Beach Bums

Ahh, Beach Week. A long-lived University of Virginia tradition that comes every year just at the right time: spring semester, right after exams have wrapped, when everyone’s tired of being stressed out and ready to relax under sunny South Carolina skies. Of course, Beach Week isn’t just, well, a week at the beach. It’s a time of great celebration after the end of another great year -- and, as with any time of excessive celebrating, it comes with some crazy antics. Going into my last Beach Week ever, I recount some favorite memories of years past.

First Year
While I didn’t go the summer after freshman year, the three members of my fraternity pledge class who did attend had lots of pearls to bring back: One slept in a shopping cart for two nights, another had his right eyebrow shaved off by older members of our fraternity, and the last one almost got left behind on departure day. Yikes.

Second Year
Best. Week. Ever. No exaggeration. Got to learn the insider tricks of the Beach Week trade. Take, for example, Hot Diggity Dogs, the only place within walking distance for late-night food that makes mediocre hot dogs taste like a five-star meal. Of course, there’s Wal-Mart, where you go the moment you arrive to stock up on cheap food for the week you’ll be subsisting on nothing but peanut-butter-and-jelly, instant mac ’n’ cheese and, well, Hot Diggity Dogs.

Of course, Second Year was awesome for so many other reasons than satisfying the munchies. My best friends from my pledge class went, we had an awesome hotel room, and the weather was amazing. It was a constant shuffle from beach, to hotel, to beach, to hotel, to Hot Diggity’s, to friends’ hotels, to our hotel. You never knew where you were going to end up. My pledge class got stuck in a hotel elevator and was pried out by a couple of firemen. We had epic games of bocce and went on excursions to find the best mini-golf in Myrtle. I met an awesome girl from Wake Forest University, and we had fun throughout the week. As I said: Best. Week. Ever.

Third Year
It was hard to live up to the glory of the previous year’s Beach Week. Don’t get me wrong -- this trip was pretty awesome as well. It was just that ... everything felt a little stale. Putt-putt, anyone?

But it was still a glorious week. One of my best buds, who’d been studying abroad the entire spring semester, came down to South Carolina just in time to join us. Our year got into icing wars with the older guys -- stakes were raised right along with blood sugar levels. The newest pledge class also brought a 10-deep brigade, and it was a blast hanging out at their place (which was a lot nicer than ours) to play games of pong. Unfortunately, Wake Forest girl wasn’t around ... sigh.

Fourth Year
The next chapter awaits. ...