Won't you be my neighbor?

I blogged earlier about my amazing neighbors but when someone needs to be recognized for something great, it bears repeating.

My friends came down for a day at the shore two Saturdays ago. They caught the bus from NYC and had a bit of a stressful day, so we were pretty amped to head to the shore.

Because the Jersey shore requires beach badges, and I only had two for the three of us, our neighbor to my right lent me one beach badge to use for the day. So we packed up my beach bag, umbrella, towels and other beachy items and headed down the street. As we passed my neighbor to the left, she called out to ask us if we wanted to use her beach chairs, since hers were sitting in the backyard in disuse. So we borrowed those chairs.

Now armed with chairs, beach bag, umbrella, we prepared to walk the half-mile to the beach. But we were waylaid by my neighbor two houses down to the left, who said "why walk, I'll drive you down! I'm headed out anyways!" So we piled into his open-air jeep and he drove us the short distance, saving our feet and shoulders a bit of stress.


I think for my friends from New York, seeing all this was like stepping back in time to Minnesota. Probably pre-Minnesota days, since they lived in downtown Minneapolis there. I know that I have pretty excellent neighbors, but I loved that my friends were also able to see how cool is my new homebase.

I was caught in the terrible rainstorms today...honestly, the storm was right overhead, what with the simultaneous lightening and thunderstorming and the creepy green clouds that made it look like 10 p.m. instead of 11:30 a.m.

BUT the weather yesterday was most excellent. A few of my friends from NYC came "down the shore" for some beach time. The picture is an unusual bookmark...maybe not so much for the beach.

I'm attempting to pack to head to a convention this week, but I will try and post a blog before I go. This will likely relate to driving as its been my biggest frustration this week, what with the large amount of tourists on the island now. It's bad.

Small town feel

I have learned the lesson that those from small towns learned years ago: Be careful what you say and who you say it to. Because you never know who knows each other.

Growing up in the Twin Cities and its suburbs meant that it was unlikely that people randomly knew each other, so you could vaguely describe them and be safe. If they did know each other, you usually knew it. But here, it seems that everyone knows each other. I was describing a person I didn't like to my service provider at the salon today and GUESS WHAT! This person is her husband's best friend's sibling. Luckily, she is not fond of this person either, but that could've been very dangerous. And these people were from two different towns that don't border one another or even share schools!

I'm usually safe because a)I don't dislike a lot of people and b)I don't talk about other people besides with my closest friends and other trusted people, but honestly, when a girl goes to a salon, its sort of a dish session with an anonymous person. I swear that aestheticians and manicurists and hair dressers have a class on "chatting up your client" or something, because somehow it is just drawn out of you.

BUT in other ways it is very nice. I love running into people and seeing people I know and being recognized myself. The place to run into people used to be the local Target in Shoreview, MN, but here I don't know as many people. However, last weekend when my friend was visiting, I did run into several different people in our travels around town. It was good timing because it made me look cool and popular and all those things I'm not, but it was also just nice to feel like I am finally getting to know people and getting to know this town and starting to fit in.

And, dare I say it, become a local? hmmmm.

Hard day at the beach

Saturday I finally did the beach bum thing and spent 6 hours at the shore! It was a tough day of lying on a beach blanket, curled up under an umbrella while reading a book. (Or, if you are my lily-white friend, laid out flat on a beach blanket, roasting in the sun with your eyes covered.)

When we got too toasty, we went into the ocean to cool off. Well, or we just got excited by the fact that there is a giant beach and played in the water, splashing each other, giving each other boosts so you flew into the water and jumping waves. We walked out to the sand bar which is a cool feeling because you can't feel the bottom of the ocean and suddenly you can walk on water...or so it seems.

I went home at one point and brought back sandwiches so we could stay at the beach and not have to go home for lunch and brought back my goggles. With those, I saw tiny little sand crabs scooting along the bottom of the shore. I'm not going to deny that they were cool to see, but I wish I hadn't seen them because now I will be constantly conscious of the fact that there are palm-sized creature with pinchers just under my feet. Would they pinch me if I accidentally stepped on one? If I were them, I'd see my big toe as an enemy.

