A Weekend on the Beach With My Best Friend

After a seven week stretch of not seeing someone, that 2.5 hour flight to see them feels like an eternity. Having my fiancee there waiting for me on the other end of that flight made it totally worth the wait. I spent the past weekend at Megan’s family’s place down near the beach in North Carolina. The trip couldn’t have come at a better time, giving me the opportunity to escape life and some potentially hectic decisions facing me back in the Windy City. I don’t think I relax with anyone else better than I do with her…which I reckon is a good thing.

I did however learn that I’m not invincible to sunburns. Wow. And OUCH. I’ve had much worse experiences but it had been a good year or two since I had the pleasure of a good beach-induced burn. I had totally forgotten the inherit value of the ol’ SPF 30. Fortunately, I’m one of the lucky few that doesn’t peel too bad but has those burns turn into solid brown tans later on.

Megan and I spent that Saturday at the beach with her mom and took a nice walk on the beach, talking about family and planning for the future. Weddings tend to have a way of turning conversations from small talk to long term issues fairly quickly. The more she and I talk about planning ahead for the next year’s wedding and the years to come, the more confident I am about how lucky I am about who I get to spend the rest of my life with.

We didn’t just spend time at the beach but also took a day trip to Bald Head Island. It was a really cool and unique place that I had never been to myself. You had to take a ferry to get to the island and then use either golf carts or bicycles as your mode of transportation. Cars were absent on Bald Head, one of the island rules that I thought was extremely cool. So we spent most of the afternoon tooling around the island on a golf cart and heading back to their house to cook up some a shrimp and pasta dish along with blueberry/peach pie for dessert.

Fortunately I only have to wait about three weeks until I get to see Megan again the next time. All I know is 8/6/11 won’t get here fast enough for me.