Montauk Is For Lovers

We are a motel manager's worst nightmare. Everything you need to know about my trip to Montauk is summed up in these two pictures.

Okay, if you really must know more, then suffice to say that I'm fantastically lucky to have any family around whatsoever this far from home, but even luckier that it's someone as adventurous as Kelly, who...

♥ ...When I invited her to come with me on this trip on short notice, said yes before she even knew where Montauk was. Actually, I'm not even sure she knows now. It's the ass end of Long Island, the island which Brooklyn and Queens are on the complete opposite side of. Actually, it probably makes more sense if our end is the ass.

♥ ...Agreed to spend a chunk of the trip bicycling and invest in a rental, even though she hasn't ridden a bike ever since she got pretty enough for guys to begin driving her around everywhere. And whom intrepidly took to the road with a fearlessness natural to one who has cheated death or at least fallen on one's head many, many times.

♥ ...Does not get one bit as cranky as she used to, even when it becomes so obvious that we are trapped in our motel room for the night without any food or beverages that she threatens to drink her face moisturizer.

♥ ...Will brave the cold winds and crossing the highway on foot (while wasted) in order to buy me the best coffee-flavored malt I've ever had, bare minutes before the last open purveyor of refreshment closes for the night, and whom afterward will barely even bother to taste the fruits of this expedition, even though it's the best thing I've ever engulfed and I could do little but sit and concentrate on relishing it for ten full minutes.

♥ ...Will scramble up somebody's private driveway without hesitation if it means getting a closer look at a deer.

♥ ...Will inform, and not judge, my daytime-TV as nighttime viewing-options during our after-hours imprisonment at the Sands Motel.

♥ ...Answered a morning "how are you?" with, "I feel like I was gang-raped. But it was probably just all the bike riding."

♥ ...Can somehow manage to fully explain the rules for "Crazy Eights" but forget to mention even once what eights have to do with any of it.

♥ ...Was totally freaked out by the tiny crabs we found while digging our sand castle and refuses to touch them, but had no problem building a pit in the castle's center where we can house them to devour our enemies for sport.

♥ ...Will confirm for me that yes, that IS Molly Shannon who just came into the diner we're having breakfast at, and who will also stop me from being a huge freak about it.