Under the Boardwalk

Day 232:

Today was really the first day in the week we had a plan, Son.  Mommy and I decided to meet Karen and Rick Sterns, Jen and Kate, and their kids for a day on the Ocean City Boardwalk for putt-putt and pizza to start the day, and so we gathered the troops and headed out for the boards.  The afternoon would see us spending a day on the beach, and the evening would have us for dinner at the Sea Isle City Yacht Club.  Not to bad...

There's something so nostalgic about walking the boards for me, Son.  See, I never went to camp.  Not ever.  For many people it's the one reprieve their parents would receive each and every year.  The opportunity to live kid-free for a week or two and get back to what got them there in the first place!  And for many people being dropped off and left to their own devices when they were kids was as much a learning experience as any they would ever have in their youth.  I suppose to each their own, though I wear my camp-free lifestyle like a badge of honor, Son...

In my day, we as a family were together Nationwide.  From Illinois to Texas to Florida to Virginia to Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Montana and any where else we may have gone, we were never left to our own devices or the responsibility of the camp counselor.  But we were always made to be inventive.  I believe this is what's made me the man I am, as I'm sure camp is to so many others.

I loved life on the road.  Traveling.  Driving.  Riding.  Seeing new places as a young lad as well as in being an older man, and I've never second guessed why it's so easy for me.  It's obvious.  Meanwhile, it's just not for others...  And that's okay.  It's not for everybody.  But for me, seeing the World is tantamount to only one thing; being your Father.

Never the less, in our tripping across the country during the Summer months from both Chicago and Houston to the East coast and mid-Atlantic, you learn to entertain yourself in a multitude of ways.  Be it reading, road games, songs, map study, whatever.  It's camp in motion.  I remember the red clay of Alabama, the Carolina pines, the Blue Ridge in Tennessee, and the boards in New Jersey.  So today while walking those boards with you, the same boards I've been walking for all the years I was a lad, to all the years Mom-Mom has been living in Ocean City, NJ, having you there brought me back... And in a big way.

I've no idea what route I'll go with you when you're finally at a point when you can decide to go to camp or not - or rather that you'll want to.  If that's the case I'll certainly accommodate.  But given my druthers, I see us traveling the country and the World, Son.  The day you were born I promised you Patagonia and Antarctica, and that's a promise I intend to keep.  And when I think about it, we can go much, much further than that.

I love you, Conor.  Thanks for each day, Boy'O.
-Dad