A Day at the Beach

After coming off of patrol the day before, Frank, Mark and I decided to head to the beach to unwind. Our previous day's mission was a tough one. We had trampled through a jungle of governmental paperwork for several hours and then had to fight off the new recruits in the chow hall in order to get the last of the fresh milk. I tell ya, war is hell. We certainly deserved a day off to unwind and to experience the finer aspects of military life...which consisted mainly of conducting search and rescue missions over our squadron's beachhead which had the innocuous name of Rehoboth. Our primary mission was always to seek out and capture the female variety of beach fauna which congregated on that particular beach during the summer months.

Now, getting to the beach was the hard part. On the weekends, there was a steady and unrelenting stream of traffic heading south out of the provincial towns of Philly, Wilmington and Dover. There was always bumper to bumper traffic all of the way to the beach. Normally, we could get to the beach in a half of an hour. But, on the weekends in the summer, that time sometimes tripled.

So, after a few years of experience, I developed a methodology to reduce that travel time. After we managed to get a few miles outside the city limits of Dover, the road opens up and meanders through mostly farm land. Because of the paucity of population, there were fewer intersections and stop lights with which to contend. And, for many miles, the road is almost perfectly straight. So, I discovered that I could pull out into the northbound lane of the two land road and drive south for several miles at the posted speed limit without encountering a vehicle heading in the opposite direction. Of course, the people who chose to stay in the correct southbound lane traveling at five or ten miles an hour usually honked their horns at me and occasionally derided me with the universal one finger salute.

But, hey, I had Frank in the car. He took care of us. There was nobody tougher or meaner than him. Think of bad, bad, Leroy Brown. Well, Frank was badder. And, he was adamant about protecting his buddies. So, I had no worries about those irate motorists.

On occasion, a car would approach from the south. At that time, I needed to force my way back into the southbound traffic. Over the years, I developed an effective method to facilitate this process. First, I would quickly glance at the drivers of the potential vehicles which I intended to cut off. Usually, I picked the oldest male driver I could find. After discerning the best candidate, I maneuvered my car until I was parallel to or maybe two feet in front of his left front bumper. I then cut my wheels to the right and came close enough to his bumper to make him unconsciously hit his brakes and veer a little to the right. His little tap of the brakes left enough space for me to accelerate a smidge and then cut in front of him.

Before the driver knew what had happened, I had smoothly and seamlessly gotten back into the southbound lane. After the northbound vehicle passed, I maneuvered back into the northbound lane and traveled south until another northbound car approached.

By performing these maneuvers, we usually saved several minutes of travel time. It might not sound as if the potential for disaster positively correlated to the potential reward. However, there was no question in our minds that the small risk was well worth taking.

Now, once we reached the beach, the reconnaissance missions began. But, those activities must be told at a later time or probably be remembered only by the active participants.