Frankie says Relax!

I said it in my last entry but it was buried. So at the risk of sounding shrill:

Dear visitors:
RELAX! Breathe! You are on vacation. Not only that, you are vacationing on an island. Getting two cars ahead isn't going to do much. There's no other place to go. We are surrounded by water.

Everyone wants to get to their beach/minigolf/bar/house as much as you do. Understand that. So please wait your turn. Gunning 5 cars ahead will save you, what, a minute? That's not much time and not worth raising your blood pressure.

Also, when you are at the beach with your wife and daughter, and the sun is warm and the wind is just right and you have your feet buried in the sand? Put away the Blackberry. Heck, don't even bring it to the beach. Nothing is so important it can't wait a few hours while you relax.

Talk to your wife. Find out how she is doing. You're likely always working and she might miss that connection. (Then again, maybe she doesn't and this is part of the arrangement! Who knows!)
Look at your daughter! She is gorgeous and sweet and smart. She won't be that size much longer, where she is still excited about playing with a toy dolphin in a bucket of salt water.

Your email can wait. Your daughter can not.

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.

And I'm done

I fell asleep for about an hour around Chapter 10, dreamed (dreamt?) fitfully about Harry Potter and imagined it was all part of the book before waking up and just reading. I kept pausing but didn't feel tired, so I kept going on. At one point, I looked out my window and noticed the dark blue sky...so I fed into an impulse, threw a scarf around my neck and drove to the beach to watch the sunset...book in tow.

It ended up being quite poignant because I read about a random sunrise in the book while the sun was rising (this is not a spoiler in any way, it was just a sunrise). That was a pretty neat feeling. Plus, I got to sit on the lifeguard chair! woo!

I don't think I'll ever be awake early enough to see a sunrise over the ocean ever again (unless its winter and then it will be much colder) but I am glad I did it last night.

Even though right now I am so tired I have no idea how I will work 8 hours...

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.

Surf City, U.S.A.

So technically Huntington Beach, Cali., has the trademarks on the name Surf City, U.S.A. (where, incidentally, I spent a lot of time as a kid because I had an uncle who lived there. Long Live Del Taco), but since my town's actual real name is Surf City, I feel I need to live up to it.

I stopped by a store yesterday and possibly found a new board to take home! I will decide by tomorrow...after I go surfing! Yes, that's right, tomorrow morning I will take my place back on top (hopefully) of a board, after a three-and-a-half-year hiatus. A former co-worker of mine, who still has a family home on the island, is down this week and suggested I try out a board very similar to the one I am looking at, to make sure I am making a sound investment.

Technically, I'll be honest: I can't afford to spend the money on a board right now. My finances are, frankly, tight, and I was unable to go to a good friend's wedding in Minnesota this past weekend because of it.
In my head I know I shouldn't spend the cash (well, credit) on this board, in terms of my long-term financial health (not that spending a few hundred dollars is going to send me into a tailspin of bad credit, but its a bad financial principal) but I am weighing it against the more anti-nihilistic argument of "I will never live this moment in my life again, ever. Carpe Diem!"
(ok, anti-nihilistic mixed with Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society)

Anyway, wish me luck on my first surfing adventure in 3 years! I'll let you know if I decide to buy the board.

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.

----
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.

BENNYs

EDIT: I wrote this post last week and for some reason it didn't post, so I edited a bit and updated it to make it pertinent after the Memorial Day weekend.

EDIT2: Ok, and by "for some reason" I mean user error. I hit "save draft" as opposed to "publish post."

One of the realities of living in a seasonal place is that eventually "the season" comes around. For Long Beach Island, that season is, obviously, summer.
This past weekend was Memorial Day, which is the traditional kick-off to all things summer and the start of the tourist/seasonal visitor parade to the island. One of the most noticeable changes is traffic.

During the winter months, I got used to careening around willy-nilly, with few cars or traffic lights to bother me. Let me tell you, this island was EMP-TY. Especially January through March-ish, when there are few holiday weekends to bring people to the island until Easter. (There were still regular visits for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, etc.)

I noticed the traffic start to thicken around April, I'm guessing people started coming out with the Easter weekend. I actually escaped the island this weekend while people poured in, heading to North Carolina to visit my cousin and his adorable twins.

Oh, and the title of this post is a name, somewhat derogatory I think, for what "locals" call summer people. The Wikipedia entry talks about the different possible etymology of the word, but either way its not very nice. I can somewhat sympathize with locals, because it does feel crowded, plus I hear there are some people who spoil the batch of apples by acting boorish and generally like their actions have no effect, but visitors to this tourist area definitely pump economic dollars, as well as tax dollars to the area. There wouldn't be as good of infrastructure if officials weren't constantly preparing for summer.

Nevertheless, I hope everyone pays attention to the second sign and DRIVE SAFELY. I really don't feel like being nosed on my way home from work, simply because you sat in the parking lot called the Parkway for 5 hours.

(PS Someone who is a "local" said I was a "local" now because if you are willing to spend winter on the island, that makes you a local. I dunno about that...what do you think?)

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:

Flooded in!

UPDATE2: I waded out of my house! Its a good thing I moved my car when I did or I would have definitely had to stay in my house til the water subsided (maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing, it would be like another day off. I came in to finish a story that was supposed to run tomorrow, but now its being held a week, so I could've done cop checks and weather reports from home!) Anyway, the water was almost to the top of my bottom step, along with some gross sticks and litter like cigarette packets. I hiked down the street through my neighbors' yards but when I got to the end of the road, I had to wade through calf-deep water to get to my car. I might go to the car wash today just to spray underneath my car, make sure there is no salt left in there to muck with my car. I will update soon with more pics!