I applied sunscreen at regular intervals, determined a)to not get too dark and b)prevent skin cancer. Unfortunately, the bikiniied girls around me appeared to be applying something other than sunscreen out of their gold-brown bottles. I thought oil was so 1986? At least no one had one of those reflector things to hold under their neck!

At the end of the day we stumbled home and lay comatose on the couch. It is really hard lying on the beach all day! For reals, though, there is apparently some scienc-y thing (thats a technical term, you may not know it) about how being in the sun all day saps your energy. We mustered enough to grill some salmon (made with the sage and lemon thyme from my garden!), go see a movie (surprised we didn't fall asleep) and stop by a friends' house for a midnight margarita (okay, pina colada, but midnight margarita has a nice ring to it.)


I guess it could be worse.

waves crashing

So, I popped my ocean cherry, which is the totally inappropriate way of saying OMG I WENT IN THE OCEAN AND NOW I NEVER WANT TO COME OUT AGAIN.

I seriously had so much fun this morning, and we really didn't do anything. Katie and I grabbed boards and walked the two blocks from her house to the beach, paddled out, and sat on our boards for about 45 minutes. There were absolutely NO waves to be seen, besides the gentle swells that mark a calm sea.

Despite the water feeling like Lake Superior only two and a half weeks ago (seriously, we let the waves wash over our feet just once and they felt ice cold; twice brought on numbness), the water was warm. The perfect temperature, really. I didn't feel cold at all, even after an hour of bobbing in the waves. This is good cause I didn't feel like investing in a wetsuit.

We eventually ditched the boards and walked down to the swimming beach to try some body surfing. That didn't pan out too well, plus there were some creepy guys who thought a good opening line was "have you seen my swimsuit? I think I've lost it" while in the water.

Anyway, now that I know how wonderful the beach is, I'm going to go there every morning! My usual routine has been to make a big pot of chai and drink several cups of it while I sit on my front deck reading a book. I still can do this...but on the beach and with my chai in a thermos.

And now, 10 hours later, I can still sort of feel the the feeling of bobbing in the waves and having water crash over my head. Its surreal, but I love it.

Last note: the beach badger checkers cameth! What my made-up word means is that, as we were preparing to leave, someone actually came to check if we had beach badges. Since Katie's family has been in Beach Haven forever and since they all lifeguard, we were fine, but I guess I will be bringing my beach badge with me since its a myth that they DON'T actually check.

badge checkers cometh

Today is June 15. Its the day our beaches stop being free and open for us and start being a pay-to-play endeavor.

It seems so odd to me to pay for the pleasure of a beach. You know, a natural phenomenon. I think the reasoning is something about upkeep for the beach, but it just seems so strange in my head. It will be even stranger when I try to go to the beach and someone checks for my beach badge.

A beach badge is how municipalities keep track of who has paid and who is not. According to some of my co-workers (okay, one), I was a fool for paying for my beach badge, because apparently they rarely, if ever, check them. Maybe he was going to different beaches, I don't know.

The two little hunks of plastic I bought for $25 each are emblazoned with a little white surfer, a number and the year. I bought the badges before May 31 so they were cheaper; I think they are $35 for the season now. Day trippers can buy them for like $8 a day or $15 for the week. Some rentals come with beach badges included in the price for the place.

Anyway, the little lady selling beach badges at the Surf City Borough Hall was incredibly slow at getting the little buttons into a sandwich baggie for me, but also very nice! I liked how all the beach badges were laid out in rows, as if they were just waiting, like the rest of us, for summer to finally arrive.

Arrest Me

I've never had more of a hard time following stoplights as I have here. I actually ran a red light the other day. To top things off, it was the light on Central Ave right by the Surf City police station. Good thing all of them weren't sitting outside or something.

Really, turning the lights back on was the worst idea ever. The lights are so high up that I don't notice them because, frankly, I was never looking for them in the first place. I got used to breezing down Central Avenue without a care in the world...except for the speed limit, of course, which has also gone down and I'm sure I often inadvertently break it.

