The beach was open, but the ocean was CLOSED due to Hurricane Gustav!
The morning crowd at Jenkinson's
Beach in Point Pleasant. Looks quite normal, right? Wrong!
The surf was too rough to
allow any swimming at all.
It was a major bummer on this
absolutely gorgeous day, but everybody knew there was nobody to complain
to.
So people just sat down and
LOOKED at the water.
or they got as close as the
lifeguards would allow to catch some tantalizing spray
there was much watching of
the parasailers
it was strange, such a beautiful
day, everybody wanted to go in the water, and nobody could
in the morning there was a
tidal pool the little kids quickly occupied
the under-four set was fine
with no ocean, they weren't going in there anyhow
this was early in the day,
but still very strange to see no swimmers at all
the lifeguards were busy whistling
people away from the water...it's funny how compelling the ocean is,
people are just drawn to it
even when they know they're not supposed to be in it...
as the day wore on people
just HAD to put their feet in the water
this is quite an exaggeration--tropical
paradise? a couple miles off Route 9? lol
I must say though the band
at the bar was decent and it was nice to have live music on the beach.
Lots of Stones covers, fun
to hear the very diverse beach crowd do the "woo-hoos" in Sympathy for
the Devil.
In the middle of the day when
I would normally be cooling off in the water, I got a
Yuengling and a flounder sandwich
and read my book under an umbrella.
That's a big advantage of
the northern shore over a place like LBI--you can actually eat and drink
on the beach.
There's even that rarest of
American commodities on the boardwalk--decent public bathrooms!
no, I did not stay for the
Foghat show