6.01.2004

I hope you all had a good long weekend. Mine was very nice, thank you. Sunday involved a trip to Jones Beach. It was gorgeous: sunny, breezy, though too chilly for me to do any real prancing in the water. My Favorite Newlyweds had brought a baby grill, so eating sufficed as the chief entertainment. And lying down came up a close second. If you lay flat, it felt a little warmer than it was.

There was an airshow going on. We watched four parachuters jump out of a plane and swing on the wind, slowly making their way down to the water. There also was a Red Baron-type plane making crazy eights, spinning, diving, and swooping. The scariest part was when he would shoot straight up and cut the engine, hang in suspension for a few seconds, and then whirlybird nosedive straight down. Of course, just as it looked as if he was going to hit water, he would yank himself back up and go back to his frenetic loops, a stream of pink smoke trailing behind him.

The part of the airshow I didn't like involved the big military planes. They whizzed, whined, and screamed over us almost at all times. Sometimes they looked like giant flying rats, other times like dildos sailing and tilting in unison. And they were loud. I was reminded of the days after 9/11 when we heard the churning of F-14s overhead pretty much constantly. This was not pleasantly evocative as we lay on the sand. Not long after the sonic boom, we packed it up.

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