And Away We Go

Hello World, Welcome back! Or at least, that's what people would be saying to me this week, after my return from adventures in Vacation Land, where I lived to tell the tale, and that is not to be taken for granted, believe me. Anyone in the local area can tell you there was a record-breaking heat wave during my vacation week, but it was still better to be out in the wilderness to frolic in the surf and sand at a time like that, rather than going to work - where I found out later, things got so bad that the hospital actually lost their electricity and had to send the non-clinical staff home. At least in my campsite, there's no electricity to lose in the first place, which is one of the advantages of leaving civilization behind, along with all your cares and woe, blackbird. Alert readers may recall that after the ill-fated renovation project on the beach last year, plus ferocious off-season storms in between, we were anxious for assurances that things would be back to normal this time around, and found the meager information about it to be spotty, contradictory and confusing. So we made a special trip out there in early May to check it out for ourselves, and were encouraged at the progress of the project, with the building and boardwalk looking intact, and even the lights were turned on, to provide more positive indications that we would be enjoying the new and improved fruits of their labors in July, and looking forward to it. Not so fast! Unfortunately, it turned out that our optimism was sadly misplaced, and instead we were faced with the glum prospect of a second year in a row with no concession stand, no bathrooms, and no gift shop at the beach, which was as unwelcome a discovery as it was unexpected. Unlike last year, at least the boardwalk was open, so you could get from one side to the other, but they eliminated the snack tent where you could buy soda and chips on the weekend, so it couldn't be considered any real improvement over last year, especially after our high hopes in May, alas. It all started on Saturday, with middling traffic along the way, and weather that was a study in contrasts everywhere we went. We made pretty good time and even checked in early, only to find ourselves setting up in a persistent drizzle - which at least had the advantage that we got a lot more done than we usually do on the first day, when we rush in and toss up 2 tents, then drop everything and hurry to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. We finally gave up on waiting for it to clear up, and just decided to go to the beach anyway, and this was the first inkling we had that the slip-shod boardwalk project was still unfinished, thanks not, after two long years and apparently no end in sight. This unwanted revelation dampened our enthusiasm somewhat, but after a long drive and hard work, we were resolved to make the best of it, in spite of overcast skies and frigid water with what would be considered big waves by Wildwood standards. It was a long and discouraging hike back up the hill from the beach with no cheese fries to sustain us, I can tell you that. Next, we made our way back to Coram to check in for the night at our home away from home, and glad for a reviving shower and clean clothes. We had found out on our trip in May that it's not The Gaslight any longer, but has joined up with America's Roadside Motor Inn chain, with very different decor all over the place, and all of the rooms have been freshly painted. Of course, Denny's is always a treat, and it was certainly a bonus to relax in a clean and cool room in the midst of a heat wave that had gripped the region in its sweltering embrace. We realized on Sunday that since there was no food to be had at the beach, rather than carry our own snacks with us and eat in our laps, we could go to the nearby Wendy's, which is a place that we haven't been in years, and savor their signature cheesy baked potatoes and delicious chocolate Frosty for lunch instead. It turned out to be a lovely day at the beach later, with plenty of sun, and smooth, clear water that would have proved irresistible to even the staunchest land-lubber, me bucko. Then it was off to dinner at Friendly's, where their Ultimate Grilled Cheese certainly lived up to its name, and the waffle fries did not disappoint. On Monday, we enjoyed bagels for lunch before going to beach, and were surprised to bump into the contractor for rolling gates at the end of the bathhouse - which area turns out to be some sort of shelter that accepts 49 occupants only, according to the signs. This may be a recent innovation in boardwalk amenities, but we honestly have no idea what any of that means. On the way back up, we had a serendipitous meeting with Jack from Bub Daddy, the company that operates the park concessions at the beach, picnic area, Camp Store and vending machines throughout the campground, and there were plenty of complaints about the 2-year-old beach boondoggle that has cut his business by 2/3, and left the rest of us high and dry in the bargain - in fact, I would go so far as to say that outrage would not be too strong a term under the circumstances, and I am unanimous in that. The time had come when Bill had no choice but go back home to hold down the fort, while I spent the rest of the week in the woods, and looking forward to some peace and quiet, surrounded by the bounties of nature