What's in Dave's Head

Yesterday morning I did a 2.5-mile open-water swim on the Severn River with three friends from my Masters swimming club.   It was the second time this season I went out.   About three weeks ago a group of us swam, when the water and air temperature were about 54 degrees.   This time, both were about 10 degrees warmer. Herald Harbor, where we swim, is a small cove a little less than a mile across. The shore is dotted with houses—many looking like they were built in the 1950s as vacation homes.   Many homes have docks for recreational boats and there’s a marina on the southern end.   In the cove, about a quarter mile from the shore, is an island that measures maybe 600 feet by 1,000 feet.   If you go to Google Maps and type in Herald Harbor, Maryland, you’ll see it.   I don’t know the name of the island.   The satellite view shows four docks and several big secluded houses or compounds on it.   The water to between the shore and th...

Yesterday Donna and I drove to Barnegat Lighthouse, the iconic landmark on Long Beach Island known as Old Barney.   Painted red on the top half and white on the bottom half, you can see the 163-foot tall structure from miles away on LBI Boulevard as you head north. On a cool, cloudless, Chamber of Commerce day that felt more like October than May, we entered Barnegat Lighthouse State Park, expecting it to be nearly empty.   Instead, a few dozen cars dotted the parking lot—unusual for pre-Memorial Day.   As we parked and strolled into the park, we could see that the cars must have belonged to the guardians of a cavalry of field tripping elementary-school kids who were collecting seashells and other specimens from the park’s expansive beach.   The army of schoolchildren, buzzing like the cicadas that will be emerging in a couple weeks from their 17-year underground sentences, were finished stripping the beach and were heading for the lighthouse. We...

Donna and I are staying the week in Loveladies, the next-to-northernmost town on Long Beach Island in New Jersey.   Everywhere on the island you hear the sounds of rebuilding: generators growling, radial saws whining, hammering.  Today we took a drive down to Holgate, at the southern end of the 18-mile-long island, to look at the effects of Sandy seven months after the storm.   Then we drove back and up to Barnegat Light on the north tip. What struck us was the randomness of the devastation.   The southern half of the island, which is roughly bisected by the Route 72 causeway that spills mainland traffic onto the island, generally was hit harder by Sandy’s force.   In Holgate, particularly, where the island is only a few hundred yards wide, the destruction was widespread and massive.   Houses were ripped from their pilings.   Older homes, not built on pilings, were either simply washed away or battered by storm surge into uninhabitable rubble....