A Site for Shore Eyes

As most people know by now, the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series. In typical Philadelphia sophomoric fashion, fans celebrated by destroying property. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened had the Phillies lost the Series.

Philadelphia fans are noted for being rude and immature. During the last game, fans booed the Tampa Bay Rays players, and booed the pitcher every time he attempted to pick off a runner at first base. This depicts not sportsmanship, but immaturity and lack of culture. Based on previous history with Philly sports fans, I predicted flaming cars in the event of a victory – or a loss.

The flaming cars appeared on schedule, but the damage far exceeded that mark. Fans overturned the huge ceramic planters along Broad Street and threw them into the street. Rioters smashed shop windows and looted stores. They tore down traffic lights and street signs, much in the same manner of goal posts after a football game. Fans even destroyed trees. Many people were hurt by flying bottles, and one man described being hit over the head with a bottle, and then a glass. Someone, not content with simply stealing the rear wheel of a bicycle locked to a pole, decided to destroy the rest of the bike also.

None of this happened in secrecy, because hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets. Apparently the mob mentality sanctioned these events. In another day and age, the perpetrators would have been not only deterred by others, but made to pay a price for their actions.



For most people, celebration brings to mind a happy event, a time for good will and elation. It’s hard to imagine how or why making life miserable for innocent people, as well as causing physical harm to some, fits into that category.

Reports say that much of the damage was caused by college students, and they mentioned Drexel and Temple. I’m a Drexel grad, and the curriculum must have changed considerably since I attended. College-age students always enjoy a good prank, but there’s not much funny about committing felony mischief.

I never understood vandalism on any level. What mentality (or lack thereof) motivates individuals to destroy the property of others? Why do some people think they have the right to take what doesn’t belong to them? The blame for lack of achievement rests solely on the underachiever, not on others.

Two weeks ago I celebrated my birthday. My wife made me a pineapple upside-down cake and gave me a few shirts. For some strange reason I never considered breaking out my neighbors’ windows, or starting a fire in the street. Am I missing something here?

They’re planning a parade along Market and Broad Streets today. That’s great for the team members, who accomplished something special, but I’m not sure the fans deserve it. Maybe it’s a good thing that championships for Philadelphia sports teams come few and far between.

As a kid, and even up until the time I got my driver’s license, I rode a bike just about every day. Biking seemed rather simple back then – I just got on my bike and rode it. Nowadays it doesn’t work that way for me. Some people seem to have it figured out, and I envy those carefree people.

Riding my bike, or as they call it, cycling, requires preparation. I own cycling shorts, with padding, but rarely wear them. Someone forgot to include a zipper in the front, which makes things rather awkward. I never considered that a problem with a bathing suit, because whenever I wore a bathing suit it was for the express purpose of entering a rather large body of water. I preferred oceans and bays over swimming pools because of the higher, and relatively unnoticeable, dilution factor.

I probably more closely fit the mold of a bike rider rather than a “cycler,” because I never obsess with proper attire. Whatever I happen to be wearing seems about right to me. Hydration used to mean riding to the store and buying an RC, one of the first 16-ounce sodas. Now it involves preparing a water bottle, usually filled with one of the sports drinks, never with anything carbonated, or with anything considered a diuretic. I do wear one of those silly-looking helmets, because I prefer a silly-looking helmet to a grotesque-looking head.

Back in the day, I pumped up my tires every couple of months or so, maybe more often if the rims appeared to be approaching the pavement. Now it’s once a week, need it or not. It’s much easier to pedal when the tires are kept at 60 psi, and at my age and weight, that’s important.




The next step in getting on the road is figuring out where the heck the bike is. In theory it should be hanging on the rack in the garage, but more likely than not, I’ll find it in the back of my SUV. I mounted one of those fork supports on a 2X6, which works pretty well, except it involves taking off the front wheel and removing the seat. Most of the time I just throw the whole bike in on its side. It’s not like it’s a big problem taking off the wheel and the seat (or as they like to call it, saddle), but they are extra steps. I replaced the original seat, which seemed to be made from heat-tempered rhino horn, with a gel saddle. Both were apparently designed by a proctologist. I also invested in a seat post with a shock absorber, which cuts way down on proctologist visits.