in all its glory. Not so fast! In fact, the drawbacks became apparent almost immediately, when I was all set to head to the beach on Tuesday, but accidentally activated the car alarm on the Aveo, and couldn't get it to shut off, no matter what I did - and which was about as unpopular with the other campers as you might imagine. I couldn't even drive it to someplace more secluded, or even give up and go home, because once the alarm is going off, all of the other functions are disabled, so you're just stuck with no other options but to shut the car down and keep your distance. This is no doubt a handy feature if some nefarious individual is trying to steal your precious new piston-pusher, but quickly loses its appeal when you can't get into your own car, and there seems to be no escape from the double-edged sword that is modern technology run amok. I found that the owner's manual was less than no help at all, and even the cell phone I brought with me for emergencies, ironically enough, was stone dead, thanks not. Eventually I must have inadvertently performed the correct combination of steps to get things back to normal, and just about in the nick of time, because the other campers had banded together with the intent of storming my campsite with pitchforks and torches, and I can't say that I blame them one bit. Overall, it seemed to be a rather odd week at the park, possibly because it was a whole week later, so that I wouldn't miss the Scottish games like last year. On my usual week, the PARK FILLED TO CAPACITY sign is always out front when I arrive on Saturday, and again on the following Friday, but this time, I never saw it at any point during my stay. Mostly everyone seems to check out on Sunday and Monday, so by Tuesday the place is a ghost town, and start slowly filling back in on Thursday night and Friday - but this year, they were still coming in on Monday, Tuesday and even Wednesday, and started leaving on Thursday and Friday. I didn't spend as much time around the park as usual, since I took the lazy way out and drove to the picnic area, so I would have a shorter walk to the beach, and I never did spot any spy sites, like there usually are, and are generally too obvious to miss, even if you're not looking for them. I also brought my own drinks, rather than tramping around and fighting with the recalcitrant vending machines on every side, so that also cut down on my ramblings. There are no chipmunks in the campsites any longer, and I only saw 2 squirrels, plus it took until Thursday to see a single crow. My schedule was too erratic for the usual 6:30 deer, although people in D Section, where deer regularly congregate, said there hadn't been any. I never set eyes on a hawk, or heard any raccoons, which is even more peculiar than the complete absence of spies. I mean, what the heck kind of a campground are they running here anyway? Speaking of peculiar, Friday started out beautiful, just like every other day, when suddenly the mother and father of all thunder and lightning storms exploded out of a clear blue sky, and had me running for cover. My plan was to wait it out under the rain fly overhang outside the tent, but after a while, I moved inside the tent and had some juice and crackers to pass the time. The lightning was so close and so fierce that I finally ran to the car, and when it became even worse (like I have never seen it, in 50 years of camping there) I totally freaked out and drove right out of the park as fast as I could, heading for daylight farther inland where it was just sprinkling, and leaving the pyrotechnics behind me. I found out later that towns just below and to the sides of the park had no rain at all, and if I had known that then, I would have just driven completely out of the storm and called it a day. It finally let up enough that I went back to the park, and figured that I might as well go to the beach since I was wet anyway, and even if it didn't stop completely, after all, swimming in the rain is a time-honored tradition at Wildwood, and I ought to know. So I walked all the way down the hill with all of my beach paraphernalia, only to find that they didn't allow people to swim after the storm, and you can only imagine how popular that was with me and everyone else who already walked all the way down the hill, by golly. I tried to drum up a mob to come back with pitchforks and torches, but that was too many trips up and down the hill even for me. The only good part about Friday was that Bill came back after work, in spite of the terrible traffic, especially after a long day on the job - but still better than getting up early on Saturday morning to drive all the way down, and then have to break down 2 campsites in a hurry, not to mention, 90+ degrees. After Friday's drenching, we turned up a frog under the spare tent, and I don't know which of us was more surprised, but it was certainly a first in my camping experiences. After checking out, we drove to the picnic area, where the concession stand was closed, even on Saturday, so we broke out our own crackers and drinks before heading to the beach one last time. It turned out to be the best day all week, and we had a lovely time in the sun and sand, and especially the water, which was clear and smooth and delightfully refreshing. Even better, we were there to see the grand re-opening of the long-shuttered gift shop (HOORAY!!!) where we