I went to Rockaway, but not to play golf on the beach

(For those who are unaware, the above is a Seinfeld reference. Kramer goes out to Rockaway and treats the shore like a driving range.)

After several weeks of discussion and planning, Gloria, her daughters, and I finally went to Rockaway beach Sunday after church.

Having been to Coney Island twice, I decided it was time to try out a new stretch of sand. Rockaway is out by JFK Airport in Queens. It's a long peninsula and there is NOTHING near it but the airport.

Riding on the A-Train out there, we crossed over the water and little islands and such, which loosely resembled crossing the Bonnet Carre, but with a few more camps. People were jetskiing and fishing and such, and nothing resembling the city could be seen.

Then you get to the peninsula, and it looks like a slightly-more-crowded Bay St. Louis of sorts (with more condos on the beach). I could definitely see how people would want to live out there. It's secluded, it's clean, and there's like, four miles of beach! The only issues is that it is not close to ANYTHING by train, so a car would be pretty much a necessity.

Gloria and her two girls, Jessica and Jasmin, were soooo much fun! We also had another guy from church, Eric, who I'd never met before, and his son Ryan. We set up a little spot on the super-crowded beach, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I actually played in the water! The temperature was great and the waves were unbelievable! I kept thinking how fun it would be to have Bethany's ocean kayak out there with me.

It was so nice to go out and relax in the sun. Sunday ended up being the perfect day for the beach. Not to hot, sunny, a nice breeze, and mild temperatured water.

Monday, I went with Ema to go deliver some stuff to a church, and on the way home, our CAB DRIVER got pulled over! Imagine that! He had crossed lanes without using his signal (who in NY does?), and he was talking on his cell phone (who in NY doesn't?). The funny thing was he lied to the cop, saying that he was not on his cell phone. The cop not only had seen him on it, but he had two witnesses in the car! So the other cop in the car hailed us a new cab, and we had to move all of our stuff out of the trunk into the other car just to drive another ten blocks or so.

Tonight is the Oteil Burbridge concert at church. He is the bass player for the Allman brothers, and is doing a free show at Graffiti to help us reach out to the neighborhood and promote Saturday's big Paint the Town project. I've got so much work to do to get ready for the show. Phone calls to make, things to set up, etc... That's pretty much what my day will consist of, and tommorrow will be making follow-up calls to remind people about Saturday.

Friday, is pretty much the most exciting day so far. I'm going to BOSTON!!!!!! I've been wanting to go there forever, and after getting back from Philly and seeing how easy it was just to go, I suggested going to Boston, since its only 30 dollars by bus. So at 7am Friday morning, we're hopping a greyhound and will be in Bo-town by 11:30! I'm sooooooo incredibly excited. I didn't think I'd actually get to go to Boston while here this summer, but we bought the tickets yesterday, so it's official!

Goal of the day- to spot this guy: