I woke up and lay in bed for a few minutes before I was awake enough to roll off of my top bunk and climb down the short wooden ladder leading me down to the dark hardwood floor, which had sand brushed across it. I walked up the stairs and out onto the deck, to a picture perfect morning. The Long Beach Island sand out in front of me looked like it was untouched other than the few fisherman scrambled across the front of the beach. I texted Mikey and Connor to meet me at Neptune Market, around a ten minute bike ride from my house. I peddled down the main road that runs through the entire island, until I arrived at Neptune. The three of us ordered our sandwiches and sat out on the benches outside the market. I looked around at the restaurants, ice cream places, the stores that surrounded me, and I noticed that even though I had been coming to Long Beach Island every year for my whole life, nothing had changed there since I was young. Seeing all of this, hundreds of memories streamed into my head at once. I was overwhelmed with how many good times I had in this place. I felt infinite.

We rode our bikes back to Mikey’s beach house, but I could not stop thinking about the one moment that I had back at Neptune Market. I was having the weirdest deja vu moments, as if I were repeating something that I had done in years past. I enjoyed these moments a lot because I felt like it connected me to my childhood. From growing up in Wyckoff to where I am today, things have changed in my life very much, when I was in LBI for the two weeks every year, everything seemed to be the same as it was the year before, which was nice for a change.
After crabbing at Mikey’s house on the bay for a couple hours, we went to the beach. When I was young, I could lay on the beach under an umbrella and sleep for hours on hours. On this day, the midday sun beat down on the beach causing the sand to be too hot to walk on. We hopped our way across the hot sand until we were close enough to the water where the sand was not as hot. We waded our way slowly out into the cool ocean like we did since we were young. We stayed in the water for half an hour until we came out and dryed off. Someone on the beach set up a big projector, where the Women's World Cup Final was being played between the United States and Japan. The mood on the beach was electric, as hundreds of people gathered and awaited the two best soccer teams to square off. The US ended up victorious, which left everyone chanting  “USA! USA!,” across the entire beach.

Later on that night, Mikey’s parents threw a party at their beach house for his dad’s fiftieth birthday. A bunch of Mikey’s cousins came down for the party, a lot of whom I had met when I was young but had not really seen since. The party was fun, talking to a lot of people who I had not seen in years, and hanging out with my friends made it a good Summer night. Nights on Long Beach Island got a lot cooler than the days, and you could feel some of the bay water in the air when the breeze blew into your face. Sitting in a lawn chair out on the beach that night, I thought about my infinite moment that I had earlier that day, it made me happy that I could leave Long Beach Island for a year and come back to it seemingly untouched.