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Surrey on Ocean City Boardwalk
One year while vacationing with our extended family, I decided to take my daughter, niece and nephews on a surrey ride. At the time they ranged in age from three to eight. It seemed like a great way to entertain and bond with the kids, not to mention expose them to the things I experienced as a child. I remember laughing and pedaling and having a blast with my parents when they took me.
It could be that my selective memory function was on full blast at the time I conjured the idea because it wouldn’t be until later, when I struggled to keep a string of obscenities from escaping my mouth in the presence of said youth during said surrey ride, that I would have a sudden flashback to my own youth. In horror, I recalled that it was on surrey rides that I learned some of the choicest swear words littering pop culture of the early 1970's.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t wait to share this boardwalk experience with these little guys as I envisioned us laughing, bonding and enjoying the best experience the Jersey Shore has to offer: trying not to kill others with a 500 pound, four wheeled weapon craftily designed as a whimsical bicycle with a fringe on top.
At the time I announced my intentions I remember the expressions on my mother and sister-in-law's faces. They looked at me like I was crazy. They feigned like it was a great idea - at least my sister-in-law did. I think my mother's exact words were "You're crazy!" I could tell that, to them, this was just another one of my hair-brained ideas likely to end in disaster. My sister-in-law, younger than I but with far greater common sense, delicately asked if I wanted another adult to accompany me. "Nah," I waved her off, assuring her I could handle it. And I am sure I could have, had any one of my four riding companions been able to reach the pedals.
Surrey paid for, instructions completed and helmets safely fastened (except for me - even in the name of fashion I wouldn't be caught dead in headwear of any kind, safety be dammed) I pushed, pulled, sweated, strained and heaved the humungous beast out onto the street. I was proud of my physical strength and thought, "No biggie!" until I looked ahead and realized that in order to actually ride on the boardwalk I had to get this thing up a ramp that, from my perspective, appeared to be a mile and a half long.
It was precisely then that the kids decided they needed to play twenty questions.
"What's this thing called again, Ann Kim?" That was Brian, he was four and thought I had two first names. "Mommy, where's my juice?" asked my daughter, who was three. "Aunt Kim, how did they do that painting?" Katie, six, cried out, pointing at a wall mural featuring a huge whale. "Why won't my steering wheel turn?" asked Nick, my oldest passenger, furiously turning the fake steering wheel in the front. He reached over and turned the real wheel and suddenly the surrey went careening into a family of six.
"Nick, keep your hands on your own wheel," I scolded lightly as I grunted an apology to the victims. The father of the traumatized yet recovering family offered to help me push the surrey up the rest of the ramp. I would have protested, had I any oxygen left in my body. We had only gone about three feet at this point.
"Wee! This fun!" My daughter cried out as the nice man sped us up the ramp and onto the pedestrian freeway.
It took me a couple minutes to recover as I huffed and puffed and mapped out a strategy. The rules of the road dictated I cross over pedestrian traffic eight people deep in order to ride with, not against traffic. It was one of the rules I promised Elmer the Bike Guy I would follow. Judging by the crowds, if my calculations were correct and I heeded Elmer's other cautionary rule, "Show respect to other riders", we wouldn't get to the other side until Brian was in junior high.
"Let's go!" All four kids cried out in unison. Realizing I had already expended nearly half our allotted time just trying to get this #$%@& thing on the boardwalk, I pushed, pulled, sweated, strained and heaved to get myself into my seat. I tried to pedal but the thing wouldn’t budge. It was then that I heard nefarious laughter coming from the other side of the surrey - Nick, the ultimate eight year old jokester, was holding the brake.
"Very funny, mister," I said, removing his hand from the brake and putting it on his own steering wheel, wishing I had remembered to bring the handcuffs Katie won at thearcade last night.
In order to finish this ride while I still had feeling in both my legs, I decided I needed to push straight across the walking, running, biking, skateboarding, rollerblading, stroller-jogging, surrey-careening crowd without apology - after all, my vehicle was capable of taking out anyone who wished to argue with me.
