Pbenjay's Blog

No, no it has nothing to do with Snookie and the rest of the Guido Gang….I’m talking about…………

First of all it was a glorious day and I was still alone at the cottage with the cats (my choice) and so I did some running around.  I even drove to Shrewsbury because I was sucked in by a persistent ad that has been running on the radio on The Breeze from Shrewsbury Bicycles.  I want a pink beach cruiser or mint green or yellow or well, you get the picture.  Too far to go to find out all of their bikes started around $325.00!! Oh well….

I picked Peter up at the train station around 4pm and he was glad to be back; see his wife and his cats (hopefully in that order) and finally be able to sit on his porch and enjoy a martini, something he has been unable to do because of the dreadful heat wave which made going outside a chore and not a pleasure.

That’s how the evening started and around 6:30pm we took the Metro (so cute and so much fun) and drove to Bradley Beach to Vic’s – NOW that’s a Jersey Shore kind of place and we love it.  Pasta the old-fashioned way with gravy you know.  A bowl of shells and meatballs and a Perroni, sitting on the restaurant’s patio and I was in heaven.  The breeze was delightful, the food was exceptionally good that night-we even shared an antipasta salad.

My plan was to come home and leave the car and talk Peter into walking over to Day’s because I had been abstaining from ice cream all week and wanted a treat tonight.  Here’s what I forgot; It was Founder’s Day in the Grove and hundreds of people went to the Great Auditorium at 7:30pm to hear a concert and they got out somewhere around 9:00pm and MOST of them headed directly to Day’s for ice cream- this is how we live it up here in Ocean Grove.  In all the years I have been coming to Ocean Grove this was one of the longest if not the longest line I have ever seen.  It literally was back to the corner of Pilgrim Pathway and Pitman Avenue.  Even a junkie like me was deterred.  Plan B: I suggest we go over to Nagles where hopefully the line won’t be so long.  So much for Plan B.  Trying to keep up good spirits and chatter so my companion who never wanted to walk anywhere at this hour, would not say “Enough is enough”.  So I suggest we walk to the boardwalk and wait for the moon to rise – an experience my Brooklyn-born, City bred husband has not yet seen in his life.  The breeze was delightful, so soft and cool but not cold and this is the kind of summer day and night we have been hoping for all through July.  Hot day, not humid, cool evening-God is good (after all we ARE in Ocean Grove)!

We sat down on a bench facing the ocean and watched the waves gently lap at the shore-no crashing waves tonight.  You could smell the ocean which by the way does NOT smell like any candle claiming it’s name and scent as Ocean. The stars were out, however we couldn’t really see the hundreds that were dim spots overhead because of the lights on the boardwalk.   Still, seeing as many as we did is a treat for us city folk who have to view the night sky through thousands of ground lights.  We thought we saw Mars, that is until Mars started to move North.  Oh well, astronomers we’re not.  I knew the moon was supposed to rise at about 10:07pm and like a child wanting to know “Are we there yet?” I kept asking Peter the time.  Finally the clock moves to 10:05. 10:06, 10:07-nothing.  10:08, 10:09, 10:10 and “Look, there it is”! The slightly larger than half moon popped up above the horizon as big orange beach ball, albeit a misshapen one.  Beautiful bright orange, a fiery imitation of sister sun.  And it kept rising, faster than I thought it would.  Lucky for us we happened to be near one of those put the quarter in telescopes on the boardwalk.  In went the quarter and I got to see the bumpy topography of Mr. Moon.   Lots of people were walking along the boardwalk this spectacular evening and many remarked on the orange orb floating in the night sky.

Time check – we still have time to get ice cream and surely the line can’t be as long as it was at Nagles, which was the closest ice cream venue.  I would have preferred Day’s BUT I didn’t want to push my luck.  The line wasn’t too bad and it was almost 10:30 – I can’t imagine how many scoops of ice cream were sold in Ocean Grove last night!!!  By the time I got my cone (coffee mud pie) and we were walking home, our moon had risen high enough through the atmosphere to become a creamy white.  It followed us home, the end of a perfect evening.  The photo below is not what we saw last night since the moon is waning and is at about 68%, but isn’t this a better photo anyway?

Full Moon Rising

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