Homecoming

One of the great things about living in Neptune Beach is that it has a small-town atmosphere. Today is the annual homecoming parade for our local high school, and it always shuts down the southbound lanes of our main north-south corridor. Not to mention that it's a nice relief from the leak in my main water line that's being fixed!

Too lazy to walk down the street...

This is the final day of the 2009 Sea & Sky Spectacular, but I'm too lazy to walk down the street to the beach to see it. Maybe it's because I spent a couple of hours down there Friday, talking to others from the 'hood and shooting footage of the rehearsal show. But because my house is still in the flight line for the Blue Angels, I can still get some good video from my own front yard. To wit, this shot of the four planes in the "diamond" flying over the house. No naptime this afternoon!

How do the organizers of this event always seem to pick a weekend with perfect weather for it? You couldn't ask for a nicer day today for an air show. Clear blue skies, temps in the low 80s, cool breeze coming off the ocean. Even though I'm about a mile out of the main show area, when the show consists of airplanes, there's always a good amount of spillover. I'll get back to my beach walking tomorrow when the crowds have gone home and it's just us locals again.

Dawn in the hood

A beautiful orange-and-blue sky greets us this morning. It's a great day for an air show! I have another commitment this morning, but will be back out on the beach this afternoon to see the sights.

We Got Angels!

Today is the second day of practice for the participants in this weekend's Sea and Sky Spectacular. A chilly wind from the north-northeast keeps us cool in the afternoon sun as we watch the spectacle. Flocks of pelicans continue flying by as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Seagulls make little headway against the wind.

We watch some of the stunt flyers making curlicues of smoke in the sky. Several people have cameras and the crowd grows. Kids on bicycles. Fathers pushing strollers. Neighbors who have never really spoken to each other before this. Retirees who are likely veterans themselves.

Next is a flyby and some fancy maneuvers by "Fat Albert", the C-130 that transports the crew and gear for the Blue Angels. It finally heads back toward Mayport.

The crowd grows anxious, anticipating the stars of the event. We're looking all around for any telltale signs of the Blue Angels. Finally, someone spies a group of planes in the distant mist over the ocean to the north. The diamond grows larger before passing by us with a deafening shriek. There's no other sound in the world like the scream of an F/A-18 Hornet, and six of them together are even more impressive. The Angels do not disappoint.

Yee-hah! It's going to be a great airshow this weekend.

Video of Fat Albert

Here's video of Fat Albert, the C-130T Hercules that transports the Blue Angels' support crew and supplies. Its all-Marine crew includes 3 officers and 5 enlisted Marines.

Video of stunt plane

Here's the stunt plane executing some maneuvers in front of us.

But Where Are the Angels? Ahhh, THERE they are!

Temperatures in the 70s have given us perfect walking weather. A crowd is gathered on the boardwalk over the dunes to catch a glimpse of the Blue Angels as they practice for this weekend's air show, but the only signs of them are a few jet tracks high in the cirrus clouds.

The water has grown cooler, as evidenced by the surfers all in wetsuits today. A strong north wind kicks up white caps on the ocean and blows salt air into my nose and lungs. That salt air is the reason we moved to the beach, when I was only seven years old. We'd lived a block off the river in town, our yard covered in oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. But eight hospitalizations for asthma over a period of three years convinced my parents that the asthma specialist wasn't kidding when he said, "You can move to the beach, or kiss her goodbye." And, 45 years later, I'm still here...or perhaps more accurately, here I am again. Living in other places has convinced me that I'm a beach girl at heart.

Breathing in the healing salt air, I pass only a few other walkers out on this cool, windy day. The tide is in so there's only a narrow strip of sand on which to walk. But that's enough. Hearty sandpipers forage along the water's edge for food. A flock of pelicans dives for fish, then floats en masse toward the outer edge of the breakers. An osprey dives almost vertically, emerging with a fish in its talons and flying across the dunes to enjoy its lunch.

A container ship heads out to sea, but few other boats are out due to the choppy conditions. I finish my walk and head back up the street to the house. It's only after arriving home that I hear the unmistakable roar of F/A-18s and realize that the Blue Angels have begun today's practice. Ah, how I love that sound of freedom!

Back into the swing of things

Been a while, huh? That's exactly what my lungs are saying as I begin my usual beach walk this afternoon. But this wad of fat that has taken over my midsection is about to win, so I have to get back into my beach walking. Neck injury, paperwork, home repairs and a respiratory infection have kept me away long enough. No camera today; this is all about the walking.

I'm greeted by a gentle breeze from the south, unusually cool for one coming from that direction. The sand feels good beneath my feet. It really has been a long time since I've been down here. As soon as I touch the wet sand where the waves have been coming in, I can tell that the water temperature is cooling now. Not many shells on the sand, only broken pieces. Sandpipers scoot through the wet sand at the edge of the surf as I make my way northward. A couple of loaded container ships, one appearing to be hot pink in color, edge out of the river into the ocean. There are many other walkers on the beach in the warm afternoon sun. Two men with a kayak stand in the water's edge for several minutes. What on earth are they talking about for so long?

