Blijburg

Originally uploaded by sarahkatina

You roll out of Funen with your homegrown biker gang five deep, cross a hodgepodge of really-real urbanscape and salt marsh, you bike up a sleek ultramodern loopy bridge that is a veritable mountain (the pained cry of Christy behind me, as we clambered, and I huffed and puffed and focused every muscle on not backsliding - "what...the hell...IS THISSSS..."), past what almost looks like it could be a New Urban Wasteland but is not, and arrive at the lovely zee itself.

The beach is called Blijburg, and translates to "Happyville," and there are many naked children and amiable dogs, many hip parents with long dreadlocks and tall black boots or perhaps Fela tshirts or perhaps lip rings, there is a tiki shack and a restaurant with battered wooden benches and too-melted candles, and there you must pay for your ice cream or your beer (if they believe you are over 16, which if you hang back from the counter and are barefoot and mill awkwardly with your party, some of whom hesitantly and quietly speak broken Dutch, some a melange, some only English, they may not), they give you a red plastic token with a starry "one" in the middle and you wander to a window outside and hand the snarky open-shirted single-earringed teenager the token and he smirks and hands you a towering, shiny cone that looks like it might be made of paint, but is in fact made of air, sugar, cold, heaven. There is a bus of the ancient hippie variety (for sale!) and a blue Model T of the nouveau biker-with-cash variety (not for sale!), and many towering Buddhas throwing up peace signs, an "Om" alter, you do not discover your burns til later - one angry red arm here, one angry red shin there, no burns for those who sported sunscreen (me) or were already tan (Bri) or are genetically gifted (Tim). You wonder at pens notebooks sand in shoes Coke doritos + pesto + cheese (together), you stare blatantly into the sun, you hear we're jammin', we're jammin', I hope you like jammin' too.

So quite a new thing, this day - or rather, its capacities - how full are you of happy? Brimming.

On the way home, I slam into a brick wall on my bike and escape completely unscathed, except for one teeny scrape on my left ring finger knuckle. I SLAMMED INTO A BRICK WALL while going FAST on a BIKE and it did not phase me. Another warning? No one else has had this many accidents, or perhaps to put it better, near misses. I am beginning to wonder.