Key Biscayne

Over Labor Day Weekend, I enjoyed the most relaxing weekend I’ve had in a long time! On Saturday, a group of us decided to spend the entire day at the beach on Key Biscayne. My friend Yael’s husband is in a PhD program at the University of Miami, and several of his colleagues live on Key Biscayne, where they have access to the private beach there.

And, um, the beach was unbelievable! So pretty! And no tourists! Or at least, not the irritating, spilling-their-keg-cups-full-of-beer-everywhere, Jersey-Shore-esque tourists.

This was my view for the entire day:

And you can definitely tell that I was using a wide-angle lens, because look at the curve of the water!

We spent the day swimming, playing racketball, and playing what they called “tattooball,” so-called because the point of the game is to hit the ball so hard at your opponent that it leaves a bruise, or, tattoo (obviously, I did not participate).

Everyone except for me played a round of Deathrace.  Deathrace consists of racing from the shore out until a chosen point (in this case, me on my blue floatie), and there are no rules to what you can do to your opponents to ensure that you finish the race and they don’t (apart from no pulling on clothing, and no drowning, of course).  The last person to touch the chosen point (me, or my floatie, in this case) is out, and they race again, and again, and again, until there is only two people left. Those two battle it out between the shore and the floatie, until the first person who touches it wins!

I would like to make it known that I did not know what Deathrace was when they started chattering excitedly about this thing called “Deathrace,” but based solely on it’s name, I offered to be the referee. It is actually hysterically funny to watch – Yael and Marcus have a waterproof camera, so I snapped some hilarious pictures of everyone charging into the water, but I haven’t seen those yet. I kept my camera far, faaaar away from the water’s edge.

We also played another game, which they called something else that I don’t remember, but what is basically Keep Away. I’m telling you, I can’t even remember the last time I played actual water games. This is what I’ve noticed: when you go to the beach with girls, you spend a lot of time floating and chatting and tanning and reading your book; when you go to the beach with guys, you spend a lot of time playing games with made-up rules and racing each other and getting hit in the head with flying, bouncing objects and in general messing around.  So anyway, we played Keep Away with two people in the center for a good few hours, and it was actually pretty darn fun. And I have to say that I am proud of myself and Yael for getting out of the center so many times when everyone else was 6″ and 180 pounds! (It was only towards the end of the when we were tired that the guys started throwing with their off-hands only.)

We stayed at the beach for almost six hours, and it was beautiful and sunny the entire time we were there.

I love going to the beach.

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