Long Beach Long Island Long Post!

I think I love FitLinxx. Too bad they don't have it at my school. Today, it said: you have lifted 15, 430 lbs. Really??? Are they lying to me? Hah! (Since I'm a beginner that looks pretty impressive to me) It felt good, because this weekend was the weekend of eating...

Impromptu Trip to Long Beach, Long Island

FRIDAY
After only 6 hours of driving (rumor has it that sometimes you can get there in close to 4), we pulled up to a tall, yellow stucco house with a stained glass window and multi-colored turret. We unloaded our stuff, then went out to a diner with my friend's grandparents, where I saw something called a "Mulberry Sandwich" on the menu and wondered why there weren't any mulberries in it. (I think I stumbled across the answer last night when I opened a guide book and discovered that "Mulberry St." runs through Little Italy). Oh, wait I have to stop writing this because there is a beagle nose nudging me reminding me its dinner time...OKAY OKAY OKAY...

So anyway, (dogs are fed) we went to the beach and took pictures of each other on the life guard stand, drank wine, got some icecream. Then we were about to go to bed, but my friend's cousin showed up, so two of us accompanied him to a place called The Mirage (in Westbury?) which my friend said was "full of Guidos and Goombas" (I guess she can say it since she's Italian American) On the dance floor, they unleashed confetti--little bits of foam that quickly melted after touching your hair.

SATURDAY--wake up, it's a gorgeous day, listen to the Atlantic ocean through the open bedroom windows (a new experience for me!) walk to a deli, order breakfast (something called a Tom Clancy Sandwich, which is a wrap with egg whites, turkey and swiss) then - off to the beach! It was pretty nice, though crowded. Unfortunately, the lifeguards pulled everyone out of the water in the mid-afternoon because there was too much trash in it...but we laid on a big sheet and read some books. I borrowed mine from my friend and forgot what it was called, but it was a book of prose and had a blurb on the back with Charles Simic endorsing it. It was a reddish pink color. Eventually my skin turned the color of the book cover...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We went to a yard sale before we went to the beach. Two female mannequin heads, halfway sunk into rectangular trimmed hedges, gazed eerily from the foliage, and although we bought nothing, my friends took several photos...

After applying liberal doses of aloe gel to our sunburns, we went out to "the club" in Rockville Center with my friend's grandparents. Raw oysters, stuffed squash blossoms, a glass of chardonnay, soft shell crabs, a few bites of gnocchi, a smoked tomato (oh my god did we ever stop eating??) And since I asked, my friend's grandfather told the story of the time he went for "a ride" with Lucky Luciano.

(When he was a kid, Lucky Luciano's girlfriend thought he was adorable. They took him to a bar - or a speakeasy since it was during Prohibition. At one point he was dancing on the counter top in front of the patrons. His mother had heard about what happened and went looking for him She found asleep in the back of a car!! She got him out and brought him home. The next day, when Lucky Luciano came around again, Mama gave him hell! "I'm sorry Mrs. Biscelgia, we didn't mean any harm, he wanted to come with us...")

Post gorge-fest, three girls with hot shoulders and full bellies squeezed into the back of the car and sang "Blue Moon" in honor of (what else) the blue moon. There was talk of going out and getting moon tattoos, but we were too sunburned. Instead, we went out for Italian ices and walked around to several bars (note: some of them don't let you in unless you're 23) I met some people who know of my school in Binghamton. ("Awww...you go there? My sister goes there. You live off campus? She lives near a bunch of crack houses. We tell her, good luck, don't get killed!" said one person, who, along with his friends - including a guy with a mysterious obsession with Nashville, Tennessee - had just gotten kicked out of a bar.)

Just around the corner from the yellow stucco house is a bar called "Shines," which my friend's grandparents used to go to 50 years ago. It was decorated with a lot of old "No Irish Allowed" signs. The people in this bar were very friendly, but when I told a guy that I also went to school (as an undergrad) in Seattle, he said "New York to Seattle? You went from culture to no culture! Good thing the rain didn't kill you!" (Uh...actually I do think Seattle has some culture! I thought.) I ordered a L. I. iced tea but it was too strong, so then I just had a bourbon and ginger. As the evening wore on, I noticed that my friends were reverting back to their childhood accents!

SUNDAY raining morning, we walked across the street and went to Mass. I'm not Catholic, but I I tried to genuflect and cross myself at appropriate times...went back to the same diner for lox and bagels (this seemed so "New York"), bought cannoli at a bakery, and drove through a dairy barn (a drive through convenience store). By the time we left it was 2 p.m. After a few minor screaming incidents, we were out of NY and on the Jersey Turnpike, but because of traffic (and yes, because I had to pee) we pulled off so we could stop and get some pizza. There I tested one of my friends theories (she said that if I ate food with a lot of sodium we wouldn't have to stop to go to the bathroom so much. Hah! Actually it kind of worked, but I also didn't drink any caffeine and barely any water. I was thirsty.)

Once more, I scrunched myself into the backseat of her little black and white Mini Cooper, next to most of our stuff, and we were on our way back to the Turnpike. We found it, eventually, but unfortunately, it turned out to be the Penna Turnpike. So, we took a nice scenic route through Philly and hit more traffic on 95...a mere 8 hours after leaving Long Beach, we finally made it back to Springfield. (Moral of story: it pays to leave early). "Hello my beautiful car," I said, as I shoved my bags into the roomy, dented 95 Taurus, adorned with 2 Mary Prankster stickers, a blue mirror that doesn't match the grayish-gold paint on the rest of the body, and a "Simplify, Simplify" bumper sticker...

Overall the trip was a great success. And the food was great. But, the tolls aren't cheap!!