Before we get on the road, let me explain why I own a mountain bike, instead of what they call a “comfort bike.” When I bought the bike, the main riding trail was unpaved, so I figured I needed a mountain bike, even though the closest mountain was about 150 miles away. After relocating to an area with hard riding surfaces, I discovered that a mountain bike was not the bike of choice. Actually, I already knew that little fact, but didn’t know that I would be relocating, but that’s a story for another day.

Even so, my bike came with a chrome-molybdenum frame and no shocks, not even in the seat post. The following year, the same model included front shocks, a shock in the seat post, and an aluminum frame, all for the same price I paid. I asked about trading it in, and learned that bikes aren’t like cars.




Al gore wants everyone to ride bikes while he jets around the country to a limousine-in-waiting. This always sounds good, until someone attempts to put it in practice. Bikes were never designed for rain, as I discovered when a sudden storm came up while I was riding a dirt trail. Mountain bikes also lack fenders, so when I reached my vehicle, I looked like the Abominable Mud Man. If you’re one of those “green” people who thinks you’re saving the planet by riding your bike to work, pray that the weather in the morning is the same in the afternoon. Many older people can barely manage walking, and we expect them to ride bicycles?

During a thunderstorm, the metal frame of a bike screams, “Strike me!” For anyone still believing the myth that rubber tires on a car protect you from lightning, I suggest sitting out in an open field during a thunderstorm in a convertible, even with the top up. Better yet, stand out there on a tire. The mass of metal in a vehicle, including the metal roof, allows the lightning to safely seek the ground without including you in the process. It will still probably blow out everything electric.

A car is also considerably less likely to be stolen when you have to park it somewhere. Most cars these days have a remote lock, and it’s a matter of pushing the button. Even without that, it’s a rather simple process locking a vehicle. Not so with bicycles. Most locks can be defeated in a matter of seconds. The better locks offer more security, but the process involves removing the front wheel, and locking the frame, both wheels, and the seat, to something secure. As of 2008, no one has figured out a better method.

Then there’s the little problem of figuring out how to ride home with something you bought at the store. They make baskets and saddlebags, none of which help you get a TV, or even several bags of groceries, safely back to your abode.

All of this is bad enough, even if you live in a city or town where everything you need is available from local stores. Such is not the case in most areas. They usually build shopping malls in areas somewhat removed from urban areas, and biking to a shopping mall and back could take hours, and the problem remains with respect to getting things home. And I haven’t even mentioned the wind and hill problems.

Yes, I think biking is great! It’s great for kids, and for anyone who enjoys sightseeing and just getting exercise. And it’s great for Al Gore, too. Maybe he should consider actually buying one.

The season here in the Wildwoods is officially over, according to Morey’s Piers, which held its closing day on October 12. That is, unless you plan on parking by a meter in North Wildwood, or plan on attending the Fabulous 50’s Weekend in Wildwood on October 18.

Until this year, the parking meters in North Wildwood came out on September 10. The main reason for that was because nobody was stupid enough to park by a parking meter when there was no reason to park by one. It also made it more convenient for the year-rounders who wanted to stroll the beach or walk the boards. Now we have to walk an extra half block to avoid paying.

The inconvenience should be worth it though, because we should see a significant cut in property tax rates next year. Well, maybe not, because a lot of streets still need resurfacing. I’m not sure what part of a street can be paved with $4.50, but it’s a start. For what it’s worth, Wildwood removed its parking meters weeks ago.

