Roads, Mills, Laps

I’m down at the Delaware beach right now. I made some sort of ridiculous resolution: I decided today at the spur of the moment to run for exactly 2:00 down the length of Bethany Beach, past Fenwick Island, ending up along the busy tee shirt and shell store-lined streets of Ocean City, Maryland. True to my, devil-may-care running preparatory tendencies, I just shot down the strand heading west for 1:00 and wherever I ended up, figured I’d turn around and battle my way back to my starting location. I didn’t bring any water (I’m still Siddartha-esque despite my average of 1.4 miles over the course of 13 months.) I didn’t bring gels or gus or gummi bears.

You see, there are these people that fish in the ocean. Through some mad loophole in the blue state’s law, they are allowed to drive their monstrous trucks right up to the water’s edge, get out, stick big rods into the sand and set up a little get down. They fly big flags–American, confederate, and NASCAR. They drive vampire-killing-sized stakes into the sand and chain their foaming, sadly abused mongrels to them and then they drink beer–lots of watered down, hoe down beer. They sit in throne-like lawn chairs with cozy holes augured out of their arms–their hairy paunches sticking out–and make idle chit-chat about Bobby Engram beating Boober Flakenhurst at the HOME DEPOT 500. Their mulleted kin wander aimlessly around the beach–throwing footballs, maiming fast-retreating aquatic life, and wrastlin’ with each other as if they were in the back of pappy Jenkins’ rusted truck up on blocks out behind the trailer.

From afar while approaching them bobbing along at a pathetic 7.5mph clip on the hard, wet part of the beach, the part where the sandpipers zip along with their little feet;the part closest to the approaching waves, these folks look like aliens to me–a Mad Max crowd of rowdies; a beach-bound trailer park; a circus–no, a carnival. I expect drunken babes atop fat shoulders flashing me; I expect Lynyrd Skynyrd blaring; I expect entire rows of missing teeth; dirty cutoff jeans; and lumpy, tattooed bodies with buttcracks and back hair.

Whatever, to each his own as they say, but they horde the beach and so it is not to each his own! It is to be written about! It is worth the spite; trust me. These are me-me, land-grabbing, love-it-or-leave it barbarians.

To run down the public beach towards the surfcasting crowd–to approach them properly–one has to remove one’s shades in order to spot the location of their flagpole-sized surfaster’s monofilament line; you have to gird yourself–expecting to be called a faggot at any moment; you with your shirt off and your short, faggoty shorts that expose the strangest of leg hair and the whitest of flesh. Their fishing lines run high–for the most part. Some are untended, though–left to the drifting tides, sagging and limp–ignored by the worst of the surfcasters as they heckle and thump their chests while tearing off sections of grilled meat with one hand and pumping vapid beer into their gullets with the other. Smoke from convenience store cigarillos wafts into your face; music–Bob Seger and Springsteen; dopey ballads sung by that lowbrowed countryboy Napoleon, Kenney Chesney–play in your ears and sear holes into your medulla oblongata.

Their flags flap proudly, you see, because these proud Americans are there to catch big American fish–big, fleshy fish; angry fish; territorial fish. The surfcasters love so much about America–the flag is so much theirs–that they feel OBLIGATED to bring them to their fishing spots in order to ward off any foreign invaders–any devils or terrorists arriving in wooden junks or gunmetal gray destroyers or old Spanish man o’wars on those sacred shores to lay claim to their public beach. American surfcasters are their to tell you that no prisoner will be left behind in Vietnam–even now; and that nobody races better than Bobby Engram, number 8 (Bobby Engram Sr.: may he rest in peace.) American fish; American prisoners of war; American cars driven by chaw-chewing good ole’ American boys that can push their feet down on a metal pedal and turn a plastic steering wheel better than the rest of ‘em.

And as for the the fish–those supposed objects of their profligate pursuit: I never saw one caught–never even saw a line dip and shake. I just saw empty bottles, plastic sacks stuck on shafts of dune grass blowing in the wind, snarling dogs, mullets, piles of half-empty white Styrofoam containers (with red hamburger blood pooled in their bottoms), and big, idling trucks dripping oil down onto that proud American beach.

I obviously didn’t enjoy the beach during that segment of the run: I was on guard; I expected to be closelined at one moment and the heckled the next. Running this gauntlet made me cringe and so I ran up and behind them and their trucks and their dogs and their kids; I ran on the snow-like sand, my legs giving away with every step.

And then I gave up entirely and crossed over the grassy dunes–running along the side of the hot, asphalted road where jeeploads of teenagers yelled out various har-har things just as they passed me (you know, in order to pull the old “scare the runner” trick?).

1:00 came and I ran back.

A few “faggots” and other drunken catcalls later, I was back on my bike (a beach cruiser)–riding west again, chasing the setting sun, wearing no shirt, no socks, carrying no towel or bottle of water–just living and running pure again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.