Going to the beach used to be great. Now it’s terrible.
Going to the beach used to be great! Every year from 2016 to 2019 (before we had kids), we would go for my wife’s birthday. We’d stay the Princess Royale hotel in Ocean City, Maryland. We’d pack salami sandwiches and orange Fanta sodas and head to the beach, where we’d hang out most of the daylight hours. We built sandcastles and I boogie boarded in the waves. At night, we’d play mini golf or go to the Boardwalk. We’d end the night and fall asleep watching reruns of Forensic Files. It worked every year. No issues. No problems.
In July 2019, on our way home from the beach, I stopped by the house my grandparents used to own, in a community called Ocean Pines, about 15 minutes from the beach. I went there every summer as a kid. They called it the “Parker House,” as I was the only grandchild when my grandparents acquired it.
As I stood in the driveway, I started to cry.
“What’s going on?” my wife asked me.
“I don’t know,” I responded. “But I think it’s just that I have such good memories here. Nothing bad ever happened at the beach.”
It seemed as if the Beach Gods were listening to me in that moment and took my words as a challenge.
A few months later, in October 2019, about two months after our daughter was born, we decided to take her to the beach for a couple days. Even though it was October, it was something fun to do while we were on parental leave from work.
It didn’t work out as planned. The weather was horrible. Rain and wind the whole time. Then when the weather cleared on the last day, I got a phone call informing me of dire news, something that impacted me deeply. I made the three-hour drive home in a state of shock of the new development. For the first time, something bad happened at the beach. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last time.
A few months later, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, and we were not going to risk contracting the virus in the summer of 2020, especially with a young child and a pregnant (again) wife. “We’ll go next year.”
In 2021, we decided to make the trek, this time with two kids in tow. My wife booked us a house via Airbnb, one that was a short walk to the beach. I booked us a minivan so we could load up cribs and all the other things our very young kids would need at the beach. Simply put, our Honda Civic was too small.
When I showed up at the Key Bridge Marriott hotel in Rosslyn, Virginia to pick up my rental car, the hotel staff told me that there hadn’t been a Hertz rental car pick up at that location in more than a year. “But here’s my reservation,” I said, showing them that I was at the right place. “I’m sorry…I don’t know what to tell you…there’s no car rentals here.”
I called the Hertz customer service line and explained the problem. “Oh, we’re very sorry about this,” the representative responded. “I can get you a Ford Taurus at another location. We’re all out of vans.”
“That’s not going to work!” I yelled back. I needed the space of a van…I already owned a sedan. “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have any vans available.”
“You can check another Hertz location and see if they have any.”
Furious, I drove from Rosslyn to Crystal City and found a Hertz location there, again explaining my situation to the poor manager who had to bear the brunt of my frustration and anger. “We don’t have any vans. I’m sorry.”
I went back to my car and found that Budget had a van we could rent. I drove to the Budget counter inside the Crystal City mall, where the attendant helped me get the vehicle. I drove it back to my house and began packing up the car, resulting in a later start than I wanted, but with a feeling that all had not been lost. Despite the seemingly minor hiccup, we were on our way to the beach…our happy place.
After a mandatory stop at Dairy Queen in Easton, Maryland (the same one I went to 30 years ago as a kid), we arrived at our accommodations in Ocean City. But we couldn’t get in the house. The Airbnb host never sent us the keycode to get inside, and no one at Airbnb could help us. We were stuck in a van outside the house waiting for someone to help us, meanwhile having to change young kids’ diapers on the floor of the van.
About two hours later, we got the code and enter the home, but it was a piece of junk. There were ants everywhere. Crappy furniture. You name it. Even worse, we didn’t realize the magnitude of taking two young kids to the beach. It was quite difficult. We realized we couldn’t stay out very long, especially because of our kids’ nap schedules, and the heat would get to them quite quickly, despite being under an umbrella.
After a couple days of the madness, we drove home disappointed.
In 2022, we wanted to try again. After all, we loved the beach. We wanted to make it work. We need some help, we thought, so we picked up our niece on the way. She could join us at the beach during the day and stay at the house to watch the kids at night while we went out. This time, the rental van worked out and my wife booked us a really nice, fairly large house (for beach houses) toward the bayside of Ocean City. It had plenty of bedrooms and was very clean.
But we ran into the same issue we did before. Our kids just couldn’t last at the beach very long. All the work to pack the van with everything we needed almost equaled the time we were on the sand. Then, the second to last night, our niece got very sick with some sort of stomach bug, so we cut short our vacation and drove her home.
Just another beach vacation that didn’t work out as planned…
In 2023, we decided to forego a beach vacation. “It’s just not worth it,” my wife and I said to each other. We’d go back when the conditions were more suitable, and our kids were older.
Then, in late 2023, an estranged family member reentered my life, a long-lost aunt, who offered my family a free week at one of the two properties she owned in Outer Banks, North Carolina. “Just let me know what week you’d like, and I’ll book it for you.”
I sat on the offer for some time thinking about it. “Do we want to try? Is it worth it?” In April 2024, I finally decided to take her up on the offer and book a week. When I looked at the availability, the house she owned was fully booked with family and other renters. The condo had a single week left: 21 – 28 July. “We’ll take that week,” I texted her. A day later, I had a confirmation. The Schaffel family was going back to the beach!
A couple weeks later, a business contact reached out to me asking if I was available to support an offsite that he was holding for his team in Seattle, Washington. “The summit is planned for 23-26 July, and I’ve got a slot for you right in the middle, on Wednesday the 24th.
Ugh. That’s right in the middle of our vacation! But it was really important that I supported this client, so I convinced him to move my slot to Tuesday the 23rd and told my wife I would take a redeye flight back Tuesday night into Wednesday, so we could go straight to the beach after I land. That would give us Wednesday through Sunday morning to have fun in the Outer Banks, a place neither she nor I (or our kids, of course) had been before. Four days would be long enough with our kids, both of whom were still under five years old.
I flew to Seattle on the 22nd, conducted my business on the 23rd, and flew back that night. While trying to sleep on the plane, my throat began to hurt. It’s just the dry air, I thought. When I got home, I helped pack up the rest of the car and we began the four-plus-hour drive to North Carolina. My wife drove as I was exhausted from the minimal sleep I had on the plane. We made it, got into the condo without issue, and took the kids to the pool.
But I was starting to feel worse. My sore throat hurt more. I was clearly sick with something. “I’m sure it’s just a cold,” I said. My sleep was rough, and my wife ended up sleeping on the couch that night. Thursday, I didn’t have much energy and tried to help with the kids where I could, which was minimal at best. She slept on the couch again. Friday was similar, and I finally decided to take a COVID test around 3 pm.
It didn’t take long to reveal my result.
Positive. For the first time in my life, I got COVID-19.
“We’ll leave tomorrow morning,” my wife said to me.
“That doesn’t make any sense, honey. I’ll be in the bedroom isolating the rest of the night, and you’ll sit here trying to figure out what to do with the kids in this small condo. We should just leave now.”
So we did. We immediately began packing up the car and drove home, arriving a little before 10 pm. Our vacation was already delayed because of my business trip, and now we were leaving early…again. Another crappy trip to the beach…
While I was annoyed and frustrated that I contracted the virus, I was more annoyed that we just couldn’t find a way to make a beach vacation work. No matter what we did…something always went badly.
And that was the hardest part. The beach was the place where nothing bad happened. Now, it seemed like nothing good could happen.
At this point, I’m not sure when we’ll go back.