Once on the other side with no fatalities that I'll admit to, I rocked, swayed and hurled myself forward to get some momentum going. I wished now that I had taken my sister-in-law up on her offer of an additional adult, or better - that someone would have struck me in the head upon suggesting this idea. No matter what I did, I could not get this thing going. I finally realized that if I pedaled Fred Flintstone style, I reaped not one, not two but three rewards: 1. it got us going, 2. it gave me a massive wedgie and 3. the wedgie was quickly forgotten as I realized this simple maneuver created a far more attractive visual of me, not to mention dispensed with my need for unattractive sound effects. It seemed to do the trick.
"Faster, Aunt Kim!" yelled Katie, my little daredevil of a niece. I was already going a quarter of a mile an hour, what did she want?
Apparently she and her other companions wanted to see more than just this block before it was time to head back. Soon they all began chanting, "Faster! Faster! Faster!"
"Why did this seem like such a good idea?" I asked myself as I strained and struggled to hurl this four wheeled beast down the boardwalk, faster as per my little passengers’ wishes.
Why is it that riding a surrey down a crowded boardwalk on a sunny summer day was so much fun before I became an adult? Maybe it had to do with the fact that, being a mother myself, I actually cared about not hurting someone as I careened through the crowd. Maybe it was because, as a kid, I could sit back and let my parents do all the work. As I looked around at my tiny passengers, they were all smiling and having a good time - Nick trying to steer us into people with his fake wheel, Julia turning around in her seat and trying to hug me, Katie and Brian taking in the sights as the sun danced on their little cherub faces and the soft breeze lifted their corn silk hair. Yes, surrey riding is definitely more fun for the little guys.
But I was sure I had done this at some point when I was an adult and it wasn’t as hard as it seemed now. Was I that badly out of shape? Did motherhood cause me to lose muscle tone and the ability to perform simple tricks like pedaling a bike? What was wrong with me?
Just then, a surrey packed to the gills with college age kids came zooming past us. It took me back to the days when my friends and I rented surreys and embarked on side-splitting, hilarious adventures. Then it dawned on me - riding a surrey effortlessly was much easier to accomplish when you're twenty-one. And drunk.
Yes folks, I hate to admit it but there were a few times my friends and I, armed with a cooler full of 'hair of the dog that bit you', set out on an early Sunday morning ride-slash-drunk fest via surrey. We'd be able to cover two lengths of the mile and a half boardwalk, laughing all the way, stopping only to take a surreptitious sip and a couple silly pictures of ourselves. Back then, riding a surrey was fun, effortless and never ended in life-altering injury as this ride was threatening to do for me.
Thinking back to those days when everything my friends and I did was fun and funny, I decided I had to see the humor in this situation and enjoy it. I looked at my itty-bitty companions and realized that they wouldn't always be too little to pedal. There would come a day when we'd do this and ease would take over where amazement left off, when they would no longer squeal with delight as they saw a kite going up for its first flight of the day or I veered into the handrails and threatened to take us all for a plunge.
After side-swiping three people, running over someone's foot and issuing forty seven apologies to those who unknowingly strayed into our path, we finally made it a couple blocks. I was just starting to smile and treasure this moment, the surrey seemingly on autopilot (although that could just have been because I had lost feeling in both legs) when my riding companions began to stage their coup.
"I have to go to the bathroom!"
"My belly hurts!"
"This is booooring!"
"I'm hungry!"
Good enough for me - my rear end was numb, my back was in pain and our time was up. With all the grace of a charging rhinoceros, I turned the fringed beast around and headed back. Instead of being a responsible adult and walking the surrey off the boardwalk, I treated my little friends to a slow, speed-controlled ride down the ramp to their giggling delight. To sweeten the experience, I took them back on the boards where we could walk freely, save for me who was bent at a 45 degree angle, for ice cream.
Now we pile eleven family members into a surrey for our annual surrey ride. All of us, including the newest addition to our family who at the time of "Aunt Kim's Surrey Adventure" was a mere infant, can touch the pedals, and we effortlessly (except for a few wandering moments) make it up and down the entire length of the boardwalk. We have a good time, each time, and inevitably we reminisce about the time I thought it would be a great idea to be the only adult to take four non-pedaling kids on a surrey ride. And you know what? It was. All four kids remember the experience, in slightly different detail, but it's a memory that they, not to mention my legs, will never forget.
For more information:
For a great place to rent surreys (and other bikes) at 8th and Boardwalk in Ocean City, click here.
Coming in 2010, the return of the homemade donuts! (complimentary with a bike rental, and truly the best)
For more information on surreys, click here
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