Matthew Monday: Father’s Day 2021

In our long line of tradition, Matthew and I had our “Father’s Day Adventure” yesterday.  You can scroll through these to see our past Father’s Day Adventures. This year we decided to spend it on the boardwalk here on Staten Island.  Officially it’s called the South Beach–Franklin Delano Roosevelt Boardwalk, but we Staten Islanders just call it the boardwalk.  According to The Encyclopedia of New York City, the FDR Boardwalk is the 4^th largest boardwalk in the world.  I was really surprised by that.  It stretches across two Staten Island beaches—South Beach and Midland Beach—and runs 2.5 miles long.  Its predecessors go back to 1882 when the beach areas were filled with amusement parks and bath houses.  You can read it’s amazing history here.   

So what did we do?  Well, first thing  I lathered up with 50 SPF sunscreen on any exposed skin.  Matthew says I am as white as a ghost, and he’s right.  He’s naturally tanned and didn’t put any on.  Good thing I did.  I was a strong sun and we were out a good five hours.  I would have been as red as a tomato if I didn’t.

Here are some pictures of the boardwalk.  The beach runs north/south.  Looking north you can see the Verrazano Bridge. 

 

 

That’s Matthew trying to locate us on the map.

Looking south you can see the stretch of beach and piers.  The boardwalk is there too.  It just didn’t make the picture width.

 

The beach is fairly nice, but in the past there has been issues with the cleanliness of the water, and even though they may have resolved that problem, people are still reluctant to go into the water.  The water there is the Atlantic Ocean.

 

So, we walked a good bit, and went looking for the place where you can rent bicycles.  We had seen multi-person pedal carts in the past and we always wanted to ride one together.  We eventually found it and rented this beauty for one hour.  $28 plus tax. 

 

So we basically pedaled the entire boardwalk, or at least a good two miles.  We stopped for Matthew to refresh himself at the Turtle Fountain.

 

 

At some point I got sunscreen off my skin onto the camera lens.  A good deal of the pictures got blurred out because of that.  Here’s me inside the pedal cart.

 

At one point Matthew wanted to go onto the beach and get his feet wet.  He left his shoes with me while he scampered down.

 

 

We also took Matthew’s electric scooter with us.  We left it in the car until the end, and then got it out, and so Matthew scootered a couple of miles.  While I walked mind you. 

 

So after five hours, walking over five miles according to my fitbit, and pedaling in that cart some three or four miles, all in the hot (86 deg F) sun, we were tired puppies.