Part of the problem is that I don't use streets with lights very often. Since I am bayside, I use Barnegat Avenue to get to the causeway, and Barnegat Ave has no lights until the causeway, which was a light that is on year-round. So the occasions I use Long Beach Blvd or Central Ave in Surf City, I am not observant enough to notice stoplights.

Interestingly, lights have not yet been turned on in Harvey Cedars and Barnegat Light. Maybe because their season starts way later than Memorial Day, since its mostly residential up there? That is my guess.

In any case, if there are any Surf City/Ship Bottom officers reading this, please go easy on me when I run a red light. Its not that I am some jerk in a hurry, or someone who enjoys putting others' lives at risk, it's just that I really, really, really haven't gotten used to those darn lights being back on.

Lazy summer days

The days really are flying by, I can't believe its June and I can't believe its been almost a week since I updated! I honestly felt like it wasn't that long ago. It looks like I've fallen into a weekly schedule of updating, despite having a mental backlog of posts.

I blame it on the lovely days we've had lately. I have no desire to sit in front of my computer. Even first thing in the morning, when I am gross and unwashed, I go outside on the front porch with a mug of tea and something to read. It's really amazing. I love where I live, for reals. The sky has been a beautiful blue with just enough fluffy, white clouds to bring out the absolute blueness of the sky.

Today I went to the dollar store and bought a beach mat, some beach shoes and a beach umbrella. I work nights now, leaving me free to go to--you guessed it--the beach in the morning. I'm very excited to learn the fine art of "laying out." I heard about it on "Laguna Beach," which I probably shouldn't admit I watch since I am over the age of 18, but I need a little junk food too!
From what I surmise from the show, this means tanning for most people, but since I'm already a burnt sienna color, I'll be using the umbrella and sunscreen to help me enjoy the outdoors minus the extra pigmentation.

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Its also been a weekend of a taste of home. One of my high school friends and her husband came down for the day on Saturday. We lazed around and grilled, then headed to the Barnegat Lighthouse. We also went through old high school pictures, teehee.
Then Monday my friend Chao, who still lives in Minneapolis, came to visit. I took Tuesday off to show him around the island, including, yes of course, the lighthouse. Back home in Minneapolis, we used to take most visitors to see some of the Lock and Dams along the Mississippi, but most people were more interested in the Mall of America.

This weekend was one of those times I was really glad the meteorologist was wrong. It was predicted to be heavy, heavy rains all day Tuesday. The rains came...but not until Tuesday night when we were already asleep. And by the time we woke up, they were already gone, replaced with that same blue sky and white fluffy clouds. Amazing.

---
I made Chao into my little model...and he did the same for me. We had a lot of fun playing around with different techniques on our cameras. One of my favorite shots I did is on his camera, but I'll share it with you next time.

Lazy days in the lighthouse


Long way down (I know I keep taking pictures like this, but I love how it looks!)


Framed.


Portrait of the two of us. Can you find me?


Impending storm


This is Obadaiah Seagull. I call all seagulls Obadaiah after a book I read in 2nd grade.

I want to eat Shruti's trash

Today I had a little private showing of West Side Story in my front yard.

This morning I heard all these seagulls outside my house at around 7:30 a.m. I looked out the window and it was all these black-headed seagulls screeching at white seagulls. A turf war! I couldn't see if they had anything or were fighting over something.

But when I stepped outside, I realized what happened. Last night I had guests for a grill party on my awesome deck. That translated to a lot of trash in my garbage bin. My friend kindly took out the trash for me, but forgot to put the lid back on the trash can.

So the seagulls picked, pecked, clawed, whatever it is that seagulls do, through the garbage bag, scattering paper plates, empty bags and leftover, squishy, grilled tomatos (which are really good basted with olive oil and garlic, trust me).

Note to self: never forget to put the lid on the garbage can again.

(P.S. sorry its been a week, I had some bad news Monday and it took up the rest of my week. Plus I didn't feel like writing.)

Lies I told

I totally lied to you guys because I promised to tell you what potachos were on Friday, and here it is Monday and you STILL don't know.

