I pedaled merrily along Ocean City's boardwalk, past boarded-up
pizza joints and lemonade stands and signs prohibiting ball
playing, seagull feeding,
skateboarding, and bike riding after 10
a.m. The afternoon sun shone down, reflecting off the happy smiles
of bikers, skateboarders launching from benches, and bundled
children tossing bread bits up to wheeling gulls.
Snubbing the rules was fun. So was walking into hotels and
restaurants and receiving the sort of attention Robinson Crusoe
might have lavished on shipwrecked Hooters girls.
But the best thing of all was the beaches. I meandered for hours,
accompanied only by the occasional solitary walker and stoic gulls
that congregated on the sand like lost barristers.
The wind blew off the ocean with a goose-pimply chill, and the
waves left puddles of foam shivering at the water's edge. When the
gray clouds parted, the sun flared furious and squinty bright, as
if aware of its limited time on stage.
Summer's heat produces torpor, a pleasant, languid ignorance that
leaves the mind addled and sun-doped. Winter's cold, however,
seemed to bring life front and center.
By the time I reached the lovely Victorian town of Cape May, New
Jersey, I was certain that, in bucking convention, I had done the
right thing.
Sipping hot clam chowder inside The Ugly Mug, I saw a sign on the
wall that nicely summarized my trip thus far. "Mix a little folly
with your wisdom,'' it read. "A little nonsense is pleasant now and
then.''
CASTING A LINE
Ocean City, New Jersey
Two mornings later, I went fishing with an old friend, Rick Horn.
Rick had weathered 16 winters in the barrier island town of Ocean
City, and so he had a pretty good idea of what winter was
about.