Nailing the Fourth of July

I love the Fourth of July. It took me a while to get used to the flagrant patriotism. I know that's the point of the Fourth of July, but the sheer volume of stars and stripes still surprised me. I'm from a generation of Brits who are raised to be slightly embarrassed about our nation's past. With the exception of skinheads and everyone during a world cup, we don't fly our flag quite proudly. 

But if the idea of a day of national pride and the preponderance of patriotic outfits took me aback at first, it didn't take long before I was decking P out in red white and blue and asking friends what they were doing for the Fourth.

Having said all that, this year we didn't quite join the party. The last couple of years we went to a workout buddy's massive beach party, but he switched gyms, and now I haven't seen him since the last Fourth of July, so the ratio of catching up with him vs making small talk with hardbodies I don't know from Adam is all out of whack. We could have joined our good friends' block party, for a more wholesome option. That'd  be fun, but it's not our block and our neighbours, after all. We could have gone to a party in Silverlake, but who wants to drive for an hour on the Fourth of July?

It turns out we didn't want, or need to drive anywhere.

Instead we made the most of a day off in the middle of the week the best way we know how. An early surf for TLOML, and a run for me, and then we wore our smuggest smiles down to the beach. It was crazy busy but we found a quiet patch with space for P to dig in the sand while we did very little. 

TLOML body surfed for ages, and not to be outdone, I took my first - very brief - ocean swim of the year.  P collected about a hundred shells. We enjoyed some late afternoon margaritas and burgers on our deck with a couple of friends, and fell into bed feeling sun kissed and tipsy by 10pm.

It's no pool party, but I think we may have found the perfect way to celebrate America's birthday.