Like all good liars, I have an excuse. This weekend was GOR-GE-OUS and any time spent in front of a computer was a total waste of time (aka work on Sunday.)

So what are potachos?
Like nachos, thick potato chips, covered with cheddar, bacon, tomatoes, onions, ketchip and chives with sour cream. In other words, perfection. They were just as delicious as anything with bacon can and should be. Forget how strange they sound and fly/drive to New Brunswick and eat them!

So let's get back to this past weekend thing. What a taste of life to come. Though, life to come will probably be considerably warmer than this, the idea of eating lunch in a sunspot on my back porch, grilling dinner, having a beer on my front porch and leaving all the windows open is definitely part of my future.

Of course, its only a taste as its going to rain the rest of the week, but I do plan on grilling again on Saturday (and tonight for that matter), so I hope it stops raining.

In more other news, this was one of those weekends where I loved my job. First I went to the top of Forked River "mountain" (its more like a tall hill), which is a private area. It was beautiful. Then I went in a rescue boat in a lagoon for a water drill.

Here are a few views from this weekend:

Storms a'comin

The storms that caused tornadoes in Texas and snow in Kansas has hit the Jersey Shore. Besides high winds and lots of rain, it is also a new moon, which affects how high the tide is. I cannot claim to have any actual understanding of tides and moons and rains and Nor'easters and how they work, I'm just going to repeat what I've (sort of) learned.

Apparently this combination of the new moon and several inches of rain is what causes coastal flooding such as what happened when I first moved here. My newspaper had me stay on the island this morning and drive up and down to report what I saw--and take a few photos.

The wind on the beach was terrific! It blew straight back from the ocean and seemed as if it was trying to push me back through the beach access point. I've never felt such a straight wind* before, usually its all swirly and going several directions at once. (*note this may not be the technical definition of a straight wind, just descriptive.)

Since the beaches in Surf City are still closed, I was unable to see the effects on my beach, but I went down to Ship Bottom, Long Beach Township and Beach Haven to see what was happening down there.

Here is what I saw (some also will probably be in tomorrow's Asbury Park Press):


Home near Merivale Blvd. in Long Beach Township. This area did not get beach replenishment, which is why the ocean is literally at their back door!



Foam on the beach near Merivale Avenue. It was sort of gross-looking and pretty at the same time. I definitely stepped in some.




Ship Bottom beach




This notorious local nightspot decided to turn storms into drinking. I wouldn't want to be the person who had to climb up there and put that up this morning!





Can you imagine thinking about going to the beach today? Apparently Long Beach Township thinks some people might, and opened their beach badge office on time.
Amazing.




Cars splash through water on the road near St. Francis of Assisi Church and Community Center in the Brant Beach section of Long Beach Township.




Sign near Long Beach Township municipal offices. It also reminded people to move their cars to high grounds.




Cars from my neighborhood park on the median of Barnegat Blvd. It doesn't appear our street is going to flood, but you never know!



By the way, today is the 10-year anniversary of the Red River Valley floods in Northwest Minnesota, that flooded Grand Forks and then caused fires. A lot of my college friends were high schoolers at that time and told me stories I couldn't believe. I heard a few nice pieces on NPR this morning, one of which was about a woman from Grand Forks who went to help Katrina victims because she understood what they were going through.

biking

Today may be a bad day to blog about biking, as it is pouring rain and I am not feeling so hot myself, but I've been trolling craigslist to find myself a few good secondhand bikes. It is getting warmer so its time to think about what happens to this island when summer folk flood it--bumper to bumper traffic.

I've been informed that it is not uncommon to hear of people biking to and from bars. Therefore, it is not uncommon to hear of people getting tickets for biking drunk. There is a ticket for that??

I live less than 10 miles from work, so I'd love to bike to work. Unfortunately the bridge from Long Beach Island doesn't have the nice sign the bridge to Seaside Heights has on its bridge. I get the feeling that drivers here view bikers as an annoyance--like people who bike only do so because they can't afford a car.

