These past few days I've been relaxing with my parents and grandparents (my mom's parents) in Ocean City, NJ. Yesterday morning Dad and I went bike riding on the boardwalk, and off on the city streets--we discovered that the northern end of the town has a neighborhood where all the streets are named after British cities, such as Edinburgh, Cardif, Aberdeen, Belfast, but I never saw London or Glasgow streets. I also got to run about four miles yesterday morning, and hope to run the boardwalk from end to end tomorrow morning--its five miles round trip.
Today was an odd day because after breakfast at Sindia's, Mom drove up to Atlantic City for a knitting conference in a casino--ok, so it wasn't a casino, it was in the convention center. In the meantime Grandma, Grandpa and I drove back to our house via the public library, so that Grandma could look up Dewey Decimal numbers for a few books, and the kind ladies at the library held onto Grandma's purse until we realized a few hours later it was missing. The librarians told Grandma they wondered when she was going to return to get her purse.
During the early afternoon, when we should have eaten lunch, I talked with Grandpa about his serving in WWII as a B17 pilot, and about ways he'd seen the Lord answer prayers over the years. I got some of his recollections recorded digitally to put onto CD. Then we ate a late lunch, and headed to the beach much later than usual.
Just as we were unloading our chairs and towels, a dark grey storm cloud rolled over and started pelting rain, lightning, and very loud thunder. We drove around for about a half hour and then returned to 12th Street once the rain had stopped, and after waiting on a boardwalk bench to be sure the storm was past, we hit the beach--around 5:00 PM.
The sky was partly cloudy, but the sun occasionally shone through, and the wind was constant. The waves were warmer than the air, but there were also jellyfish on the shore. After about an hour or so, we looked north a block and a half and there was a wedding party taking photographs on the beach, in the failing light. It was odd to see guys and a groom in black tuxes, girls in identical maroon bridesmaids dresses, and a bride in a wedding gown on a mostly deserted beach under a dark sky.
More later- we're heading out to the boardwalk.
Posted by swanson at september 23, 2005 8:33 EM | TrackBack