treated ourselves to some ice cream in honor of the occasion - and once again, bumped into Jack from Bub Daddy, who accepted our congratulations and hopes for a speedy return to business-as-usual all around. All too soon, it was time to bid a fond farewell for good, with another stop at Denny's to console us, and we arrived home without incident, although in the dark - which was probably just as well, because we didn't feel like unpacking the cars anyway, and elected to save that for Sunday. So far, I've already made good progress on my vacation laundry, and I also had a plan to put all of my camp gear away somewhere else besides the attic, so the furry varmints wouldn't chew on it. They may think their tiny angry mob with pitchforks and torches is going to sway my decision, but I wouldn't count on it. Elle

Camp Rock

Greetings, Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea: Well, the time has surely come, in fact it's a week later than usual, for me to be setting off for Vacation-Land, and I don't mind saying, not a moment too soon, by golly. Tomorrow morning, I'll be packing up all my cares and woe, here I go, and leaving behind all the workaday stress, chaos, headaches, and calamities, for a week of relaxation in the woods, and frolics in the sun, sand and surf. Ah, wilderness! My parting gift to you is this ode to the great outdoors from humorist Dave Barry, who once famously observed: "Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel industry." Amen to that! And that's not just the s'mores talking, believe me, or my name isn't - Happy Camper ======================================== HAPPY TRAILS TO YOU by Dave Barry There's nothing like taking your family on a camping trip. getting away from civilization, sleeping under the open sky, looking up into the heavens and gazing upon an awe-inspiring vista of millions and millions of . . . what ARE those things? Bats? Very large mosquitoes? Oh NO! They've taken little Ashley! So perhaps it's better not to sleep under the open sky. But you should still go camping, because it's the best way to get close to nature, with "nature" defined as "anything that you would kill if it got inside your house. "Exposure to nature is healthy, especially for children. Kids today spend far too many hours sitting around indoors, watching moronic TV shows such as "the evening news." By stark contrast, when I was a boy growing up in the rural town of Armonk, N.Y., in a house surrounded by rustic woodland, I spent countless carefree hours roaming free in my bedroom, learning to make flatulence noises with my armpit. But I'm sure that if I HAD gone outside and interacted with nature, I would be a much healthier person today. That's why I say: So WHAT if North America has more than 30 species of rattlesnakes, as well as 60 species of spiders that inflict what are classified as "medically important" bites? Let's start planning your family camping trip right now, using the "Q" and "A" format! Q. What equipment will I need to go camping? A. You need a tent. Tent sizes are measured in units of men, as in "a three-man tent"; this tells you how many men are required to erect the tent if they are all professional tent engineers equipped with Tent Viagra. Even then, the tent will collapse under unusual weather conditions, such as nightfall. You will also need a hatchet, for the spiders, and a credit card, for the motel. Q. Where should I go camping? A. The United States has a spectacular national park system with millions of unspoiled acres, where wildlife is protected by federal laws. Avoid these places. You want a commercial facility with a name like "The Stop 'n' Squat Kountry Kampground," where large animals cannot fit through the 6-inch gaps between the Winnebagos. Q. How much food should I take? A. A lot. You'll be providing food not only for your family, but also for the entire raccoon community. When I was a boy in rural Armonk, our garbage cans were regularly terrorized by a gang of brilliant criminal raccoons. I recall being awakened at 3 a.m. by loud noises, and looking out the window to see, by moonlight, my father, a peace-loving Presbyterian minister, charging around in the bushes, wildly swinging a baseball bat and saying non-Presbyterian words. Of course, he did not get the raccoons; you NEVER get the raccoons. The raccoons were safe in their secret headquarters, recording my father via high-resolution night-vision videotape technology that humans would not develop for another 25 years. That particular video is still hugely popular on Raccoon Entertainment TV ("Tonight we present the classic episode 'Crazed Minister in Pajamas'"). Ten years later, I was a counselor at Camp Sharparoon, which meant that I had to go camping in the woods with a group of boys and a nutritionally balanced food supply consisting of 75,000 small boxes of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. I tried to protect our food at night via the Boy Scout Handbook technique of suspending it from a rope strung between two trees; the raccoons thought this was hilarious. When darkness fell, they got the food down in seconds, using lasers. Q. What if I get lost? A. If you don't have a compass, stand very still, and listen very carefully, until you hear this sound: "eh-eh-eh." That is Canada. Whatever you do, don't go that way. (C) The Miami Herald This column was originally published June 17, 2001.

