Friday Five at the Beach

In honor of summer, please share your own beachy memories, plans, and
dreams with a "Beach Trip" Friday Five.

1. Ocean rocks, lake limps? Vice versa? Or "it's all beautiful in its own way"?

I’ll admit that I love both, but living in Minnesota for eight years, four and a half of which were on the lake, created a love for lakes that is hard to shake. (It’s hard to believe it was that long, even though it seems like we’ve been here in Ames quite a while) Last weekend I drove into Storm Lake, Iowa for the Western Iowa Synod Assembly and thought, “Did I turn right accidentally and wind up in Minnesota?” It felt good to be driving in a town on a lake again.

2. Year round beach living: Heaven...or the Other Place?

It could be both, actually. For me, environment is not nearly as important as the company with whom I’m sharing it. But, all things being equal? Yeah, beach living would be really, really cool.

3. Any beach plans for this summer?

The only beach plans for us this summer are next Saturday, when I’ll be running along the shore of Lake Superior for 26.2 miles before enjoying a post-marathon afternoon with friends in Duluth’s Canal Park.

4. Best beach memory ever?

You know, for a Nebraska farmer’s kid I have a lot of beach memories – isn’t that odd? I remember walking on the beach in York, Maine with my ex-wife while we vacationed with her brother and his wife, spending the day at South Beach every New Year’s for three years while in the Nebraska Marching Band, and the Cliffs of Moher (which isn’t really a beach memory, but it is the ocean and it is SO VERY COOL to remember - see the beautiful pic above). But a really, really good one is from the honeymoon Kris and I took after we were married. We were in Grand Marais, MN, and we just walked on the beach and enjoyed an afternoon in the sun, with some poetry and a really good meal at a shoreline restaurant before heading back to our cabin for the night. Just a great afternoon.

5. Fantasy beach trip?

I’d love to go back to Titusville, FL, where I did my internship in 2001-2002, and while there, stay for a few nights along Cocoa Beach. I have some wonderful memories of some really great times at Cocoa Beach, and it would be really nice to catch up with my friends at Trinity Lutheran in Titusville. This is a trip I actually hope to make sometime in the next few years, after the kids are old enough to remember it (and the almost-required addition of a few days at DisneyWorld, of course).

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what the beach means to you.

Well, to be honest the beach doesn’t mean nearly as much to me as the sea (again, how does a farmer’s kid know these things?), but the novels Bag of Bones and Duma Key, both by Stephen King, are beach novels, and I enjoy them both tremendously. Ooooh, wait, now that I think of it, Waking Ned Devine is a great beach movie – especially the scene of the old men skinny dipping and then racing off to beat the lottery man to Ned’s house. Funny stuff, that.