Right now its sort of a moot point because my bike was stolen from my front porch when I lived in St. Paul (it was a gentrified area that was only two blocks from a not-so-gentrified area. Someone actually sawed the porch railing to get the bike off!)

It's been tough to find a good secondhand bike that isn't really expensive. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a bike right now (save that money for my surfing fund!) but I do want something that can get me to the library and grocery store when my car will seem ridiculous to try and use.

Picture this!

Something different for my blog: A picture post! I had a really nice Friday when my friend Kristen visited my island. We started Friday at breakfast at ScoJos...and I tried Pork Roll for the first time! It tastes like Bacon but looks like Canadian bacon. I think I like regular bacon better for eating, but I think Pork Roll on a breakfast sandwich would be perfect. Then we went up to the Barnegat Lighthouse and actually walked to the very end of the stone jetty at its base. It took us about 2 hours roundtrip...I wonder how long it actually is! The concrete portion is only about .1 miles, but I bet the stone part is much more.

Here is some of what we saw:

Bugged

(oops, sorry its been a week. I have no good excuse.)

Maybe I am jumping the gun, but it feels like spring is here to stay. Though I wouldn't mind a sudden drop in temperature because I am feeling all grossed out.

There are all these BUGS hanging out on the southside of my house. That is the front of my house, so its all over the front door, all over my car and all over my porch steps! I don't know what they are, hopefully someone can enlighten me, but they look like they might be larvae or baby bugs of some sort? They are really tiny black bugs with wings that are longer than them.

I hope this doesn't mean I will have lots of these bugs, but grown up, hanging around my house this summer.

Also: Where can I move to escape mosquitoes? I appear to always move to places that consider the insects their "state bird."

I guess I could move someplace that doesn't have much water, but then there are probably other things I would miss out on, like trees and canoing and swimming and stuff.

Surfing, U.S.A.

(I hotlinked that from the cocoa beach club, which is very bad, but I figured that I have low traffic, so it won't use up too much of their bandwidth. I hope. I'm sorry if it does, then take it down.)

Today I went to the original Ron Jon's Surf Shop here on the island. Growing up, whenever I would see the RJ sticker on someone's car, I assumed it was from Florida or California or someplace nice and warm year-round. Not New Jersey! But that goes in line with the fact that I didn't really think of New Jersey as a hot beach spot. I feel that is something that is very prevalent in East Coast/New England thinking, but not anywhere else in the country. You probably don't find too many people from Nebraska (or Minnesota!) on the beaches of NJ. Though, now that I think of it, a guy from my high school used to go to the Jersey Shore...

Anyway, I went and started my research for my new summer hobby: surfing! I surfed for my first time in San Diego summer of 2003 and LOVED it. And, if I may say so, I wasn't too bad at it. I had the distinct honor of being the only person in my class able to consistently get up on the board. On my first time! So, I've decided that, seeing how I seem to have some aptitude for it and I live a few blocks from the beach, I am going to take it up regularly.

It's going to require a bit of investment on my part. A basic foam board is going to cost me around $70-$100 where as a starter fiberglass board will run me around twice that. The fiberglass boards are hard to come by used because people tend to keep them for fun, but they also have higher trade-in value if you buy. If I want to start mid-May and get a jump on the season, I will have to invest in a wetsuit, a 3.5mm one. That will also run me around $70-$100. But it will also extend the season to about 6 months and make sure I stay warm, which is nice. The water in May is around 50-60 degrees, even though the air temp is higher. The ocean really doesn't get warm until August/September and then September and October are the best surfing months because its hurricane season!

It's all a lot to think about, but I am glad I went now so I can start setting aside money for this purchase. Also, I can start looking for deals in the local sandpaper and surf shops now. I have to also set aside money to buy a bike or two: I want a tourist no-gear, wheel-around-town bike, which could cost me around or below $100 and I also want a road bike, which could be double or triple or even quintuple (is that a word?) that. Maybe I'll go with a not so fancy road bike!

Question: Anyone know of a good place to scout out boards? Or, maybe, possibly, even have one to give or sell??

Here fishy fishy fishy fishy fishy.

