There are three reasons why I get up early and haul my butt to the beach by 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. This "early to the coast" has been a habit of mine for decades -- When someone says, "Let's go to the beach" (or when I decide to go by myself), there's no point in drawing the process out. Get up, get going, get there, get sunburnt, get home. These are my simple concepts. Why? Why would I choose to get up so early just to relax?
Reason #1: All of the best parking spaces are taken by 10:00 a.m. All of the other parking spaces (mediocre to crappy) are taken by 10:15 a.m. Really, if you're later than that, why bother?
Reason #2: If I get to the beach early enough, I can leave early and the whole day hasn't been blown sitting in the sand. Take Saturday, for example. I get home in time for the singing of the national anthems at the noon World Cup soccer match, and I end up missing nothing.
Reason #3: There are not too many people on the beach that early. I hate people. This gives me the chance to be asocial without appearing too weird. People are supposed to pick their own spots at the beach - It's not considered weird to separate yourself from humanity when picking a spot in the sand.
The water is warmer than I expect it, which is nice except I can't go in too far because I have chosen a spot in the midst of the surfers. I remember to come back over the breakwall before the incoming tide isolates me from the stairs that lead up to my car. (Actually, there are many stairs all leading to a sidewalk that leads to the parking spaces, but it's better to walk along the sand than the pavement.)
The best part of going to the beach early today is that it is low tide. That means that the entire beach is exposed and walkable. At high tide, most of the beach disappears as the water crawls right up to the famous Wall, but this morning I walk two miles up and back again. I stop near the end to collect two giant quohog (locally spelled sometimes as guahog) shells. Walking/jogging back I hear a girl whine to her mother, "But LOOK. SHE found shells!" Sure I did, Kid. I worked/walked for those shells.
There are two equally compelling perks to being at the beach and leaving the beach early. The first perk is that strangers vie for the parking space as I vacate it, making me a hero to one car and a villain to dozens more. The second perk is laughing and waving at all the cars backed up for miles and miles and miles and miles waiting to get to the coast, people who decide that a 10:00 a.m. start time from their driveway is going to get them to the beach any time before dinner. There are spots of the highway that are moving at a semi-normal pace, but those spots are few and far between. Traffic is backed up off and on for twenty miles on routes 1, 95, and 495. For all those poor suckers who won't see the beach until it's too late to really enjoy it (aka "No spot in the sand"), I've already been there and done that.
Sometimes pals tag along, but it's a rare friend willing to head out by 8:15 a.m. at the latest. So when a pal asks, "You wanna go to the beach tomorrow? I can pick you up around 10:30..." I just laugh and laugh. I'll be halfway through my beach day by then. I tell you what -- meet me up there; I'll give you my spot when I leave.
