Vacation, all I ever wanted ...

We just returned from four days at the far east end of Long Island, in a beach community called Montauk.

If you go past the uber-rich party spots of the Hamptons, you get to Montauk, which feels how I imagine Fort Lauderdale might have in the 1960s -- low-slung motor lodges with names like the Surfside and the Beachcomber, and groovy little restaurants like Mr. John's Pancake House and Shagwong. Not even Starbucks has penetrated this town that somehow balances vacationing city folk and commercial fishing docks.

We picked our vacation time sort of at random. My boss wanted vacation requests for the summer within a week or two of when I started, and we had no idea what summer had in store for us, so we just chose a July weekend and an August one. We got really lucky. It was about 100 in the city, and almost that in Montauk, but with the ocean breeze and swimming in the ocean or pool, it felt more tolerable.

I ate roughly my body weight in seafood, mostly lobster, but with some oysters and mussels thrown in for extra girth. I also tempted the skin cancer gods by lying on the beach in full view of the shiny orange orb.