An article published this week discusses that more U.S. women face heart, stroke risk. The article talks about things to help prevent heart disease, such as the two usual factors: exercise and diet. I struggle with both of those personally, but I hired a personal trainer at my gym, so that should help the first part.

The second part, diet, talks about eating more fruits and vegetables, whole-grain and high fiber foods and little salt. I find this hard because I cannot finish fruits and vegetables before they go bad. I wish I could go to the store and buy half a bag of salad or something.

It also mentions eating fish at least twice a week. This is another example of conflicting reports. Sorta. Women have to limit their intake of certain fish, such as tuna and swordfish because those fish have high levels of mercury, which may affect any current or future pregnancies. So I can only have one Tuna Melt per week, boo.

EDIT: And just now I read yet ANOTHER story that says the benefits outweight the risks: Seafood in Pregnancy is a Net Plus.

Living near the ocean, I have a lot more access to fresh fish and there are lots of places in the island that sell stuff hauled in this morning. This is exciting. But balancing that, along with knowing I need to watch certain fishes and also realizing that some fish are not sustainably farmed...it's a lot to think about!

Luckily, there are organizations like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has something called the Seafood Watch Program. Its goals are to bring awareness that some fish are not sustainably farmed--a fact that they say could eventually eliminate some kinds or even all fish.

They have guides on their website as to what fish are your best choices, what are good alternatives and what fish to avoid. The guides can be tailored to your geographic area and they will even send you free guides for your wallet or purse, which you can order on their website. (My former co-worker used to carry one around, which is how I became not only aware about that some fish are not sustainably farmed, but also the danger of high mercury levels.)

Here are some examples from the Northeast Guide:

Best choices: Clams, Dungeness crab and imitation crab from the US, Pacific Halibut, Spiny Lobster (U.S. Trap-Caught), Wild-caught Alaska Salmon, US Farmed Tilapia, Tuna (Albacore from BC or the US, Skipjack or Yellowfin from the US)
Good alternatives: Black Sea Bass, Imported-Farmed Catfish, Crab--Blue, imitation, Alaske King; American/Maine Lobster, US Caught Mahimahi or imported using a pole, Swordfish, Central America farmed Tilapia, Shrimp from the northern atlantic and canada.
Avoid!! Wild-caught caviar, Farmed Salmon, Chilean seabass, Imported mahi-mahi using a long-line, orange roughy, imported shrimp, Chinese farmed Tilapia, tuna caught using a long-line.

And with that, I leave you with a favorite Sesame Street clip that inspired the title of my post:

its almost a barn-raising...

I took this picture a few weeks ago, but today is the perfect day to post it. Why? Because its raining...a cold, steady, icky, grey, mid-February rain. I wish it was colder so all that rain would be mounds of white, fluffy snow. But, instead, the road outside my house is flooding, again.

So when the place you lives floods often, what do you do? You have raised homes. Whenever I heard raised homes, I always thought of my Children's Encyclopedia about homes built literally on the water and scantily-clothed, happy kids climbing ladders to their house. That seemed like fun, like living in a tree fort.

Well, homes here that are raised have staircases. And they are raised in all different ways. Some are literally likes houses that were built on a platform, and there is enough space underneath to act like a car. Others are just raised a little bit, and have a porch or somehing to walk up to at the house (like mine.) Still other are raised very slightly, like a car on cement blocks, and just have a few extra stairs leading up to the house.

The effect is that houses is here LOOK huge but are really your average size, one-story or two-story house. Some homes, built early-on when this island wasn't quite the tourist hot-spot and just a place where some people had nice 50s-style homes, weren't built on stilts. Whether some sort of climate change has made it more necessary, or general realization of having a house on stilits is good, there is a big business for getting your house raised. I always wondered how it happens, but I guess you can sort of see it from this picture.

Good things most homes don't have basements. Though a few older homes in Beach Haven actually do!

History of LBI

I really like my local library. Its small, its friendly...I've always craved being a "regular" someplace, sort of a Cheers-where-everybody-knows-your-name kind of thing, but not necessarily because I was an alcoholic. So this teeny, tiny library in Surf City seems like a good alternative.

