We’re in Cape May, New Jersey, a little seaside town near the point where Delaware Bay joins the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a quaint place, full of Victorian houses and a boardwalk that has lots of places to buy ice cream or frozen custard and play skeeball (I love skeeball; I’m pretty bad but I still get a charge out of plopping the ball in the 40 or 50 point hole). I’ve managed to get lost several times wandering around the windy streets, which is pretty amazing as it’s a small place. We’re staying at an old place on the ocean called the Hotel Macomber. Rooms are small and damp, being so close to the water, but it’s a charming place.
The beaches here are a new experience to me: you have to pay to use them! It’s four dollars a day, and you have to show your tag to the beach monitors before you can actually get on the sand! People bring pretty much everything but the kitchen sink when they go: coolers, tents, chairs, umbrellas, you name it. We’ve been boogie boarding, as the waves are quite gentle and the water is fairly balmy by west coast standards – low 70’s. Going to the beach and out to eat are the primary recreational activities here, and there are TONS of restaurants, and most serve lots of seafood.
The weather continues hot and humid, typical for this part of the world in the summer. We keep hearing that this is all quite mild compared to later in August. Last night there was a spectacular thunderstorm with lightning that lit the whole sky for about an hour at 3:30 in the morning. I would have expected that to break the humidity, but the reverse was true: it was more humid today than yesterday! We’ve been running most mornings, and come back literally dripping. We shower, change, and are already sweating again by the time we’re done. Phew!
Internet access has been dicey. The Hotel Macomber has none, and the nearest place we’ve found is the public library that has free wireless that is monitored via proxy server so all we can do is surf the web, and a lot of sites are blocked. It’s a little branch, and has ten public machines that offer web access. They allow anyone to use them, and there is always a line. We’ve found a huge number of East European kids work here in the summers; they’re cheap, reliable labor for the local merchants, and the public library’s computers are their lifelines to home. If you ever doubt the worth of a public library, come to a place like this and look around: kids in their area quietly reading, adults looking at newspapers and magazines, folks politely lined up waiting to use the computers.
We’ve also had some luck out on the street finding some open wireless access points, but it’s all touch and go – and a lot warmer than the air-conditioned library. We leave tomorrow for Philadelphia. I’ve never been so am looking forward to a major history fix.