Today is Saturday.  For the majority of the world that doesn’t mean a whole bunch, but for someone living on the Atlantic coast it has a extremely important meaning.  That being you stay away from the grocery stores, and the liquor stores.

Saturday is when the vacationers come in to town.  And I know the picture above shows a winter traffic jam, but let me tell from experience that that is you feel when are coming to the shore.  You travel from the middle of the state, or some other state and you have this feeling that what you are leaving behind you is the frozen tundra.  The shore offers sunshine.  Sitting on the sand, with a frosty drink at your side to offer your parched throat relief.  The ocean stretches out in front of you to cool you off when the sun becomes too much.

But us locals stay away.  We like the money you bring with you to support our economy over the cooler months when you are back freezing in your icebox states, but we learn to stay away from the stores on the weekend.  We shop during the week, in the mornings if we can because Great Screaming Jaybus!  Vacationers don’t rise all that early.  Unless it is to clog up the streets running, and riding their bikes in traffic.  Good Lord, why people feel that they won’t get crushed by my vehicle, I don’t understand.

So I sit here on my patio, smoking a good cigar drinking a Foster’s ale and chuckling about the traffic jam that is happening 1/2 of a mile away from me on the bridge that goes out to the island.  Have fun on your vacations, folks.  I remember all too well what it was like after a 9 hour drive from Pennsylvania to turn into the driveway of the house I had rented for my family on the ocean.  The excitement of the kids as they tumbled out of the car, barely waiting for it to come to a stop, heading over the dunes for that first view of the ocean and to put their feet in the water.  I  remember it well, and am feeling very fortunate that I live here now.

Salt life, baby.  Ain’t nothing like it.