I really love vacationing with my family. Everyone is loud and smart and tall, and about the only thing that we ever bicker over is who is more right when it comes to politics, or who drank the last of the gin. A week at the beach always kicks ass, but a week at the beach with them is better. We don't do anything, really; we don't go out to eat, or shop, or drive to lighthouses. Instead, we sit on the beach all day long, moving in and out of shade as we see fit (there's a history of skin cancer in these Norwegian genes), and eventually we head back to the houses and shower, and then we have cocktail hour, and every night it's someone's turn to cook, and after dinner we walk to the pier, play some charades, and call it a night.
The past couple of years have gotten interesting because many of the cousins are now college-age or slightly older, and we have started staying up "late" (meaning past nine-thirty), and the adults realized we are going through much more booze than ever before. We don't talk much to each other during the year, aside from Christmas; we're scattered all over the place, and it gets too hard. But we pick up where we left off every time, and then we pull out the Cactus Flower, which is this '70s banana-seat bicycle that lives in the storage room of one of the houses we rent, and then we take turns pedaling it around the block. And then my cousin falls off the Cactus Flower, taking the skin off the tops of his feet as my brother is photographing it all, and the resulting sequence of photos make me laugh every time.
There's where I'll be for a few weeks, then. I'll think of you all fondly and raise a sand-crusted Heineken keg can in your honor. I'll be back in early July for more Grizzlebee-ing, beer pong at 3 am-ing, Sage Francis-ing goodness. In the meantime... peace. And thanks for the ride to the airport.
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