It’s time for the 2nd annual “From the Swamp How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay. Consider this your punishment for my having to write one of these every year of my Catholic grade school education. For those of you who missed the 1st edition, here it is:

https://www.udpride.com/archives/20020819.htm

The location and many of the cast of characters are the same this year, but I must say it was one of the goofiest vacation weeks I have ever experienced.

First off, it was more like 10 days instead of a week. I took the previous Thursday off so that my wife and I could accompany the Younger Swampette to Ann Arbor to visit U of M. We sat thru the perfunctory presentation including a video — featuring Michigan grad James Earl Jones — and then took the 90 minute walking tour. We then met with the Associate Head Softball Coach who made it clear that there was NFW Caitlin would get a scholarship, but she would get a shot to try out as a walk-on. As far as academics go, it doesn’t get any better than Michigan. The YS wants to major in either Pre-Med or Physical Therapy and try to play ball, too. The beauty part of being a walk-on is that she can walk right off if it gets to be too much. Where MSU was “big and ugly” in her estimation, Ann Arbor, to my eye, was big and beautiful. She was as impressed as we were, so her list is now Boston U, U of M, Central Michigan, Valpo and Purdue. We’ll see what happens.

On Friday, we loaded up the Family Truckster and drove 9 hours to Allentown, PA. Who on earth vacations in Allentown? Not us — we spent the night there and drove the last 2 hours early Saturday AM to beat the rush from Philly to the Jersey Shore.

My wife and I had both been doing some serious Weather Channel watching before we left and things were not looking very good. We’ve been going to Stone Harbor for almost 20 years and we’ve never had extended bad weather. The word ‘rain’ was in the forecast for every day. It actually turned out to be fog that was the culprit, rather than liquid precipitation. The water temperature was colder than normal and the air warmer, so the result was a shroud that would make London proud, covering the beach for the better part of the first 4 or 5 days of our stay. Thursday and Friday were outstanding and more or less made up for their hazy predecessors.

Stone Harbor, NJ is at the southern tip of the state, just north of Cape May and Wildwood. What exit? Exit 10 off of the Garden State Parkway. The fog made the shop owners and the movie theater proprietor in SH really happy, as people spent what would have been their beach time there. My sister and her husband came over from Delaware for dinner and a visit. The Younger Swampette’s friends who were staying in Ocean City came down for a day and then she reciprocated. My one regret is my failure to connect with George Federici, a UD grad Class of ’95 who shares a weekend house in Avalon with a group of friends. He’s only there on weekends and we kept playing phone tag. George discovered that SJU Head Coach/Comedian Phil Martelli was staying next door to his place, so that probably kept him occupied.

The main attraction for me, like last year, was hoops. Once again, I dragged myself out of bed for 6 straight days and was running up and down the asphalt while most people were still asleep. Oddly enough, the bizarre atmospheric conditions did not interfere with our roundball routine at all — we could still play in the fog and did. The weather gods were kind to us hoopsters, not so nice to the sun worshippers. This year the crowd was decidedly younger and more of the 5-on-5 full-court variety vs. 4-on-4 the half-court runs that I had come to know and love in years past. No problem, my knees can handle the 94′ game.

Lots of fathers and sons: Dan, an excellent player, brought his son Mike who at 14 is an unbelievable shooter. 6’9″ Charlie had his 6’2″ 14 year old son Chip with him again this year. I played with a kid named Joe from Chicago who goes to UD. His dad and uncle both played with us. Kyle, the 6’5″ kid from Pittsburgh Central Catholic is now more like 6’6″ or 6’7″. His dad — a former football player at Pitt — -ran with us one day.

Lots of familiar faces: Jack the HS hoops coach from Hatboro Horsham showed up one day, complained about playing full court and never came back. Frank who is now 70 was there every day. Joe who used to be a regular came with his son one day, but Joe was wearing sandals. He had one bad eye and then scratched the retina on the other playing hoops. For 9 weeks Joe had use of only the bad eye — which was functioning at 10%. That convinced him to hang up the sneaks for good…can’t blame him. Jimmy from Short Hills was there, plus some new faces.

