. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I've added this postscript late because I found out that the terrific Irish group by the name of The Answer will be opening for AC/DC on this tour. This is incredible news as I've enjoyed their first cd and anxiously await their second. This will indeed be an amazing concert and hopefully well worth the wait and the price.