We’re still way ahead of Wildwood in the street repair department. Streets don’t seem all that important to the elected officials in the big city, with the exception of Rio Grande Avenue. A smooth ride to the giant beach balls seems to be the priority there. The visitors rolling into town for the Fabulous 50’s Weekend will feel very much at home, because the streets haven’t gotten any better since that time. I thought they were bad back then, but figured that eventually they would figure out how to patch a street so the patch was fairly level with the actual street level. Pounding the patch with shovels is not considered an approved method. Note to Public Works: The subsoil must be compacted properly before patching. . .

In other news, North Wildwood solved the problem of Richardson’s Creek coming through the bulkhead at 1st Avenue. Now the bay waters have to go all the way up the block and come in through the storm drains. Only due diligence prevented me from losing another car during our latest storm. It’s really not that important to us to be able to fish in the streets.

According to news reports, recall petitions are being filed against Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano, Jr. and commissioner Bill Davenport. The mayor says, “We’re not supposed to repair the sewer lines. We’re not supposed to repair the streets. We’re not supposed to have a community center. All they say is stop spending money.”

Actually, they are supposed to repair the sewer lines and the streets, but they’re supposed to do it in a way that allows people without off-road vehicles to navigate the streets. They’ve redone Pacific Avenue three times and still don’t have it right. And it would sort of make sense to build the community center in a less ridiculous location. The new center is not in a very convenient location, behind the football field, which is what residents tried to explain before it was built.

I don’t live in Wildwood, and have no say in what goes on there, but my observation is that the mayor wants high rises and most residents don’t. He says they’ll have them, no matter what the people want. This is a high stakes game, so a lot of money is floating around out there. Condomania has already considerably changed the character of the island to the point that the Firemen’s Convention is leaving after next year due to the lack of motel rooms. If there’s one thing that firefighters don’t like all that much, it’s high rises, and that’s pretty easy to understand.

We happened to be in Atlantic City yesterday, only because we had to exchange some items bought at an outlet store. After parking for $5.00 on the sixth floor of a parking garage, I looked around and decided it wasn’t a place I’d like to spend much time in. There are city people, country people, and small town people, and we’re pretty much the latter. I always liked the summers here, and welcomed the people and the excitement, but if I want Atlantic City, I’ll go to Atlantic City. Sometimes I get the urge to gamble away some of my money, so I go down to the convenience store and buy a lotto ticket or two. That’s my definition of high rolling.

The monarch butterflies are on the move, heading to Mexico. I’ve noticed them for many years now. Often, I’ve had them fly over to me before continuing on their journeys. They’ve never been to Mexico before, but the ones that manage to avoid major highways and other obstacles find the place in the mountains anyway. In the spring, they’ll head back north, then die after laying eggs. The new ones will find their way to the roosting spots of their parents, where they’ll lay eggs before dying. The fourth generation of the butterflies that made the original fall migration start the next year’s migration. It’s a remarkable story that can’t easily be explained away as simply happening by chance, sort of like the story about North Wildwood’s parking meters.

Scientists now say that Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of space-time that is particularly devoid of matter. This sounds suspiciously as if scientists have been studying not the universe, but the insides of their heads. This bubble, they say, clearly explains why it appears that the universe isn’t actually expanding, as they say it is, although it clearly is, although it’s not totally apparent, even though it is, because they say so.

I don’t know who these “scientists” always quoted by the press really are, but I suspect that some crackpot just picks up the phone and dials some number at the Associated Press until he or she reaches someone in need of a hot story. He or she starts out by saying, “I’ve been thinking. . .” which should immediately put the listener on alert. Global warming, incidentally, sounds like a hot story.

One of the biggest problems with these people is that they immediately believe whatever they happen to think up. They treat the Big Bang Theory as if it’s the Big Bang Fact, never bothering to explain how, if something explodes, the billions of parts of the smithereens can remain in precisely the same relative positions to each other for billions of years. For some reason, they believe that a “constantly expanding universe” sounds better than just a universe that just happens to be there. Before the advent of GPS systems, using satellites, navigation would have been pretty interesting if the stars happened to be in different places each evening or early morning, when they were used for determining one’s position on our sphere.