Like last year, there was one day in particular that stood out because of the way that our team meshed. I was paired once again with Jimmy and Kyle, but Jack wasn’t there. 2 new guys, Kevin (who is a dead-ringer for former 76ers President Pat Croce) and Dennis — both grey hairs like me — rounded out our fivesome. We played 7 full-court games in a row, finally succumbing to a squad of young, quick dudes who were playing their first tilt. Two of those games were against the team featuring the 6’9″ 350 pound man/mountain Charlie (who played collegiately at Lafayette) and his son Chip.

In the first game, Charlie tried to establish a sucker-man game by throwing long outlet passes to Chip, who would release as soon as our shot went up. Having played on the same team with father and son earlier in the week and witnessing our opponents getting burnt repeatedly by this play, I let my teammates know to be ready. The first time they tried it, Jimmy knocked the ball off of Chip and out of bounds; the next time Charlie overthrew Chip because I had cut him off. That was the end of that play. We were up 8-4 in a game that went to 10 when Charlie decided to take over. He had told me earlier in the week that he doesn’t like to get the ball under the basket too much because it “ruins the game”. Charlie ‘ruined’ his squad right back into it and we were tied at 9. We swung the ball into Kyle who was being covered by Charlie. Kyle shot and missed, but tipped the rebound. The tip missed, but fell right into the hands of yours truly all alone under the basket and I put in a two-handed tip of my own for the game winner. The 2nd time we played Charlie’s squad it wasn’t even close, as Jimmy and I shut down the sucker-man play completely. When we finally lost I sat down and watched the next game so that I could gather enough energy to ride my bike back to the condo.

Our place this year was on the bay, across from the Wildlife Sanctuary. Diagonally opposite from us on the inlet there is a huge white granite house with a terra cota roof that purportedly belongs to Tom Cruise, although TC didn’t show up at all during our stay. One celebrity who actually was staying in Stone Harbor: rocker Dave Matthews. You could tell when there was a Dave siting because all of the kids would be on their cell phones, telling their friends where he was. That would put small armies of young folks into motion. The Swampettes hit him up for his autograph and he happily obliged, although he wasn’t allowing pictures because he said that he didn’t think he looked his best.

On Thursday afternoon, I tried to call my voicemail at the office, but couldn’t get thru. I figured there must have been another case of ‘Matthews Mania’ and all the circuits were tied up by teens desperately seeking Dave. We went to dinner in Cape May and I tried again from there, but it was the same deal. It wasn’t until we got back to the condo that we heard about the East Coast Blackout. Now as much as I loved watching all of those Yankee fans suffer, the bad part about this deal was that all of metro Detroit was also included in the festivities. Naturally, the New York-based news networks only focused on one particular big city immediately east of the Hudson River and info about when power would be restored back home in MI was in extremely short supply. Finally, late Friday evening I called home and the answering machine was working. I left a message for our Wheaten Terrier, Clancy, letting him know that we’d be home on Saturday.

After 10 ½ hours of highway cruising, we pulled into the driveway. I took a brief nap and then headed over to the Woodward Dream Cruise, a free day-long party for roughly 1,000,000 folks featuring tons of really cool old cars. Blackout, schmackout — the Cruise must go on! As they said in the paper, the Woodward Dream Cruise is kinda like Christmas — there is just no stopping it.

I spent Sunday catching up on things and it looks like not much happened on the Flyer front while I was gone. UD will face the Chris Kaman-less CMU Chippewas in the opening game in Maui and OSU in the 2nd round if both Ohio squads win. The Baylor situation became downright ugly — I don’t know how it can get any worse. Lima Shawnee’s Jamar Butler is headed to OSU instead of UC. BG has a lot of super hoop prospects in the funnel. It’s time, as Alec Baldwin so eloquently said in “Glengarry Glen Ross” to “get them to sign on the line which is dotted”.

As for me, as I got ready to head back to work on Monday, the only question I had was this:

Shouldn’t my boss have to give me an extra day of vacation since the blackout closed the office on Friday?

It was great to get away, but it was good to be back, too.