My big mouth gets me in trouble sometimes. That should not shock anyone. I have learned over the years, however, to not promise things I might not do.

I did not follow that guideline earlier this summer during a conversation with my daughter. She loves our family’s annual beach week as much as I do, so I told her we could make plans to head down to the beach for a day trip sometime.

I didn’t regret things at that point. When I saw a free Saturday on our schedule and proposed the trip, I felt a little guilty, but not enough to worry.

At that point, I felt fully confident I could get organized and pull off the trip. My only concerns at that point were ones out of my hands, specifically bad weather or rough surf which would keep us from enjoying the actual ocean.

So I started to get ready for the day. I had great plans of getting up early, packing the car and beating the traffic to the beach.

Of course, that didn’t happen at all. We got up early, of course, but getting everything ready took a little bit longer than I had planned. I don’t blame anyone – I just always underestimate for these kinds of things.

Then I forgot that I needed gas. Or maybe I remembered and just figured that we would be on schedule so getting gas wouldn’t put us further behind schedule.

None of that, however, had the impact that my fellow travelers had. Somehow, I picked the day when all the people who don’t know how to merge or handle steady traffic decided to head to the beach.

I do my best not to get all road ragey, but I could not believe my bad fortune that day. Since we do not have a superhighway to the beach – something I need to add to my list of presidential promises – we have two and four-lane roads with stoplights.

I can’t blame the roads for the almost five-hour drive to the Delaware shore. I blame the people who can’t keep a constant rate of speed and seemingly freak out when we lose a lane of travel. They should know to stay home on the day I want to go to the beach.

In the end, I forgot about all the stress and angst the moment my toes hit the sand. We had great weather, enjoyable waves and even saw some dolphins that came incredibly close to shore near the end of the day. I read a ton, we had a nice dinner and walked around town before heading home in the evening.

The drive home had some minor issues – I needed to stop a couple of times, including once for a soda so I didn’t lose focus – but those kinds of things didn’t seem to bother me as much as the delays on the way to the beach did. That’s good because leaving the beach in and of itself makes me feel bad. I didn’t need any other problems.