I haven't been to the beach all summer; I hardly went last summer either. This summer, I've been kayaking almost every weekend, including an early morning trip last Sunday from Battery park City to the Intrepid. I've been dying to get into the water, especially as the summer heat wears on.

I used to live in Brooklyn and would go out to Coney Island, because it was only about ten minutes by train from where I lived. Now that I'm in Harlem, there are no nearby beaches. Supposedly, there's a little cove on the East River here in Manhattan, and there may be some possibilities for water sport on City Island. I wasn't looking for an adventure though. I wanted a cheap, accessible beach, and chose to try Far Rockaway.

To get there, I took the 2/3 express from Harlem down to 72nd street. There, I transferred to the 1 and went to 59th, (bc the 2/3 doesn't stop there), and I was able to transfer to the A train pretty easily.

I was on the A for about an hour as we plied through midtown, the West Village, Tribeca, downtown, downtown Brooklyn, and on out through Brooklyn and the far reaches of Queens. At the end of the line, the A splits, going one way to Lefferts, and a second route down towards JFK and Far Rockaway. I was on the Lefferts train, so I got off at the last stop before the split and waited about five minutes for the second train.

Shortly thereafter, we were above ground, afforded a decent view of Queens. It's very rural out there, overbuilt in a Long Island sort of way. My experience with coastal communities has shown that roads are haphazard. They end after a block or two, end in odd T-intersections, or meander around marshes and inlets. We passed the Howard Beach/JFK Airtrain stop, then on out across Jamaica Bay, which is huge. A number of road bridges spanned the water, and boats traveled underneath. It wasn't like being in the city at all.

In the Rockaways, I had a choice of beaches. The line splits again, going up and down the long line of wide beach that is Rockaway. I stayed on the train and headed east, and got off at the second beach I saw, near a large apartment building. It was a giant complex, I'm not sure if it was a development or a housing project. I walked out to the beach, which had fewer than a dozen people on it. I set up camp, read, then played in the water, then used my mask and snorkel to see if I could spot anything on the roiling, sandy bottom. I didn't see anything that I couldn't see on the beach.

My main concern was wildlife. Once, when I went to Coney Island, I saw a spider crab on the beach; a man had grabbed it by the claws and was dancing with it. I stepped on a blue crab another time, which scared the hell out of me. Yet another time, I snorkeled down about eight feet, and looming in the sand cloud produced by the breaking waves was another spider crab. My sense of beaches is that once you can't see your feet, they're potential food for the denizens of the ocean.

I started to get hungry and noticed there were no delis near this particular beach, so I broke camp and went back to the train. I rode to the end of the line, which was much more thoroughly populated. On the back of one old Victorian building was a sign offering the servies of a 'former prosecutor' for legal needs ranging from bankruptcy to criminal defense to divorce.

People in Far Rockaway are friendly. A number of day laborers asked me if I needed help finding the beach. An MTA employee said I was heading the wrong direction - and I believe I was - and told me how to get to on the right street. I passed by an electronics store blaring lyrics:

All I want is weed
It gives me all I need
The weed soothes the nerves
We got to preserve

"Hey mami". Spanish for 'Hey Baby!'

To be fair, I was trotting about in a tankini, unaccompanied by man, woman, or pet. I bought a beer, some chips, then some chicken, ate on the boardwalk, then out to a beach that was more populated, but with more trash in the water. The wind kicked up and blew sand in my face. I think I saw a jellyfish in the water. Fed up, I walked forty blocks back to the original beach - walking instead of running back through the previous gauntlet.

The boardwalk has weeds growing through the boards, some boards are loose, and many of the stairs are almost worn completely through. A good number of the beaches were closed. One nice feature is that you can see the full array of air and sea traffic. Low-flying planes set down in JFK and in the distance, a dozen cargo ships are lined up, just like cars at the Lincoln Tunnel, waiting to come in to port.