Sun comes up, it's Tuesday morning.

I first noticed it when I was applying sunscreen after that first dip in the ocean Sunday afternoon: little aqua blue flakes on my skin. Coming from the sunscreen? Like an extra ingredient? Like: “Now with aqua blue flakes!!!”? But they were the same color as the Rehoboth Beach beach towel I'd bought that morning, so I assumed that was the culprit. I guessed I should've washed it before I used it. I was hoping it was a temporary thing.

But it was the same after Monday morning and late afternoon swims, and that night I washed it with the rest of my clothes. The lint tray wound up packed with aqua blue fluff. And there were little bits of it all over the rest of my clothes.

So is it good to go now? Or did I get a defective and/or cheaply made beach towel for $19.95 at Rehoboth Lifestyle at 77 Rehoboth Avenue? Or maybe the whole line of these “First and Anchor”/“Made in China” beach towels is defective—preying on tourists in need? I know, in the scheme of things, but still a bummer. “Hey, how did your vacation go?” “Great. I picked aqua blue flakes out of everything.”

I bought it shortly after I figured out my Rehoboth exit strategy Sunday morning. Patricia and I are flying out of D.C. next weekend, and without a car there's no clear path to get there. There's no train. Rental cars are either all rented or at a premium. There is a bus to D.C. but it only leaves once a day, at 6:30 PM, from the parking lot behind the Volunteer Fire Station on Rehoboth Avenue, and doesn't arrive in D.C. until 9:30ish. That would screw up dinner plans. There's a train from Wilmington but that requires a busride to Wilmington via the DART bus service, whose website is kind of unhelpful. It's tough to see at a glance how often the buses go, where they go (how many stops), and if you can buy tickets beforehand (feels like: not). Both my sister's family and my brother-in-law's family have a car, but they're packed. In the end, the best exit strategy seemed the evening bus to D.C. I'm hoping that its company is as responsible as Amtrak is in terms of pandemic mask policies.

Because of all this—exit strategy, beach towel—I didn't get into the surf until Sunday afternoon, about 24 hours after I'd arrived. Monday morning, the last Monday of the summer season, the beach was quiet—mostly grandparents and grandkids, and a few single parents with children. Monday afternoon, I biked through the Gordon Pond Wildlife area over to Lewes, then went back to the beach like Frankie and Annette. Tuesday morning, during a 7 AM stroll along the boardwalk, amid all the geriatric joggers, I saw a school of dolphin swimming close to shore.

Overall, it's the usual beach routine in unusual times. Gus & Gus isn't allowing indoor dining (good for them), so Saturday we ate our gyros and cheese steaks on the boardwalk (they were out of chicken), then went to Funland, mostly staying outside, where my sister cleaned up at Whac-a-Mole and that squirtgun horserace game. Sunday, for dinner, we went to Obie's on the north part of the boardwalk, but we were the only ones who walked into the place masked. Monday we ate in. My brother-in-law's family lives in Canada, which requires a COVID-free test within 72 hours of reentry, and the family member who's heading back first had his on Monday: negative. Rite-Aid and Walgreen's do drive-through tests but he went to a nearby clinic, paid the extra $60 or so for the quick test, said it was much more efficient than the Canadian system. Then he went swimming.