Beached wail

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

I don’t know why I ever left.

“I’m not leaving. Ever. I mean it,” I said to no one in particular, sipping a strawberry daiquiri on the beach.

It was … a revelation.

“I could do this forever, literally,” I said, again to no one in particular.

In my one hand was the daiquiri. In the other was a book, my second of the week.

I had just gotten done with a 20-mile bike ride to the main strip at Virginia Beach.

And I was about to pig out, literally, on a heaping plate of pork barbecue at a restaurant 50 feet from the condo my wife and I were staying in.

“This is how life is supposed to be.”

For the record, I wasn’t talking with the missus about this because she was back in the condo taking a nap.

This is what you call takin’ it easy, ladies and germs.

“What do you mean, you want another cowboy hat?” she had asked me the night before.

While I was shopping for my second cowboy hat of the vacation trip.

All my life, I had gone ohfer on cowboy hats – and now suddenly, I couldn’t get enough of them.

“I need an orange one. To wear to football games,” I explained.

The logic made sense at the time.

As did the logic of playing 54 holes of miniature golf one evening – before spending a couple of hours at an arcade playing air hockey and a football game that tests one’s ability to throw the ball through an array of targets.

“I could get up in the morning,” I laid out the plan for our future as we watched the sun set, daiquiris again in hand, “take the dog for a walk, come back, get my laptop, write here on the beach, of course breaking for lunch, then call it quits around six, and …”

You can tell that I gave this a lot of thought, can’t you?

Oh, yes – this is the plan.

Take over the media world, publish 10 bestsellers, maybe make a run at the White House, then retire at 50 and live the good life.

It’s going to be a busy next 16 years – but it’s going to happen.