It wasn't until mid-afternoon on Sunday when I began to feel like I was on vacation. Officially, I guess, I was on vacation when I left work on Friday, but it felt like I still had important things to do.

Rock and roll, while not really a job, was the name of the game Friday and Saturday night. And, because we were playing a gig Saturday night, Saturday day was one of distraction. No drinkee, no smokee, get some rest and be ready to rock out at eleven or so at night.

Because our previous two gigs (in the ten days leading up to last Saturday) were somewhat frustrating affairs, it was good to have such a triumphant show on Saturday night. Tons of people, Old Beans played a tight set (although not as long as we had planned) and even the punkers were impressed with our energy and attitude.

So by Sunday afternoon, marked by all the things I couldn't do the day before (a couple bottles of wine and a couple hits off the biddybung), I was officially off work. I would not have to make the trek to the foothills of the Sandias for a whole week. I had another trek to make on Monday: to the sandy beaches at the southern tip of North Carolina.

Sunset Beach is a little place divided from the rest of the world by a one-lane bridge that comes apart to let boats through every hour. You have to have patience and good directions to get there. My immediate family met there to have a different routine for a few days.

I lived in Florida for three months in 1996, and the ocean was the only thing I really miss about the place. And miss is probably an overstatement--but it is the one thing I have good feelings about. Appropriately for this vacation, the beach was our destination much of the time.

A beach house about a block from the ocean was our headquarters. A tent just off the 30th Street beach access walkway was our sandy pile. The ocean, in the waves, was where we spent our quality time. Boogie boards provided a ride every once in a while. As alluded to in the many surfing movies I've seen, waiting for the right wave is what takes time. The ride is about fifteen seconds, tops. Sometimes you don't even get on the wave, you miss it and look around to see if anyone did any better.

So floating on the waves was what happened most of the time. Becoming a brown-tinged beach boy was an ancillary benefit. Since Sunset Beach is a family beach, the bunnies consist of underage girls just realizing the effects their bikinis have on the boys and men on the beach. There weren't many of these bunnies--it wasn't that type of beach. My younger brother and I were a couple of just a few single men over the age of 21. It wasn't a hook-up beach, and this suited me fine. I didn't want to work that hard for anything.

Kids ruled on this beach. There were hundreds of them, accompanied by parents and grandparents. In the case of my nephew, even a few uncles. The kids are pretty fearless, especially if they are older than five. They try to ride the waves, jump into the foam and ride on thin planks of wood across an inch of water on the beach. Younger kids are a bit fearful of the waves. When you're only a couple feet tall, those waves look like they can drown you in one gulp.

So twice a day, we ventured to the beach for our daily exercise. At night, we slowly drained our supply of beer, wine and whiskey. It was during these times when I realized the distinct advantage of living in high altitudes: living at a mile high means you can drink much more when you're at sea level. More drinks (and not so much drunken stumbling) and fewer and less intense hangovers. I didn't even feel hungover until early in the morning the day we left. And that was mostly because I was trying really hard to drink too much.

The point, of course, is to get out of your regular routine, even if it means just creating a temporary new one. While there was some talk of work, it was few and far between--and very easily dismissed if you didn't want to talk about it.

Of course, tomorrow, I will have to do the same thing with the vacation. By the end of the day, I'm sure I'll be a little tired of promptings from my co-workers for details about my week away.

I'll develop the pictures, keep the memories in my mind and life returns to the normal I've lived with for the last few years.

The hope of leaving normal will return soon enough. Probably as I sift through hundreds of mostly useless e-mails Monday morning.

Matt Worley will be a working man once again by the time you read this.