Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Daddy Day Camp, vol. 7, Final Edition, Jacob Riis Beach, the Rockaways, Queens, NY





Labor Day is past.  The Summer has ended.  Everyone is back at work. Yet here in New York there are two magical "extra" days negotiated in the teachers contract for training.  Two days where families freak out.  Two days when I really try on my new "stay at home daddy" hat for real. Mommy needs the car for work.  So we grabbed our beach toys and books to beat the hottest day of the summer yet at Jacob Riis. 


Riis is our fav city beach and we hadn't been here all summer, just Rockaway down the road.  When Elian's mom pointed out that the Q35 bus would get us there in an hour, we were in.  


I don't know where all the other kids are today.  Camp is over, after school not yet begun, but they weren't here with their nannies.  At 11 it was just us and a whole lotta national seashore at the end of Flatbush Avenue. But what made it most clear the summer was done was sadly watching the remaining lifeguards dig out their summer guard chairs from the sand and store them in the 1930's palace of a beach house behind us. Daddy Day Camp is done; I guess it's time to get to work.