That would have been unfortunate. Weather reports of impending doom and thunder and clouds sent lots of people home early on Sunday, but it turned out to be one of the best days yet. The sun hung in there, the breeze was nice, the beaches were (sorry) not too crowded and the ocean, well, let's talk about the ocean. Saturday, the ocean was 66 degrees. That means, it's almost warm enough to not be obsessing about how cold it is. You could swim and mean it. Sunday, though, it had dropped two degrees to 64 (at least along the Atlantic City-Ventnor-Margate-Longport part, reports from Avalon had it in the 50s). That's a big two degrees. Those two degrees meant, you could take a dip, but not without a lot of anticipatory build up and motivation. But it was not so cold that you couldn't stay in for a bit once you were in. But truly, if it's going to feel like summer, we need those two degrees back, plus a few more.
In other news, we made like tourists on Saturday and took a whale watching boat tour off Cape May and, ok, it's Jersey, so we didn't see a whale, but we saw some very cool dolphin stuff (mating, a little newborn kind of a dolphin guy who looked like a little black football swimming with mom, lots of pods, a dolphin snatching a fish out of the air) and, as a finale, an American Bald Eagle perched in a tree. That was spectacular. There had been word of a whale hanging around the Delaware Bay, and they do see them on these tours, but not for us. In any case, thanks to Nicole our guide. Here's a fun fact: Just like the shoobies, the dolphins who return every year to Cape May, or to Wildwood, or to Ventnor, are the same dolphins, year after year. So if they act like they own the joint, well, it's because they do.
Postscript: Speaking of weather, and hippy dippy weathermen, was a shocker to see this morning that George Carlin had passed away. I grew up listening to George Carlin records, over and over again, and I think that like many, Carlin was the guy who showed me what it was to laugh until it hurt. Carlin was scheduled to perform at the Borgata on July 26th. He will be missed.