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.

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.

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

New Year's Eve on the Beach

Without a doubt the best place in the world to attend a New Year's Eve celebration is not Times Square, where temperatures can freeze exposed flesh in minutes... it's in Rio de Janeiro, where temperatures require bikinis.

Why, you may ask, would a blog suppposedly about Floridian Beach Life post about Brazil? The answer is simple: Temperature. Despite God's wisdom in making Florida a narrow peninsula situated in the subtropical belt, temperatures late in December and into January get downright cold. Like ghosts of Reconstruction carpetbaggers, cold fronts from Up North invade our Beloved Florida, robbing the Sun of its warmth and sucking the land dry of vitality. Thus we must turn our eyes further south to the tropical beaches of Brazil to find our vanished summer lifestyle.

Meanwhile, long pants and jackets - the dreaded encumbering outerwear of the Up North folks - are required for most days on the beach. Only the most intrepid surfers venture out, and like Californians in the summer, they do so in full wet suits.

Nevertheless all is not lost. King Neptune warms our beaches through the winter with moderating seabreezes off his watery domains, and there are days when the temps would be considered balmy Up North, and surfers don't need wetsuits.

Spring comes first to Florida, and the 2010 Bikini Season will open around March 1st. We'll let you know how it goes.

Image Source: Rio, Surfer

Christmas on the Beach

Christmas in Florida is a little different than those frigid States Up North (which includes all the others but Hawaii). We have no snow with which to build snowmen, so we make do with the materials at hand. A little carefully shaped sand, some palm frond arms, sunglasses... and voila! A Florida Snow Man. While all you Up North folks trudge through snow, sleet, ice and bitter cold, dressed up like Eskimos, we Floridians head to the beach in shorts and T-shirts for a little sun and surf. We don't care How You Do It Up North... and boy are we glad!

Image Source

Why is This The Sea?

Okay, okay. So in The Obligatory "What's This All About" Post #1, I wrote that this blog would not be about surfing. Yet here we are, on post #2, with a surf photo, mention of a great surfer movie, and link to a video about said surfer epic.

What's going on?

Simply put, everything begins and ends with the Sea. I could wax poetic about the religious, scientific, and metaphysic aspects of the Sea, but nearly any work by Joseph Conrad would do a better job. Suffice it to say that the Sea is pretty big stuff and worthy of thoughful reflection.

The sea is the reason why we go to the beach. A beach without the sea is a desert: when's the last time you got amped to go to the desert? The sheer pleasure of sitting on the beach all day, doing absolutely nothing but watching the sea is a narcotic all its own. Surfing, sailing, beachcombing, any of these can change your life. All you need is to embrace the Sea.

So without further ado, watch the clip below and reflect on the lyrics from the Waterboys. Whatever your troubles may have been, that was the River. This is the Sea.

Watch The Video

These things you keep

You'd better throw them away.

You wanna turn your back

On your soulless days.

Once you were tethered

And now you are free.

Once you were tethered

Well, now you are free.

That was the River;

This is the Sea.

Now if you're feelin' weary,

If you've been alone too long,

Maybe you've been suffering from

A few too many

Plans that have gone wrong.

And you're trying to remember

How fine your life used to be,

Running around, banging your drum

Like it's 1973.

Well, that was the River;

This is the Sea.

Now you say you've got trouble.

You say you've got pain.

You say've got nothing left to believe in,

Nothing to hold onto,

Nothing to trust,

Nothing but chains.

You're scouring your conscience,

Raking through your memories,

Scouring your conscience,

Raking through your memories.

But that was the River.

This is the Sea.

Now I can see you wavering

As you try to decide.

You've got a war in your head,

And it's tearing you up inside.

You're trying to make sense

Of something that you just can't see,

Trying to make sense now

And you know you once held the key.

But that was the River

And this is the Sea!

Now I hear there's a train,

It's coming on down the line,

It's yours if you hurry,

You've got still enough time.

And you don't need no ticket.

And you don't pay no fee.

No, you don't need no ticket;

You don't pay no fee.

Because that was the River;

And this is the Sea.

Behold the Sea!

-Written by Mike Scott, The Waterboys, 1985