A quick update from Mom down in Florida this morning. She is fine tucked in south of Tampa and spending most of her day watching the local news down there updating Hurricane Idalia's path. Yesterday I talked about our Jersey Shore beaches and the affects hurricanes and nor'easters have on both our natural and replenished shorelines. You know how I feel about beach replenishment and us as a species trying to reverse and control Mother Nature.
I focused on Hurricane Idalia which hit a Category 4 status last night. In addition to Idalia Hurricane Franklin in the one that could affect the northern East Coast more. As it sits now he's 200 miles west-northwest of Bermuda and is wavering between a Cat 2 & 3. It's running parallel to the East Coast and you can see above where it's location correlates to the United States.
Interestingly enough I received a phone call yesterday which kind of relates to the post I made about storms and beach replenishment. Back on February 25th in a post, HERE, I followed up on a Asbury Park Press story and a Facebook post on NJ Surfers discussing beach replenishment, the ocean front in Deal, and the affects that all plays into beach access for surfers, beachgoers, and anglers alike. I dug a little further into the beachfront homes, and their sale and tax history, as found online in public access databases.
The call from was one of the owners of one of the properties I had mentioned. She wasn't happy with my post. She told me it was incorrect, presumptuous, and might even be a tad, well I won't go there. I appreciated and respected her call. That is the way people should voice their pleasure or displeasure. While she talked I scrambled to find the post on my phone. I had remembered it but wanted to refresh it in my mind.
While we didn't discuss specifics but I got what she was saying. If even, we assume, that the data is correct in something I post, the assumptions that could be made, about the people attached to the topic, or here, the properties. Point made and well taken. Period.
Phillips Avenue- 2010
I will stand behind my beliefs of the ridiculousness of beach replenishment. The suspect cycle of federal, state and local officials who "benefit", in so many ways, from trying to fight Mother Nature and appease local landowners. And that goes up and down New Jersey's coast. Why did I pick on Deal? I used to live, just rent a house, on Phillips Avenue and "Jetty County" in Deal is where I started my passion for fly fishing for striped bass. I go there still when I want to reconnect with my past even if "Jetty County" has since been destroyed.
This blog gets a lot of traffic. It's still holding at the #23 fly fishing blog worldwide according to Feedspot, HERE. From time to time I do tick people off, usually regarding striped bass management and the ASMFC and the NJ reps, but here's a case where another post sat the wrong way with the reader.
At the end of the conversation she said, "You're probably not a bad guy", which did make me laugh for a second. I appreciated her call. I appreciated the chance to have a civil conversation with another human being, which has become a rarity in todays world. In the end I would say, "She's probably not a bad girl (woman) either".