But first, we got donuts.

Peter Pan donuts is a Greenpoint institution. The servers wear these kitschy outfits, and kitschy sour expressions, and there’s a little counter and everything.

The donuts fortified us for the hour-plus train ride down to Far Rockaway. When we got there, though, we needed lunch. We went to the best diner in Far Rockaway, according to the owner, who told us that several times, so I figure it must be true.

And then. . . beach!  I’d never been to Rockaway beach before – it was really crowded, but nice. I even went swimming, which I almost never do at beaches off of large cities.  My only bathing suit (which I bought at Old Navy five years ago for about $3 and wore all through five countries in all sorts of situations) had finally bit the dust, so I wore an old strapless bra.  I don’t think anyone could tell the difference.

You’re not technically allowed to have beer on the beach, so we had to be really subtle with our bartending.

Some of us brought fancy cheese:

And some, less fancy cheese:

When you’re at the beach, you pretty much have to dig a giant hole at some point.

Some of my friends made this awesome happy birthday land shark!

Overall, a delightful birthday!  (Well, until we tried to leave Rockaway and there was a track fire and no train service, and it ended up [for various reasons] taking us four and a half hours to get home . . . but other than that, a loverly day!)

Let’s all make sure to take advantage of whatever nearby seashores we have access to, before this wave rolls in:

__

(Thanks to my clever, clever roommate for thinking this up and making us do it, even though we were all tired and whiny!  See also:  this Improv Everywhere stunt.  I don’t know if this is where S got the idea or if the subway just suggests such activities!)

• camped for five straight days and nights;
• biked 11 miles around the newly repaved Cades Cove loop;
• hiked a five-mile trail on a gorgeous day;
• saw 5 bears (2 were tiny, adorable bear cubs), 1 coyote, a couple of turkeys, and a racoon;
• played with 3 shockingly enormous dogs;
• witnessed several nights of synchronous fireflies mating, in the thickest, loveliest display I’ve seen in years;
• visited with my lovely parents, my fascinating extended family/family friends, and my oldest (as in longest-known) friend;
• attended Bonnaroo 2010, where I saw The National, Tori Amos, Brandi Carlile, Regina Spektor, They Might Be Giants and others;
• got about a thousand mozzie bites and (despite multiple 90+-degree days) only one minor sunburn;
• swam in a lovely saline pool;
• suffered through the usual crazy amounts of real-estate envy/life questioning that all vacationing NYers must experience;
• ate at a Manchester, TN restaurant called ‘The Tater Box’ while a bluegrass band sang about snake handling;
• consumed enough grilled meats of varying types to feed an army;
• drank enough alcohol of varying types to drown a navy;
• survived two flights of two legs each and checked a bag, and, for the first time in memory, had no delays, cancellations or lost baggage;
• read two novels and saw one movie; and
• took zero (0) photos.

I had fun, but I’m very glad to be home.  Thomasina didn’t remember me at first, which made me very sad, but she figured it out (and she is EVEN CUTER THAN I REMEMBERED!!).  I have my first night of karate tonight after two weeks of inactivity, and I’m a little frightened.

More to come . . .

Way back in college, when I visited Venice during my summer abroad in Italy, I asked my gondolier if there were any women gondoliers, and he laughed at me, and explained that, though there are often women who try out to be gondoliers, it’s not really a job they can do, because it takes so much upper body strength to shunt the gondolas under the bridges and so forth, and none of them are ever able to pass the tests. Since then, I’ve frequently made jokes about being an aspiring gondolier – I don’t know why, but the conversation just stuck in my head.

Way to go, Boscolo! This makes me really happy. (Even though Venice is sinking, so it’ll soon be a moot point anyway.)

My flight was at 1pm, but I was coming from camping in the mountains and we didn’t know how long it would take to get to the airport, so we left a big window and I got there at about 11:30am. I checked my bag (which cost me $15). It was the first time in ages I’d had a checked bag (ever since one of my bags was destroyed being drug by its strap behind a baggage cart, and I had to collect each of my underthings and toiletries as they drifted – alone, mauled and covered in tar – around the baggage carousel in front of scads of strangers, I’ve avoided checking bags if I can help it), and as I was flying into Newark, I was nervous about lugging my big, heavy suitcase, and my packed duffel full of library books back from the Newark airport.

I was sitting at the gate at 11:45. My flight was supposed to be at 1:15, but naturally, it was delayed until 2:30. I began to smell trouble. The flight kept getting delayed, and I felt really helpless, because every person I knew in Tennessee was camping in the mountains out of cell phone range, so I wouldn’t even be able to reach them. Suddenly, every cell in my body screamed that it absolutely did not want to be in that airport, with a broken-out face and no make-up and five days of not having had a bath (except for a brief, ineffectual Dr. Bronner’s rubdown), wearing a dirty T-shirt and my mother’s jeans, which were way too big and also way, way too heavy for the weather. And I realized that there was not one thing I could do about it. If I wanted to get home (and I had to be there by Monday at least), I had to rely on this airline. I was entirely impotent. I was a prisoner of USAir.

