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Fortress 6170Home \ Fortresses \ June 2000 \ 6170
Location: Bellows Beach |
Saturday, June 17, 2000
Meiko, Lisa, and I went to Bellows Beach. We weren't going to stay very
long and in fact, I wasn't even going to build a fortress. I thought it
might be nice just to do some body boarding. We also brought a small
grill and stuff to make hamburgers. But anymore, I just can't help it.
The sand calls to me. I am driven. So I decided, with the short time we
had, to simply build a single tower. I
figured it wouldn't take very long and if I concentrated on height, it
might still be impressive.
I piled the sand nearly five feet tall. To get the height, there's got to be a good base to support it, so the base was large, probably close to 3 feet across. I began carving. After about a half an hour, Lisa asked me where our keys were. Shit. We checked our beach bag, looked through the car and all of our stuff, and I checked the waistband of my shorts. They were nowhere. One of the first things I do when I get to the beach is to secure the keys, putting them in the little zipper pocket of the beach bag. Today I forgot.
So I conducted a Phase One Search: I spent most of the following hour sifting through the sand near our towels, using my fingers like rakes; searching the Jeep more thoroughly, under the seats, through the console, in the back, even on the ground around the outside; looking again through our beach bag, the towels, Meiko's stuff; searching everywhere--to no avail.
One theory was that I had shoved them in the waistband of my shorts, which I often do, and they fell out when I bent down to start digging sand for the fortress. So I sifted through the sand near the half-carved tower. The tide was coming in and the water made the sand more solid near the tower, making it more difficult to dig. I still couldn't find them. The only other place I thought they might be was actually inside the tower. They could have fallen out of my shorts, then I could have inadvertently scooped them up in a handful of sand and thrown them onto the pile as I was stacking up the tower. I thought about this far-fetched theory as I stared at my magnificently tall tower.
Then, for the first time, I used my carving tools for destruction. I hacked away at the tower, bit-by-bit, for about 20 minutes looking for the keys inside and listening for the sound of metal to hit the knife. When the tower was gone, so was our last hope of finding the keys.
It sure was a nice tower.
And I have no photographs of it.
We decided that we'd have to get copies made of all the keys and if that was the worst thing that could happen to us at the beach, life is not too bad. I started the grill for hamburgers.
We all sat around for awhile, Meiko and Lisa by the towels trying to enjoy the beach, and me behind the Jeep, dejected, watching the flames lick the coals. I always drive and was the last person to have the keys, so where ever they were, it was my fault they were there instead of secured in the bag. For a second, I thought about ending it all by jumping into the grill. It's only about 12 inches across though, and 6 inches tall, so it would've been a difficult method of suicide.
As I was contemplating this, for some reason, I glanced back past the Jeep towards the beach. I saw Meiko and Lisa sitting there, then a guy walking past them. I recognized him as the guy camped out an a nearby towel. He was walking towards the water, taking a diagonal track, crossing in front of Meiko and Lisa. He passed near my ex-sand tower, then paused, looked down, and picked up something shiny. Something that looked like a set of keys that were just sitting there in the sand. He shook them at Meiko and Lisa and although I was too far away to hear, I could tell he was asking innocently, "Are these your keys?" Of course that was awesome. I saw Meiko perk up and shake her head yes and he handed them to her. He didn't know we had been tearing up the beach for the past 90 minutes looking for them. Gauging by the location of the keys, my theory had been partially correct: I must have stuck them in my waistband and they fell out. They must have fallen out while I was walking towards the site of the sand tower and got covered by sand, hiding them from view. The tide had now come in and washed away some sand to reveal them. Why he decided to cross diagonally across the beach towards the water I don't know, but he did, and saved the day.
As the hamburgers cooked, a storm rolled through, but since it came from the ocean, we saw it coming from miles away and had plenty of time to batten the hatches and get everything under cover. I opened the back hatch for cover and rigged it at an angle so the water would drip away from the Jeep. I pushed the grill under it, still cooking hamburgers. The storm passed quickly and by the time we finished our hamburgers, it was calm and the sky was blue again.
Too bad about the fortress though. And now I never forget to "secure the keys."