Beach Watch
Spent a whole week at Myrtle Beach during this years Spring Break and took two of the three kiddies and grandbabe Emma.
Lee went off to Baltimore to care for her sick Uncle Les who is a gem of a man and doesn't deserve what he is going through right now. For no really know reason he keeps pumping gallons of fluid into his abdominal cavity and it must be drained periodically. Last week my wife informed me they pumped out 11 liters of fluid from his peritoneal area. That's about 51/2 two litter bottles worth of bodily excreta.
Lee said he is wasting away and that it would be hard for me to recognize him because of the tremendous amount of weight loss. Again he is such a kind and gentle man it is a shame he has to experience what could be his final days, weeks, months this way.
I had a semi good time at the beach with the remaining clan of Marcie, Emma-Leigh and Jamie. Billy went with his mother to Baltimore and they both arrived at Myrtle late Thursday. They stayed through Friday afternoon and headed for home because Jamie had a prior commitment she could not miss.
With limited mobility I spent most of my time in the room manning the oceanfront railing that came with our fifth floor oceanfront room and I took a lot of photo's with my Fuji digital camera which I have come to hate and love at the same time.
It is such a pain in the ass to focus - I have learned to hate auto focus with a passion and there is no real way to overide it and manually quick focus. It is maddening and I am seriously considering purchase of a high dollar digital SLR (single lens reflex camera) to get back the control I once enjoyed with film SLR cameras.
It seems that by the ti
me the Fuji digital gets focused I've missed the shot. I hate it I hate it I hate it.
Back when we had an eclipse of the moon I got a good series of shots until the moon went completely blood red then the damned camera refused to focus on the orb, and the manual overide didn't work for shit. I've also noticed that it rarely gives me a tack sharp focus where I really want it in many shooting situations so again I think it is time to move up. My kiddies can fight over who gets the good camera when I croak. The photo at the left is and example of such a maddening moment. In cast you can't tell those are clouds illuminated by a rising sun.
The Atlantic Ocean was cold for most of the stay. According to the area weather report the water temp was about 62 which is a bit icey for me. The hotel we were staying at has a pool which they can heat but refuse to do so. They do have a couple sister hotels we can go to that have heated pools and spa's so that's where we went when it was practical. One of the huge problems with the hotel we stay at is the parking. There is only one handicapped space and the rest are on a first come first park basis. There are only about 20 spaces for over 100 rooms so it is an interesting game of musical parking spaces and people rarely want to leave the lot because if they return and there are no spaces they have to park across a really busy four lane street.
The beauties in the photograph are a trio spotted at poolside. One of them is my daughter the other two are someone else's daughters. The one in the middle really had a nice pair of personalities.
The girl in the center is from Tennessee and her name is Taylor and the girl on the far right is from New York State in the Watertown area and her grandpop deposited her at the hotel and went off to his own golf resort for the entire week. Needless to say she probably had some very interesting times.
The two fellows in the other photo are related. It's hard to believe they are close cousins. The economy size youth stands about half the height of his 6'9" cousin who is currently dating my 17 year old daughter. The one holding the baby in the first picture. Josh (right) was very helpful to me. He is such a bull he was able to lift my 150 Jazzy electric riding chair out of my van so I could use it for the week. Then at the end of the week he came back and put it back in the van. This time he jury rigged a plywood and 2x4 ramp that I brought along with me to get the chair back into the truck in case he couldn't come back. His family owns several houses in the Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach area so he was there doing some improving on a house they just bought. Thanks for all your help Josh.
Spring Break at Myrtle use to be one of the great destinations for college kids. Now the locals have just about banned everything and the cops are ever present during the day and night. I remember a wilder less tame MB back when I was younger and it is like a retirement home now. Teens seem to stay away in droves. We did have a large fraternity gathering at our hotel at the end of the week and the damned security guard threatened to breath-a-lyze the college kids which I thought was pretty low. It's alway been my contention that if we can send an 18 year old off to be killed in a war for oil we damn well can let him drink a few beers before he croaks.
This was one of the busier days but if you study the photo the beach crowd consists mostly of adults and families. The days of the teen crowd apparently is gone.
Too bad it was a great destination. Now the kids go to places like Cancun and other ports of call where they don't give a damn what they do and some of them never come home. Think of Natalie Holloway. But a kid learns about life fast if he gets his neck in a noose once in a while. He won't do it leading a completely pristine life. Everyone needs a couple skeletons in their closets if not a couple same sex friends who you got drunk and careless with.
I haven't written in this journal for a long time for various reasons including health, and it is getting very late so I believe I will stop at this point and go horizontal for the night. Perhaps the new day will mean more scribbling in this journal and perhaps posting of a few more interesting photo's like Jamies "tramp stamp" which was temporary - thank all that is holy.
Of course Marcie just plain tramps it up for the camera. Can you say she has been bitten by the modeling bug. You go figure why she picked a fire hydrant. BTW that is the El Cheapo local license plate motel we stayed at in Myrtle Beach.
Some guys just don't care how cold the water is and others who look like they would survive naked in an Artic blizzard choose to stay on the beach fully clothed.
The men were no exception but the ladies pretty well stayed out of the 60 degree water. I was a bit amused by the young men in the crowd who were a bit on the fluffy side who tried to demonstrate athletic prowess by sucking in their guts and tossing a frisbee or football when the young ladies passed by. Some of the ladies really needed to do a bit of gut sucking themselves. Then there were those girls who could fit under a door. How do they walk around and live and breath with less body mass than a gnat?