Before I got my MacBook (I love it so much!) I used to come here for internet time, but now I've been free to explore the bound annals (aka books). So I recently checked out a history of Long Beach Island. I learned it's pretty much been a resort spot for several centuries.

Interestingly, the first part developed were not the areas near the current causeway, or the pretty northern bit, but the southern end of the island, where Beach Haven is now. Since most of the traffic came from Philadelphia and it was the point most directly west of the city, it developed first. I guess after you've taken a horse carriage across the Pine Barrens and then had to take a boat to an island, going another 12 miles north in a horse carriage seemed unncessary. So there wasn't too much about Surf City in the book.

BUT I did discover that my street was one of the first bay to ocean streets (I use that term loosely) on the island. I wish some of the big, old hotels were still in existence, it would be interesting to see.

Modern-day connection: they appear to be tearing down the Quarter Deck Inn, which is the first hotel you see on the island. I suppose lots of families have memories of staying there, and it will eventually just become another page in the history book.

From the vault

Maybe its homesickness or the fact that I just got a CD of backup info from my old computer, but I've been spending a lot of time looking through old pictures. Obviously I always intended to move near an ocean, since I think I enjoyed this surfer dude costume the most. (I started out as Calvin, but when my Hobbes left the party, I started digging in my friends closet to make the hair fit many different costumes: Old lady, surfer dude, disco guy, etc.)

The first time I ever went surfing was three and a half years ago in San Diego, where I was for a professional convention. I loved it. I instantly understood why so many people work just enough to live, so they can spend the rest of their times on the beach. I still remember that feeling of getting up on the board after so many failed attempts...and I felt proud that I was the first in my class to be able to do it, and only two other people managed to stand up by the end of my class.

It's been a long time since I've had the chance to go surfing. Obviously, there isn't much opportunity to go surfing in Minnesota, though some real die-hard surfers have Surfed Lake Superior. And now I am going to be only a few blocks to surfing all summer long! I live about a mile from the original Ron Jon Surf Shop, whose stickers I always saw on cars but always assumed it was in California.

A co-worker of mine surfs, so hopefully she will take me under her wing and help me know the best equipment, the best spots, etiqutte of NJ beaches, etc. I think I will probably start with a cheap foam longboard (cheap is relative) because it should be easy to relearn on, etc.

It has warmed up here a little bit, just enough to think about surfing for us uninitiated, but the long haul of warm weather means the ocean didn't cool down as much as usual, and surfers (with their wetsuits) are still surfing in january. Though perhaps they do that year-round irregardless of warm snaps...

Weather

flooding, originally uploaded by seat_5a.

The weather here has been rather unusual. Its odd to have 70 degree weather and go to the beach to watch the sunset with no coat on on Saturday...and then have it snow today.

This, I believe, is not normal weather. I've been assured that it does, indeed, snow down here. I am ridiculously attached to the snow and wish it would...though I wonder how much of that is some sort of Minnesota bravado, where I need to prove to these soft people how tough we northwoods people are!

But I don't feel very tough at night sometimes. The wind howls when it rains and a bush in front of my house scrapes against a window and makes these "eeek....eeeeek....eeeek" noises. So, I haven't watched a scary movie since I moved out. Too much to stoke the imagination. I don't know if the rainstorms here are more furious or if I just scare more.

They have nor'easters, which are like the north Atlantic version of hurricanes. They can produce up to 90 mph winds and torrential downpour! The result of these storms can be coastal flooding...and living on an island, that means me!

The combination of a nor'easter and high tide and full moon caught me the first weekend I moved out here. The flooding wasn't too bad, but it was exciting for me! I had to move my car because this is salt water flooding, not freshwater flooding like in the midwest.

Blizzards I know how to deal with, but driving in the flood was hard--how do you drive through high water without splashing all over your car and risk erosion?

I probably looked like an idiot that day but that's okay. I know how to handle myself in ice and snow storms, pumping my brakes and all. Just wait until it snows, I'll show them!

Unfortunately the snow today did not stick.