Happy Fourth of July! Belmar

Posing at the beach ;)

The water is just freezing cold....

...so it's pretty hard to get in...

At the restrooms... Elis just had to take these pics... Aren't they funny?... We went to the "Pretty Ladies", of course ; ) Calling Kevin to find out how the roof of the convertible works...

In fact, we found the right button to close the roof... However, unfortunately it didn't work : (

Driving back to Tinton Falls...

We found the right exit : )

Elis in the Ford Mustang Convertible

Elisabeth and I took my black Ford Mustang Convertible and went to Belmar to spend the day at the beach there. In fact I had never been to Belmar before (I always spent my beach days at Bradley Beach last summer, since the O‘Shaughnessys have a beach house there), so I was really looking forward to seeing Belmar as well. We wanted to leave early enough, so that we could ensure a parking space. (You have to know that on the 4th of July it’s just crazy here

--> lots of people everywhere, because most of them have a day off, and we wanted to prevent being stuck in traffic). Although it took us some time to get to Belmar (we took the wrong way :) ), we managed to find a parking space not so far from the beach in the end. The admission to the beach was quite expensive (7 bucks!), but it was well worth it. It was so relaxing just lying at the beach, chatting, observing the people, listening to Elis’ MP3 files and doing nothing else. (By the way, thanks again for letting me listen to your music, Elis :) ) It was such a great day, although it was so hot and unbearably humid and the water freezing cold. However, we enjoyed it in spite of the humidity. The only “real” problem we had to face was the way back. By the time we got to our car, clouds had darkened the sky and I have to admit that I was a bit worried. You wonder why? Well, you know we were en route with a convertible. You still wonder why I was kind of nervous? Well, I wasn’t quite sure how to fold back the roof of the convertible and since it started to rain the minute we got to the car (without roof!), we were in trouble. Kevin had told me before how I had to fold back the roof, but when I wanted to do it myself, it just didn’t want to work. (I should have listened more carefully, because I’m not such a technical freak and it takes me in fact always some time to figure out how things work.) However, I could also remember that Kevin had told me that sometimes it doesn’t work, so Elis and I thought the only thing we could do was call Kevin to find out more. I tried to call him on the home phone, then on his cell phone, then on Sharon’s cell phone, but nobody was available. Only after some minutes had gone by (and we were soaked in water by that time…), did Kevin call back. He told me again the same thing I had already known before. When I told him that we were sitting in the car (without roof!) and that it was raining, he just laughed out loud. (Isn’t that nice? :) ) Well, anyway, after some time had gone by again, a guy came by and offered his help, but he couldn’t figure out either how the damn roof of the convertible worked, so he apologized, gave us the advise to “go under a bridge”, rushed to his porch (so that he didn’t get wet) and left us, poor Austrian girls, in the rain. Isn’t that nice? However, Elisabeth and I decided to wait under a tree until the rain ceased. When we figured out that this wouldn’t work out either, we decided to look for a roof, but unfortunately we couldn’t find any. You want to know how we ended up? Well, lucky us the rain stopped and we could go back to Tinton Falls. We even managed to find the way back without taking the wrong one first! You can imagine that we were so proud of ourselves… :) I’ll never forget this trip to Belmar on this Fourth of July. It was not only adventurous, but also funny and a bit embarrassing ;) For more details, check out Elisabeth’s blog http://www.elis-en-route.blogspot.com/ and have fun reading “Two Nannies And A Convertible...”