My fourth of July was a whole lot of sensory overload, but highly enjoyable. I try to dress patriotically on the 4th of July, because I am just that much of a nerd. But my favorite shirt (it’s got three cherries on it, two red and white striped and one blue with white stars and it says SWEET! on it. I got it at Target like 3 years ago for about $4.99) somehow got a spot on it so I couldn’t wear it. I wanted to wear jeans because the beach is typically cold, and so I dug through all my tank tops and stuff and tried to do that layering thing that seems so popular these days, but no dice. The thought occurred to me that my bathing suit is blue, but decided I didn’t really want to deal with wearing a bathing suit all day. I finally settled on a red tank and a blue tank, though the blue was by far the wrong shade, at least I had tried. All that stalling around trying to figure out what to wear left me about 5 minutes to eat some lunch before I left.
I had to be at Daymon and Laney’s by 1:30, and almost got a speeding ticket on 85 trying to get there in time. Daymon’s brother has a 15 passenger van, but took one of the seats out so it only sat 11. There were 15 of us. We drove out to Santa Cruz, parked at the harbor and hiked out to the beach. There were cops checking bags for fireworks and alcohol, but they weren’t doing a super thorough job. Daymon had to take a 6-pack of beer back to the van, but the cops didn’t notice the other 15 or so cans mixed in with the diet cokes. Nor did they check deeper than the top surface of Dee’s box, which had all the hard alcohol in it. Hee.
We got our spot set up nice with a bunch of blankets on the sand and an E-Z-Up sunshade, and people started stripping down to swimsuits and rolling up pants to go play in the water. Somehow I had not expected that, and I could not believe that I had made the conscious decision *not* to wear my bathing suit to the beach. I mentioned that to someone, which prompted one of the best quotes of the day: “You know you’re in Northern California when you go to the beach and remember your jacket but forget your swimsuit.” Classic, and so true. Thankfully, my new jeans have really wide legs and are stretch denim, so I managed to roll them up pretty high and have plenty of fun in the water with everyone else. (Sadly David seems to have had a bit too much fun in the water, as about halfway through the afternoon he realized his wedding ring was missing)
Finally it started to get dark and people started shooting off fireworks. I had heard that the previous year had been comparable to being on Normandy Beach, or as Dee put it “It was like frickin’ WWII” (yes, she really said frickin’). People ad the expensive, professional grade fireworks, the kind you see at the “official and legal” fireworks shows. A group about 50 feet from us seemed to be made up of mostly teenagers having a bonfire, and at least 4 fistfights broke out before the group wised up and split up. I think all the fights had a common combatant, but it was hard to tell.
By the time it was fully dark it was hard to know which way to look. Sparks and explosions and earth shaking BOOM!s were all around us. We were surrounded by people with huge arsenals of fireworks. It was pretty indescribable. The best description I can think of is take a professional fireworks show you might see in your city, multiply the fireworks by about 8, being shot off pretty much in a ring around you and exploding right over your head. Close enough that of they go off too close to the ground they might hit you, Close enough that you are hit by the ash. Now make all that last for over 2 hours.It was insane. I think Liz put it best when she said “This is the fireworks show you’ve waited your whole life for. And being the true lover of fireworks that I am, she was totally right. It was a little bit freaky having them going off so close, but sooooo cool.
It was a long day in the sun, but I had a great time. The hard part was the trip home, tired and sunburned (but only a little). The drive back to Daymon and Laney’s seemed really long, and the trip to my house from there seemed like an eternity. (Major shout out to my friend Henry, who is totally the call-in-the-middle-of-the-night friend, who got called at 4 a.m. his time (he’s in DC) and talked to me for the last 10 minutes of my drive to keep me awake. He was a little miffed at first when he thought I was calling him at 4 in the morning just to chat, but when I was driving and about to fall asleep, he woke right up and stayed on the phone with me.)
I knew my feet were dirty from the sand, but I had absolutely zero energy when I got home to wash them off. Ordinarily I’d be sort of “yeah, whatever” about that, but I recently decided that it would be a good idea to buy white sheets because they were 600 thread count and on unbelievable sale. White sheets are never a good idea. And I had just washed them and put them on my bed on Sunday- I didn’t want to go through that again so soon. I kicked off my boots as soon as I was in the door to my room, and laid down on top of my bed, pulling the comforter I keep folded up at the foot of it over me, and I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillows. I was groggy this morning and sore most of the day from carrying heavy things and trekking over a lot of sand, but I can’t wait to do it again next year. You should totally come.
*Bacchanalian
** Credit goes to Heidi for this title