The Fun Five

Things to do and where to do them

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No. 1 -- Surfing season

The tropics run on no one's schedule, but we know from experience that as the waters just north of the equator heat up in late summer, so, too, do the local waves. With swells marching ahead of winds that sometimes never reach shore, surfing conditions here can change day to day. That means Wednesday can be a flat, hot bore and Thursday can be epic. Our advice: Keep your surfboard waxed and your eyes on the tropics.

No. 2 -- Make it memorable

With the final week (give or take) before the start of the 2007-08 academic calendar now upon us, it's time to review summertime goals. What experiences did we hope for our children, our families, ourselves? You can't make a summer in a week, but if there's a way to put a cap on it, now's the week to do it.

No. 3 -- Road food

August isn't the best time to travel, weatherwise, yet we are so conditioned to the notion of late summer car trips that we get practically twitchy in the presence of road maps. Even if our schedules (not to mention our wallets) make journeying impractical at the moment, one can assuage the impulse by indulging in a bit of heavenly road food: Necco Wafers, diner patty melts, drive-though breakfast sandwiches. Take a road trip without ever leaving town.

No. 4 -- Over the line

Ten-pin bowling is an American invention, as are the recent innovations that supposedly make the sport more entertaining: Neon lights, pop-up gutter rails, foul-line lasers, animations, strobe lights, etc.

But as far as we're concerned, the last significant improvement in bowling technology occurred when some smartie figured out that air conditioning might make the game more enjoyable. Sounds good to us.

No. 5 -- Watermelon memories

There are those who don't like a watermelon, and not much can be done with them. They don't like the mess, or the juice, or the seeds spit everywhere; they complain of stickiness and of newspaper laid down to catch it; they'd rather sit in the air conditioning than on a porch, faces wet from slurping red flesh off green rind. But we are cut from different cloth. It is August: Give us a fat speckled melon and a heavy long knife and humid spot in the shade and we will be just fine, thank you very much.