UPDATE: I was listening to the news reports and they were talking about how flooding shouldn't be as bad on the Jersey Shore because the wind down here is coming from the West blowing East--so against the ocean. Um yeah, unless you live on an island! I live on the bayside (west end) of Long Beach Island, so the water is coming in from the bay.
The water is getting higher and higher. I moved my car out of the backyard so I can have the option of going to work if necessary because the water went up several inches within a half hour.

I can't get out of my driveway because the flood waters have come in past my house and are up to the next house up the street. I think they should subside soon, but if they don't do I get a "flood day" at work? hmmmm.



This is looking down my street towards the bay. You can see the edge of my sidewalk to the right of the picture. I can't tell how deep the water is in front of my house, but its definitely deeper as we go towards the bay. I also do not want to drive in this!


My car is hiding in the backyard!


This flooding is definitely worse than the last time, plus the weather is nastier. Also, that day I didn't have to go anywhere until after the flooding was over, since I hadn't started work yet (of course, it was my moving weekend!)

This is a pic from my moving weekend:


Hmmm, now that I reread my last entry, I said the waters receded around 5 p.m. I hope these waters recede sooner than that!

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.

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??

Won't you be my neighbor?

I've written about feeling lonely, such as last week when I realized I had no place to stay when my heat went out. But I haven't written about how warm and friendly New Jersey has been for me.

I have some GREAT neighbors. My landlords, who live upstairs on the weekends, are nice and friendly and warm and responsive. And they share their beer. My right-hand neighbors are a retired couple and they are like grandparents--always there for me to borrow a cup of sugar or what not. They made some amazing, home-made from scratch, onion soup the other night and gave me a frozen batch. And, in return, I try to do things like wipe off their car of snow when I am dusting off mine, or things like that.

This morning, I was leaving my street as a car started to drive down, and the driver waved to me. Did I know him? No. Does it matter? Not really. That's just life on the island.

I know what some of you are thinking right now: "Warm and friendly? New Jersey? What?"

This state gets a bad rap. And most states that have bad raps have people saying they have bad raps (how do I unwrap myself from that tongue-twister?). But New Jersey is such an interesting state because it almosts has five eco-systems or something. North Jersey is a different beast from the Jersey Shore which is different from South Jersey and Central Jersey. Also, there is a chunk of Northwestern Jersey that is different too.

All this in a state that is 70 miles wide and 150 miles long. It's amazing!

North and much of Central Jersey strikes me as being very New York-oriented. Most of the people who live there work and play in the city, and drive/train home for sleep. That's the part that is a little more rough and tough, I think. Probably because New Jersey is ranked 47th in terms of size but 11th in terms of population, and the majority is crammed into that portion. I'd be watching my own too!

South Jersey (I only know Ocean County, not the parts closer to Philly) is a little slower-paced and some parts are a little backwards, to me. I've had some...racial run-ins...where people just don't seem to be aware that its not okay to use the N-word. (Some people call people down here "Pineys" which refers to the Pinelands, a large swath of greenery in the middle of the state. It's like the Southern Ocean word for "hick.")
I think its ignorance, not actual racism per se. But, besides that stuff, it reminds me of Minnesota in that its full of nice people who wave and stuff.

I wonder how things will change in the summer...I mean, I know its going to get mad-crowded and there will be all sorts of North Jersey/Philadelphia/New York people summering, so its going to be a lot more awake. I sort of like my sleepy little town without stoplights right now...

Oh and everyone drinks Yeungling beer likes its going out of circulation. Very Philadelphia.

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!

the big freeze

the big freeze, originally uploaded by seat_5a.

Not much to report from the island. It is starting to warm up out here, but just last week the bay was frozen over...maybe not enough to walk on (you need at least half a foot of ice for walking and one foot of ice for driving), but enough to be very pretty.

Its really the wind that makes you cold and boy is it windy on this island. I learned that the reason that wind makes you cold is a human exudes body heat, of course, but that heat makes sort of a cushion around your body--a real life aura! When the wind blows, it blows away that cushion, and that's why wind feels so much colder than just low temperatures.

Luckily, I have heat!

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...

Finding a place to live

I have a place to live! YAY!

I am going to live in the 2-bedroom place in Surf City for an amazing price. House-hunting on Saturday was depressing and exciting at the same time--depressing cause the places in my price range were SO awful, but exciting cause it makes me appreciate my new place even more.

Maya and Vikram came over last night and had dinner with us. We went out for Manhattan Clam Chowder, which is tomato-based instead of cream-based. I never knew there was such a thing! We also had really excellent crab cakes.

Also, the neighborhood is really nice. It's a dead-end neighborhood but enough cars go by because the end of the block (4 houses down) is the Surf City Yacht Club (and the bay. and the sunset.) The neighbors are year-round, too, so that adds to the safety. The guy who owns the house is part of the fire department, which is two blocks away, and is also where the police department is located. The beach is three blocks away. Long blocks, but nevertheless...!

The place is so relaxing and there is a nice breeze all the time...except it was really humid today and I felt hot. I can't imagine what the summer will be like! Oh well, I'll just go to the beach when it gets that hot =)