23

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.
(4 days ago that is.)

After 4 years of a less than notable birthday while here at college, I ended up going on a mini-road trip with some of my best guy friends to the New Jersey shore just to break our SONIC fast food virginity. And boy was it good.

We left right after our morning classes at noon in hopes to make in time for happy hour from 2-4pm. It was a beautiful spring day, sun shining and a cool breeze. With a newly purchased bikini on under my T-shirt and shorts, I was hoping to catch some rays and get some color on the sand. I survived the 2.5 hr trip to Waretown, NJ in the backseat between Henry and Chris (Dev up front and Gabe behind the wheel). We drove by the city and through Brooklyn. We played animal noises games. And Dev had the video camera in hand recording the progress of our birthday journey.
We turned into the SONIC with minutes to spare before 4pm and were so overcome with joy that we didn't even know where to begin. We had already planned on making at least 2 stops at SONIC (lunch and dinner!) so we started out with beverages and decided to get out of our car and sit at an outdoor table for our first time. After observing those around us in order to figure out what to do, we put in our order and waited. The waitresses deliver food on ROLLER SKATES. Enough said.

We bought a bottle of wine and drove around for a bit looking for a beachy area to relax for the afternoon and finally settled with a nice park with a playground and gazebo in a residential area. The guys through a baseball around for awhile and I curled up in a blanket at the bottom of the curly slide and just took some time to free my mind. It was awesome.
We soon came to realize that there are no sandy beaches in northern NJ and after making one more stop at SONIC (this time in one of the little parking stop looking menus) we decided to head back to Stony Brook for the night.
It was a nice drive back...though tolls are fucking expensive...and Gabe's GPS led us right through downtown Manhattan. As he whizzed through the NYC traffic and the lights flew by the open windows of the car, I felt like I was in a movie.
I think Henry, Chris and myself all managed to get cozy enough to fall asleep in the backseat and before long we were back in the Sanger parking lot.

It wasn't a birthday filled with cake, cards, and candles...but it was a wonderful day to escape and spend some time with my boys.

Thanks guys, for always being there.