Beach Is Packed

The 2010 Bikini Season is off to a fantastic start with a packed beach for the Easter Break.

Cars were parked door handle to door handle for miles north and south of the Main Street Pier on the World's Most Famous Beach, a sight that hasn't been seen this early in the Season for a decade or more.

The National Cheerleader Association and National Dance Alliance held their annual International Championship once again in Daytona Beach, and flower patches of high caliber abounded everywhere. 

Shannon Orrange, of the University of Buffalo Bulls, was featured in Sports Illustrated as Cheerleader of the Week. Here she is during the NCA/NDA Int'l Championship.

What a great beach.

2010 Bikini Season Opening Day Coming Soon!

Every spring, after Bike Week and before Easter, the Day of Days arrives and it's suddenly warm.

Then, like flowers giving forth their blooms, Bikini Wildlife pops up out of the sands of the beach practically overnight.

This Day of Days can't be forecast with any precision. It requires arcane sciences and consultations with various oracles, auguries, signs and prognostications to predict; and even then we may be fooled by false Days of Days like this past Saturday.

A beautiful Saturday, warm and sunny, it brought forth a dense profusion of beach-goers, some of whom ranked at the professional level. But it was a fleeting glimpse, followed by cold rain on Sunday and colder days ahead.

Nevertheless, the Stewards Committee has high confidence that the Official Opening Day of the 2010 Bikini Season will be this Saturday, March 27, 2010.

Bike Week on the Beach

The 69th Annual Bike Week celebration and guzzle-a-thon began Friday and roared into full swng today. While not strictly a beach related even, Bike Week is the first real warm weather event of the year and the herald of coming spring.

We have half a million tourists in town, parading up and down Main Street, gnawing on smoked turkey legs, and casting coin to all and sundry of our starving tourism businesses. They are most welcome.

One thing Bike Week is known for is the care-free attitude towards apparel - or the lack thereof. Despite what we Floridians view as chilly temperatures, the horde of Harley-Davidson enthusiasts freely eschew heavy clothing in favor of items rarely seen outside of Wal-Mart or Frederick's of Hollywood catalogues. This may at first seem a good thing. But not so much after noting that beer bellies and faded tattoos are just as popular.

In other words, the bikini viewing may be hazardous, and viewer discretion is advised.

However, it is posible to discover a little surprise here and there as many of the vendors bring in Bikini Professionals to help hawk their various wares:

Which just lets us know that spring is coming soon. Y'all keep your Puxatawney Phil ground hog thingy.

For our spring barometer, we'll use something a little easier on the eye.

Spring Rises from the Sea

Spring comes at the end of the cruelest month with a warm sunrise out of the sea.

It is a day not marked on any calendar nor forecast with precision. Warm sunrises may come and flicker and fade in sorrow to wintry nights, but there is always a daybreak that is the day of days; there is always a morning forbidding mourning.

You can tell when the day of days has come. The air itself will herald Spring with a hint of warmth in the predawn humidity as if the moisture in the air tingled with a promise that hot house days will come again. The sun will rise in colors of fire, having shed the pale chastity of winter whites. The sea will be softer without frigid nights to sharpen the wave crests.

Winter steals down from the North like a wolf upon the fold, but Spring will always rise from out of the sea.

Winter Reading

Winter on the beach, even in my Beloved Florida, is not a time for swimsuits and water play. Rough winds do shake the curling waves of spray and summer's lease hath already passed its date, to borrow loosely from the Bard. However, dressing warmly and reading a book or two on the beach is a fine activity for the cooler months.

While any book will serve as good beach reading material, the best choices are those old sea tales from the Age of Sail, when the oceans were wide and voyages took years. Why? You're at the beach... the sea is right there... and you went to the beach to get away, right? So why not enjoy an adventure yarn or two that combine all three?

Joseph Conrad, one of my favorite authors, writes some of the best sea tales ever told. Try his collection Tales of the Sea, which includes Conrad classics such as Lord Jim, Heart of Dearkness, and Typhoon.



For those who like stories with a bit of the spooky, look no further than The Terror by Dan Simmons. This fictionalized account of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage is part carefully researched historical fiction, part mystery, and part horror. I'm not a horror fan, but I couldn't put this book down. Something is out on the ice. You will want to read this one someplace warm (like the beach) with snacks ready to hand.

If high adventure in a historical setting is your cup of tea, the C.S. Forester's Hornblower series is for you. The 11 volume Hornblower series is hands down the best damn sea tales ever told. Follow Horatio Hornblower's Royal Navy career from lowly midshipman to Admiral of the Red during the Napoleonic Wars. Start out with the first in the series, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. Be sure to have the others handy, as you'll blaze through Hornblower's adventures. Forester is not only a good historian, he's one helluva great storyteller.

No Surfing Today in Florida

No, there is no surfing today in my Beloved Florida. No sir.

This is Day Six of sub-freezing night temperatures. The cat actually wants to come in at night. The sea lays prostrate beneath the cruel heel of bitter air, and the shore birds have abandoned us for God-knows-where. Even the pelicans, both the Brown and the White, are reluctant to get their feet wet.

Fish in the ICW (the Intra-Coastal Waterway, aka The Ditch) can be seen lying on the sandy bottom belly up, writhing feebly. Forget pouncing on them with a cast net; the cast nets are all frozen stiff and fail to spread.

I can acually see my breath inside my surfer apartment in the morning, and it's not because I forgot to brush my teeth.

I admit it has been hard to brush them lately as they are chattering too fast to hit with the brush. I've found the best way is to hold the brush steady and just move my head back and forth.

Any of you folks Up North who would like to experience a Florida Vacation in the convenience of your own home need merely move some of that snow stuff in your driveway out of the way, put out some lawn chairs, and set outside for a spell.
 
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The Cruelest Month

Be at peace... this isn't a picture of a beach in Florida, although with temperatures below freezing at night and barely creeping above fifty by day, we could very well wake up one morning to find a scene like this.

Notice the brave beachgoer in a parka and the dog frolicking in the background? We're not doing this in my Beloved Florida. No, Sir. First, we have no parkas, excepting of course for those transplants from Up North. Second, my Evil County Government has banned all animals from the beach, so no dogs may frolic here.

There is a long list of things and activities that are banned here on the Most Famous Beach, and a multi-million dollar police force ready to seize upon violators to ticket them or arrest them as the mood strikes said police force. Unfortunately, no one has yet figured out how to ban cold fronts and ticket them or arrest them for invading our beach. Most unfortunate.

January is the cruelest month in Florida, but look at Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro in January:

Winter Beach Image: Richard Slessor 
Ipanema Beach Image