Finally, we boarded, and the plane went out on the runway, and then sat there for half an hour. The air conditioner was broken, and the couple behind me were big, fat, loud Yankees who kept reaching up to grab at my air conditioning nozzles and scoff at me for not being overheated. The flight attendant was really nice, though, and explained that I would almost certainly miss my 4:11 connection when we got to Philly. Actually, I was glad – I figured I could switch my flight for one into LaGuardia, and then I wouldn’t have to deal with the bus and the subway. I could just hop in a cab and go home, although inevitably the cabbie would lie about knowing where my street was and then leave the meter running while he chased down pedestrians for directions, like always.

We finally did get to Philly, and it turned out all the flights out had been delayed so long I had not in fact missed my connection. I went to my gate (further down the terminal), and asked a bored young woman at the podium if I could get on something to LaGuardia. She said the only flight out to LaGuardia was currently set to leave at 9:00pm. Then she got on the speaker and announced that the 4:11 flight was further delayed, from 5:30 to 6:30. Everyone grumbled and cussed. I sat for a minute, then went to ask if there were any flights on other airlines to LaGuardia. She said I’d need to go to Special Services, which was down and past the food court. I walked all the way over there (down one long leg of terminal and then another). I saw a long line of people at one gate.  I knew that was probably my line; still, I hopefully asked a nearby worker where Special Services was.

‘See that long, long line right there?’ she asked, amused. ‘That’s it.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘You resemble Chelsea!’

‘What?’

‘Chelsea! Anyone ever told you that? You look like her a little bit.’

‘Chelsea…Clinton?’

‘Yeah! You favor her!’

‘…Thanks,’ I muttered and joined the Special Services line. I stood there and stood there, and it creeped along. I had many options. I tried to think…if I could get my suitcase back, I could take a bus straight from the Philly airport to New York, or a train to Penn Station, assuming there was an easy way to get to the Philly train station from the airport. I wondered if I could get the airline to pay for my train ticket. But perhaps I couldn’t get my bag back. The ideal thing would be to fly into LaGuardia. In fact, I so preferred it, I might take an 8pm flight there over a 6pm flight to Newark. But then I realized that, until I was able to talk to somebody, my bag would be put on the Newark plane, and if it left without me, I’d have no way to get my luggage. I’d probably have to actually make a full trip to Newark to get it, which would suck. I cursed baggage on all levels; I’m not normally prisoner to possessions. I’d have just ditched my clothes, but I’d stored half of my library books in my suitcase. Plus, my glasses were in there.

I started to get nervous about my flight leaving. But it wasn’t supposed to leave until 6:30. They wouldn’t move it up, would they? No one was going anywhere. Finally, I asked the guy behind me if he cared if I ran to check the flight monitors really quickly, and he said no. When I looked for my flight, it said it was leaving at 6:00pm. I looked at my phone – it was 6:03. I full out ran back down the two terminal legs to my gate. The area was empty, the door shut, the bored young woman just turning from it. ‘Noooo,’ I thought. My suitcase was lost. But then suddenly, the bored young woman began gesturing to another airport worker who was running two young girls up to her. ‘This them?’ she said. ‘Newark? Well, come on.’ And she opened the door again.

‘I’m on that flight, too!’ I cried and ran out with them. They were from New Zealand and had some trouble figuring out the gate or something. We all got on board. One of them sat behind me and shoved her knees into my back the whole way. I sat next to a wiry old Asian man, which was great, since he had no body fat and didn’t go apeshit when once again, we were stopped on the runway for 30 minutes with no air conditioning. I noticed, however, that someone smelled absolutely rank, and then realized it was probably me.

I was scheduled to get to Newark at 5:00pm. I got there at 8:00. I retrieved my suitcase, and walked down to the bus terminal, surrendered my suitcase and got on the lovely air-conditioned bus. I was so glad to be out of the airport. I noticed that these buses stop at Grand Central after Port Authority, and decided to get off there – I could get a cab home cheaper and easier and wouldn’t have to get out in the blaring, horrid armpit that is 42nd Street, especially on a Sat. night and with a lot of unwieldy baggage.

This proved an ideal plan. The entire Grand Central area was deserted, and I immediately flagged a cab that furthermore was one of those big van cabs, so I could take my suitcase right in with me. The cabbie was good and didn’t take me for a run-around, and the cab ride was less than $20, and Oh, My God, I have never been so luxuriously thrilled to see my apartment.

I entered it like Odysseus coming home (in attitude, I mean – I didn’t enter in disguise and slay a bunch of suitors in the foyer), and immediately saw that my roommate had managed to hook our television up to the cable cord, so we still got channels, which we’d expected to loose, as the transition to digital had happened on the week we were away, and we had nothing in the way of a transition box. I collapsed onto the couch and flipped through the channels, and I ordered sushi for delivery – an insane amount of expensive sushi, and beer. I took a long, long, hot shower, and then slept and slept and slept. It was pretty awesome.