Last week I referenced a fictional character from Alabama (Forrest Gump). This week I was in Alabama enjoying the Gulf shores of Orange Beach, Alabama watching my adult children see – for the first time – one of the United States’ coasts instead of the Great Lakes, Salt Lake, or some lake in the Rockies.
The tide, by the way, was not… crimson, but I watched what it could do to a beachside in the matter of a few hours in the late afternoon.
I’ve been to Deep South many times to visit family, or to address business matters, but I never bothered to spend time on the beach except for a week-long meeting in Myrtle Beach almost 20 years ago.
You know, for the most part, I’d rather be in a large city or by one of the Great Lakes if I am not at home, but I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived in Alabama.
It was not “Spring Break crazy” with raucous partying. Even my adult children were glad to relax and did not mind the slower pace of the past week. Even on the first two cloudy days with a tornado watch in the mix, the view of the beach and shores was beautiful.
I am surprised at how warm and how cold the high 60s/low70s temps can be and how interchangeable these sensations were.
I would start my afternoon at the beach feeling warm from a sun reflecting from white sand and a vast gulf. In the same afternoon, as the tide reached closer to shore, I felt very cold, and if you saw me there with a cat cartoon laden beach blanket on my lap, you might have asked, “what is THAT guy’s deal?”
For some reason, I spent more time feeling cold than I spent feeling warm, but I still felt good because I was enjoying the novelty everyone else was enjoying the beach, seeking and finding shells, and just doing whatever they wanted with very little scheduled activities.
In the meantime, although my “books” at work were already closed, quarter-end reports typical in a publicly traded company were still due, so I spent more time working than I wanted to, but for the amount of time I expected it to take from time to relax.
This didn’t bother me, though.
In the sports world I thought about athletes who play ball on Christmas and Thanksgiving days, the same athletes who spend time watching film instead of running about with their children, and people in the hospitality and restaurant industries whose Saturdays likely fall somewhere in mid-week instead.
As far as I was concerned, I was going to grab any vacation time I could, because this year’s Spring Break is the first time I was not tethered to a desk closing the books… ever. That would 40 years, folks.
I wish I could have relaxed more, but some chunk of that wish was granted by watching my adult children finally get to see a huge body of water on the edge of a soft, white sand beach “like all the other kids.”
I usually avoid sitting on a beach on the Great Lakes. I’d rather be watching the shores while I eat, or while being a passenger on a boat.
This year, however, I actually just sat in a chair, on the beach, for three straight afternoons, and figured out what time it was by watching the tide hug more of the shoreline as the day progressed.
I daydreamed a lot, and only once on that shore did I take a call. I was, in fact, the one who initiated contact.
The only sport I watched on television was the NCAA Division I Women’s basketball finals, and an NBA game Thursday night while the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Memphis Grizzlies neared the completion of their respective seasons.
I’m glad I did not see the men’s final. I heard mixed reviews from “great defensive showdown” to “ugly offensive execution/sloppy.”
It’s a matter of perspective and the only TV going on in our place on the shore was watching Xfinity channels from an iPad to streaming some shows to binge watch.
I only watched the NBA contest from a distance while my wife, son, and I enjoyed a massive boil bag with sauce and butter leapt everywhere from the shellfish we destroyed and from our hands, which tend to move a lot when each of us speak.
In a few days, the NBA play-in will be the sports event that matters most. While day 3 of The Masters this morning means nothing to me.
Not all sports columnists love every sport even when they are in the moment.