Monday, August 07, 2006

A day at the beach

A few weeks ago I and some of the people living in the dorm this summer decided that we should go to the beach before the summer ended. After some though we chose yesterday as the best day to go. It was the second to last Sunday of the semester and the last one before "finals week".

I got up early, showered, shaved, and sat down to check my email. Looking at weather.com I saw there was a big storm system headed right for us. At the appointed time I went to the lobby to meet with the other people going. After hearing about the storm everyone had second thoughts of going to the beach.

We decided to wait and see if the storm would pass quickly. We played Zombies (a fun little board game) and had lunch. After eating the storm looked like it was going to dodge north so we headed out.

At the beach it was overcast but the sun was making an effort to peek through the clouds. This was nice because it was warm but not hot. The water was a bit chilly at first but it felt good to go swimming. We swam a bit and built a sand castle (which put the other ones on the beach to shame, go engineering students)

Towards the late afternoon the sun did actually make an appearance as the clouds broke up. On our way off the beach some very nice people from a church group insisted that we stop and have a burger (have you ever seen a college student turn down free food?) We thanked them and left. Even after free burgers we went to dinner at a really good pizza place before going back to Kalamazoo.

On the drive back the conversation somehow got onto the track of Montos in Diet Coke. For those lacking knowledge of such things: if you put sugar in soda it releases the CO2 at a rapid rate. Why is this interesting? Well, Mentos sink in cola and Diet Coke is very carbonated. Still not seeing it? How's this: 2 liter soda rocket. You put the mentos in the 2 liter, screw the cap on, shake it up, pressure builds, and wa-la soda rocket.

We stopped at Meijers and picked up several 2 liters and a value-pack of mentos and headed for and empty parking lot at the back of campus. I think it was the most fun I've had since... I went to the beach earlier that day. You can get the 2 liters to really zip. The only downside is that you end up covered in Diet Coke in the end.

After a day full of fun I came home and was getting ready for bed when I noticed that my back was as red as red could be. Turns out that the sun in the afternoon was enough to scorch my back pretty well. I suppose sunscreen would have been a good idea. Who knew?

Ja Mata Ne.