If it's Labor Day Weekend, you've probably been red-flagged from swimming at the Jersey shore.
Every year, my parents would rent a house at the Jersey Shore for the month of August. Sometimes they would split a whole-summer rental with my Uncle Tommy (my mother's brother), but August was always our end of the deal. It was the best month. The water was warmer and the weather was better.
New Jersey being a bit more civilized than Colorado, school didn't start until after Labor Day, so my folks would often plunk down some extra money and rent the house through Labor Day weekend.
I don't know why. I can't remember a single Labor Day weekend when we were allowed to swim. It seems there was always a hurricane churning somewhere out in the Atlantic that made for big waves and treacherous currents.
This weekend it's Hurricane Earl. Earl missed New Jersey by a couple of hundred miles, but that doesn't mean that it's not going to spin up some big waves. The last report I saw predicted 15-foot swells for New Jersey. Those are big waves.
When my folks retired, they bought a house on 19th Avenue in Belmar, NJ. Today, I brought up Belmar Cam to see what things were like. The camera is on 16th Avenue looking south toward my parents' street. It probably won't show much tonight because it's already dark there (I just brought up the link and found a guy eating a slice of pizza on the boardwalk), but click the link tomorrow to see what's happening on the beach.
Since Earl has now passed the Jersey Shore and is on his way to Long Island and Cape Cod, I want to dedicate this song to the State of New Jersey.
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Today would have been a tough day for anyone who was running for Governor, but it was especially tough for someone who is running just to make house payments out of his campaign fund.
The State Republican leadership has put on a full-court press to try to get Dan Maes to drop out.
Today, Politico reported that Maes had been called to a meeting with State Republican Chairman Dick Wadhams at which Wadhams laid out a bunch of "evidence" that the newspapers don't have yet. Wadhams was reported to have asked Maes, "Do you really want to put your family through this?"
Where I came from, we used to call that "blackmail." In Colorado, however, it's OK if you're a Republican.