Even though the Theory of Evolution is a theory, it is now treated as the Fact of Evolution, although no evidence supporting the theory has ever been found. Oh, they’ll find that evidence, eventually, we’re assured, as schools are ordered to teach the theory as the one true fact concerning our existence. It’s still not clear in my mind how a fish gave birth to a salamander, or how the salamander eventually bore a rabbit, but if humans evolved from some pool of water previously devoid of life, it stands to reason that every creature on Earth must have been something else at one time. And why would some roaches continue being roaches for millions of years, when it would be clearly better to become humans? If cavemen disappeared because they evolved into better human beings, why did the monkeys keep hanging around?

It’s a fact of life, no pun intended, that it’s impossible to mix up a bunch of chemicals and make something that is living. That’s exactly what we’re supposed to blindly believe, although no one has answered the one question I’ve asked many times. If every living thing survives solely by consuming some other living thing or things, what did the first living things consume, if nothing else was living? There had to be a first organism, in order to support this theory, so how did it manage to make some other organism before dying of starvation? Why does no one ever question this?

I like when people come up with crazy theories to explain away why their present theories seem to be flawed. One of my favorites is the recent claim that man-made global warming definitely exists, even though it’s getting colder. The reason that it’s getting colder is because global warming causes climate change. This is the only way to explain the fact that the Earth has gotten cooler since 1998, just when we’re in the middle of that darned global warming. Last year, two women were going to prove something or other about the Arctic ice melting, I guess by proving that there was no ice to walk across. I’m not sure exactly what they were attempting to accomplish, but they stopped after the first day because they got frostbite. Another group was going to march across Massachusetts to demonstrate against global warming, but spent the first night trudging through several feet of snow. They were given warm soup at a shelter in the first town they reached. A global warming conference was canceled due to snow and ice. The year before, Al Gore ranted about global warming in twenty-degree weather. (Note to global warming alarmists: If you’re going to inform the public about global warming, do it during the summer, when there’s a chance it may be warm.)

I happen to have a few theories of my own, which are simply random musings, but could be worth considering. One is that there are lots of stars in the sky, and driving SUVs is not going to make them go away. The sun happens to be one of those stars, the only one you can never see during the night.

Polar bears know how to swim and are adept at walking on land forms other than ice. They actually prefer eating out of trash cans over running around killing prey. If the Arctic ice disappears, they won’t.

Carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas; it’s something that plants need for survival. Plants convert CO2 to oxygen, which is something animals, including humans, need for survival.

If there’s too much CO2 hanging around in the atmosphere, make more fire extinguishers. Most of them are never used. Also, make more golf courses. They can suck up carbon dioxide at almost alarming rates.

It would take millions of years to convert coal miners to diamond miners, so let’s burn more of the darned coal. It’s very clean now, thanks to the new scrubbers being built.

Environmentalists are destroying the planet, with an emphasis on our own country. They don’t want anyone using natural resources, which contradicts the term, “resources.” The lumber industry has actually saved a lot of trees, because log cabins required an entire tree trunk for one board.

There doesn’t seem to be enough sanity to go around. Politicians seem to be especially devoid of this characteristic.

Maybe the Hadron Collider is dangerous and could destroy the Earth, and maybe it’s not. Why take the chance, just to satisfy the whims of some crackpot scientists? One of the things they’re attempting is to recreate, on a smaller scale, the Big Bang, something that maybe never happened. They’re also hoping to find another dimension, but it’s hard enough working with the ones we have.

Politicians running for office are much like individuals in the early stages of dating. They present an image that looks much better than the real thing. Before voting, think of yourself as a bull and try to imagine the size of the sword hidden behind the cape. You’ll never see it until it’s too late.

Rationalization only seems right because it’s easier than admitting the truth. Morals haven’t changed, but people’s revised perception of them has. If you believe in God, rest assured that He doesn’t agree with the revisions.