As Easy As Falling Off A Bicycle

Hello World, Happy July! It's hard to believe that the first week of the new month has already come and gone, and if you're anything like me (heaven forbid!) nothing to show for it besides. For anyone who is planning to go camping in another couple of weeks (like someone who shall remain nameless, but who looks suspiciously like yours truly) and is woefully unprepared, this is a daunting prospect indeed. Of course, it's all too true that normal people can toss a few incidentals in the back of their SUV and head out for a week in the woods in blissful contentment, but anyone can tell you that my gargantuan preparations for vacation would make the Normandy invasion look like a spur-of-the-moment backyard fling, and don't spare the howitzers, my good man. Normally I would be starting out this weekend, but with July 4th so late in the week, I figured the weekend would be a mob scene at the campground, especially if the weather is fine, and I decided to hold back a week and hope for smaller crowds after the holiday. That gives me an extra week to pack, and the way things have been going lately, I have the feeling that I'm going to need every bit of it, especially if I have to make room for all those howitzers, Big Bertha. But if nothing else, I'm sure many alert readers will be relieved to learn that The Flag Brigade managed to do a perfectly adequate job of flying the colors on Thursday, upstairs and downstairs, which is nothing to sneeze at, as we are all too painfully aware, from previous experience over the years. Later that same day, we were treated to the spectacle of glorious fireworks over the water at a nearby park, which we could enjoy from our upstairs porch, to our rockets red glare content, Francis Scott Key. Now that it's July, after all, and even the ridiculously long-drawn-out hoops and hockey playoffs are a thing of the past, a reasonable person could be forgiven for thinking that there would be nothing of note, or newsworthy, in those areas, at least until the new seasons started up again later in the year. Au contraire! (That's French for, "I sneeze upwind of your flag!") I am here to tell that otherwise reasonable person that they would be not only completely wrong, but enormously so, and in such unexpected ways that it would make their very heads spin - sort of like Meadowlark Lemon spinning a basketball on his finger, only with cartoon eyes popping out of their heads. I couldn't help but notice, when I was reading a story about the recent NBA draft, that certain picks were being assigned to the New Orleans Pelicans, of all things. (Please let me know if this starts to sound fishy, because I wouldn't expect anyone to swallow it hook, line and sinker, or think that I was just pulling a load of tripe out of Davy Jones locker for the halibut, by Neptune.) Now I will admit that I am no basketball maven, and I don't know everything there is to know about the NBA and all of its storied franchises. But one thing I do know is that there is no such thing as the New Orleans Pelicans, at least up until now, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise, try as they might. No, you're not imagining things, it's our old friends the Charlotte Hornets (who baseball legend Ralph Kiner once famously referred to as the "Charlotte Harlots" during a broadcast) once again making more noise in the news than they do on the court. I should warn you that you're going to have to pay close attention to this next part, because it's almost impossible to tell the teams without a scorecard, as the saying goes. The Hornets started in Charlotte way back in 1988, before moving to New Orleans in 2002 as the New Orleans Hornets. At that point, the bereft city of Charlotte was awarded a new NBA franchise (no, not the Harlots!) known as the Bobcats, and still playing there now. Meanwhile in New Orleans, the Hornets petitioned the NBA to rename the team, and requested a return to the city's previous franchise name, the New Orleans Jazz - which team had relocated decades ago to become the Utah Jazz, who are also still playing there now, and flatly refused to give up the team name so New Orleans could have it back. At that point, they settled on the Pelicans, which is the Louisiana state bird, and the rest, as they say, is history. Not so fast! It turns out that before the Pelicans could even take to the boards for the first