As I reach my turnaround point, I look up to see the light on the corner. Red...then quickly green. I turn and face the wind to return home. One of the men with the kayak heads out across the waves as his friend stands behind on the beach. Approaching my street, I notice a kiteboarder preparing to launch. I pause and take a seat on the platform at the end of the boardwalk across the dunes to take it all in for a few more minutes. The kiteboarder glides to and fro just outside the breakers. Leaving him and the others behind me, I turn westward toward home. How could I live anywhere else? Note to self: I must do this more often.

Work, early meetings, and now a burgeoning respiratory infection, have kept me from walking on the beach. Don't know which is worse about being sick in middle age: having a full bladder when you have to cough a lot, or not being able to tell whether you're sweating off a fever or having a hot flash! Hopefully, I'll be back to normal soon, and back to my beach.

Here's my little crab buddy walking on the beach

This is the live crab I saw this morning walking on the beach.

Calm After the Storm

I'd heard that the surfers had a field day this weekend with waves kicked up by Hurricane Bill 800 miles to the east, but I didn't get to the beach then. Weekends at the beach are too crowded and noisy. People who don't live here and visit for the day have little sense of ownership, so they have no qualms about throwing their trash all over our beach. That type of disrespect annoys me, so I tend to avoid the scene.

My mother always said she could start to feel the weather changing to fall in August, and it always made her sad to see the summer go. Summer was her favorite season of the year. This year, she won't have to watch its departure. I'd never noticed the change until this year. August always felt more like the "dog days" of seemingly endless heat and loathsome humidity. She said that even as a baby, I would just cry and cry on hot summer days. But this morning, there was a lovely occasional breeze wafting in from the east. The weatherman on the morning news said we'll stay below 90 degrees today, for the first time since June. What used to bring sadness to my mother just feels to me like welcome relief from summer's unrelenting heat.

The ocean today was calm this morning, almost glassy except for a few small waves breaking close to shore. Clouds with welcome shade soon parted and the sun began to beat down as I walked. Several shrimp boats from Mayport were casting their nets just offshore. Large flocks of birds were gathering on the beach, all types together, foraging for breakfast. Several proudly carried little silver fish in their beaks, always with others close behind awaiting their opportunity to snatch them away. A crab washed in by a wave looked a bit lost at first, then started making his way back toward the surf before another wave gave him a lift back to the sea. There were no shells worth picking up. Most were in pieces, as is often the case here in Neptune Beach.

Yes, change is in the air. This year, I can definitely feel it.

Storm Brewing

Haven't gotten off to a very good start, have I? Business obligations have kept me from my beach walks since my first post. Afternoons are tough this time of year due to storms that move in from the heat of the day, and I'm just not that much of a morning person, so any obligations at or before noon will preclude a daily walk.

Although Hurricane Bill is about 800 miles to the east of us, we had some pretty nasty-looking unrelated storms move through from the west this afternoon. The bands of clouds were actually quite lovely. They reminded me of the beach when the tide is going out and leaves bands of wave remnants on the sand. But you can probably understand why I wouldn't want to be walking on the beach in this kind of weather.

August 17, 2009

(The photo above is me on a winter beach walk in 1980, right here in Neptune Beach.)

This morning as I crossed the boardwalk over the dunes, I was greeted by a flock of hungry seagulls being fed by a family that was allowing their toddlers to run naked on the beach. In today's society, I'm not sure that's the greatest idea, but to each their own. The ocean was gray and fairly calm. Many wispy clouds in the sky, mostly cirrus, a few cumulous and some jet trails from early flights along the coast. Few shells on the beach, but a couple of de-tentacled jellyfish that looked for all the world like the bottoms of glass coke bottles. As I walked, I noticed the beginnings of several tidal pools and sloughs that may turn into dangerous runouts once Hurricane Bill passes us (hopefully offshore) this weekend. On my way back across the dunes after my walk, I noticed a small cherry tomato bush growing amongst the weeds on the dunes, with two ripe red tomates on it, an odd anomaly. I must remember to take my camera on future walks.

So, where is Neptune Beach, you may be asking? We're in the northeast corner of Florida, just south of the St. Johns River's mouth, on what nautical charts have traditionally called San Pablo Island. The island doesn't seem much like one, as it stretches all the way from the south side of the St. Johns River down to Vilano Beach, which is just north of St. Augustine, and is several miles wide in places. Jacksonville is to the west of us, Atlantic Beach to the north and Jacksonville Beach to the south. We're an unusual oceanfront community for Florida, in that only a couple blocks of our oceanfront is commercial; the rest is all single-family houses, with no high-rise condos.

Why am I blogging about Neptune Beach? Good question. I'm hoping that posting something each morning will keep me motivated to continue my daily walks. It's a habit too easy to let lapse. Early meetings, feeding the cat her breakfast, pending work projects, reading the daily newspaper over breakfast, and social networking online have their ways of pushing my beach walks aside. At this time of year, if one waits too late, the day is already too hot to get out there. But with my mother's death last month, my role as caregiver went away. Working from home as a writer and editor gives me more flexibility in my schedule than most, so my excuses for missing a daily beach walk have become fewer. Perhaps by blogging about the beach, I will find an audience that keeps me going on these daily walks that renew my spirit and keep me healthier. The walk may be in the morning or early evening, depending on the time of year and weather.

It seems odd to need an excuse to get out and enjoy God's marvelous creation, doesn't it?