time, the Harlots - I mean, the Charlotte Bobcats - applied to the NBA to change the team's name back to the Hornets once again, bringing everything full circle, and making matters just about as clear as the proverbial Mississippi mud, thank you so very much not. Frankly, it would be all too easy to describe this whole pandemonium as a hornet's nest, but the dinosaurs and I agree, that would be an insult to hornets everywhere. Not to mention, the harlots. Meanwhile in the NHL - proving once again that the management has way too much time on their hands, if indeed any more proof was needed - the upcoming season brings yet another re-alignment to the league, and a new playoff format for everyone to get used to. There will still be the East and West Conferences, but they will now have 2 divisions in each, rather than 3 previously. (These appear to be identified as Green, Blue, Orange and Yellow at the moment, so apparently they didn't have enough time on their hands to come up with divisional names yet.) This restructuring moves the Rangers back into an 8-team division with the Flyers, Penguins and Capitals (thanks not) while next door, the Bruins will be duking it out with the likes of Ottawa, Buffalo and Montreal, among others. In order to make the divisions more geographically cohesive, perennial western powerhouse Detroit was re-allocated to the East, so the Winnipeg team could make the switch to the West and play other clubs closer to home. Another feature of the new re-alignment is that each team plays in every other city at least once during the season, which hasn't happened in over 15 years. This should be particularly helpful for those acrimonious breakups, where players or coaches leave one team for another, in the full flower of antagonism, mud-slinging, and the wholesale airing of dirty laundry in the media, and the only saving grace is the hope that you're never going to see that other team ever again, or at least until several years have passed and the whole sordid affair has blown over. Now you're guaranteed to have that unwelcome reunion in your very own arena within the same year, and if that doesn't make for some interesting times ahead, well then, I just don't know what it would take. Of course, there's always the harlots, but what with the Pelicans coming home to roost, I figure they're already going to have bigger fish to fry, if you know what I mean. And here on the local scene, someone who hadn't already been following this story in the community newspaper, couldn't help but be stymied by this arresting headline: ==================================== Putnam Tables Vote on Bike Path Ads ==================================== Well, I can tell you that the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when tables weren't allowed to vote on anything, much less bike path ads, by golly. Times have certainly changed, heaven knows, and not always for the better, you can believe that. First of all, bike path ads don't make any sense to start with, and then when you add in the part about the tables voting on them, well, it just goes from bad to worse, as far as comprehension is concerned. But apparently, there is some method to their madness after all. It turns out that Putnam County was about to strike a deal with Bikepath Country, a company that sells advertising along bike routes, and splits the profits with the municipality, giving the cash-strapped governments money to pay for upkeep of the trails. Putnam is small, but its population is vociferous, and the outcry over this plan was predictably swift and clamorous, so much so that the Legislature had no choice but to back down. In that context, the headline makes way more sense, when you realize that "tables" is the verb and "vote" is the noun, rather than the other way around. Of course, the dinosaurs and I can also remember a time when headlines made sense all by themselves, and you didn't need a whole drawer full of footnotes to figure out what they meant - which after all, is why they invented headlines in the first place. On the other hand, when it comes to a place that lets tables vote on things, I guess we can all agree that anything goes, and that's not just the placemats talking, believe me. And speaking of anything goes, I hear that Charlotte is very nice this time of year, and if you happen to patronize any harlots while you're there, tell them Ralph Kiner sent you. Elle