Monthly Archives: July 2010

We went to The Pier Restaurant last night and had a wonderful meal. My daughter prefers white wine, so we had a Far Niente ’05 Chardonnay. Very nice and kept on ice, something rare these days. When we left, at about 7:30, the restaurant was only 20% filled, which was once unthinkable. Nor was the beach all that crowded today (which is fine with me) and we had our sixth consecutive day of outstanding weather, albeit with a wind that prevented my reading the papers at the beach. Tonight we go to The Blue Pig and our daughter and grandchildren will then head back to New York. Both girls ran into the ocean this year a little ways, so we’re quite pleased with their carrying on five generations of family tradition at the Jersey Shore.

I won the second highest award at the arcade playing “Deal or No Deal,” 200 tickets!

I have moved up from whack-a-mole to whack-a-gator, having to push an 8-year-old amateur out of the way.

Here’s what I’ve learned on this summer vacation:

• Sea gulls are attracted by packaging. They can tell food by the container or bag, and pursue the opportunity. Tell me again why consultants can’t find buyers?
• If you can fit more than six letters on the rear of your pants and I can read them at 20 yards, you shouldn’t be wearing messages on your rear end.
• I can recognize already the 14-year-old girls who will become prom queens, fall in with the wrong crowd, marry big men on campus, and ruin their lives.
• It’s ostensibly for the kids, but the truth is that adults just love to dig huge holes on the beach.
• Dolphins play great games, especially when they leap in the wakes of passing boats.
• The most depressing people I see are the guys with metal detectors out on the beach at 6 am.
• A beach house from which you have to drive a mile and park to get to the beach is not a “beach house.”
• I spend 7-8 hours on the beach each day, of which 15 minutes are on the phone and 20 minutes on email. I will make over $60,000 this week doing that. Why is it that people are so inflexible that they can’t return a phone call or an email if they’re on vacation?!

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Big dolphin day, some about 20 yards from the beach, others gamboling behind a cigarette boat, leaping like, well, dolphins.

Tonight we head for the Wildwood boardwalk, see how many rides the girls will attempt, how many games of chance I will lose at. It’s not the same since they did away with the Whack-A-Mole machine.

Love getting up early, going for coffee, writing, being among the very first on the beach.

Ironically, Apple is now trying to deliver my new iPhone, and they’re telling me that FedEx will only give it two more tries! I told my house sitters to be on the lookout for the FedEx truck and to send Koufax after it. They might just waive the signature requirement!

Cape May early in the morning. Alaina and Gabrielle camped out. Maria’s personal sea gull:

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Freda’s Cafe last night, BYOB again, so I chose a very nice Villa de Caprezanno to accompany the stuffed peppers and giant prawn (which was only slightly smaller than the table).

My observation is that Cape May is not as crowded as last year, with “vacancy” signs at virtually every B&B and hotel, and parking spaces at the beach (usually as rare as an objective news anchor) much easier to secure. The beach crowds during the week are sparser than I recall, as well. Tonight we should drive over to Wildwood, with its two miles of boardwalk, for the grandmunchkins, and we’ll see what the crowds are like there.

Daughter Danielle assembled a beach shelter yesterday that would have shamed the Brooklyn Bridge designers. The kids did not go in it once, of course.

The “dolphin watching” boats seldom stop in front of our location on the beach and you never see dolphins around them. But when they’re gone, the dolphins come and frolic and fees, for the first time while I was in the water about 50 yards away. Could it be the boat motors scare the dolphins, or the dolphins have learned to avoid the boats and their intrusive gawkers? The law of unintended consequences?

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Dinner at The Black Duck, BYOB, and since I’ve been successful in two recent wine auctions, I can bring wine everywhere. This was an ’05 La Fleur de Laussac Bordeaux.

Lemonade from lemons department: My lap top curser froze last night, I think the track pad is broken. But my daughter arrived with the grandchildren and her lap top. So I used Dropbox on my iPad to find where I was and copy what’s ahead, then write on her lap top (as I am right now) and place the chapter in our shared Dropbox folder. Everything will be up to date on my desk top when I return. Otherwise, since it’s tough to type at length on an iPad, I would have missed five days of morning writing! Life goes on.

More to come.

Bad luck at the Borgata tables last night, though I did learn to play a new kind of poker. You have two chances to take back your money. I needed two more.

Drove down to the Sandpiper on the Cape May beach this morning, arrived at 9, room wasn’t ready of course, so we changed and spent the day on the beach anyway. One of the managers trades his parking spot with me so that I’m between the building and a utility gizmo, safe from all but seagulls. I carry stuff in the trunk to deal with that. On the beach, a gull swooped down, grabbed two fries from Maria’s dish, dropped one and flew off. As she was recovering from the most daring attack in Jersey since Trenton, the gull came back in, under the umbrella, for all the world like a P38 on a strafing run, and grabbed the fry he had dropped the first time! Another gull zoomed down in pursuit and a WW II dogfight ensued, but “our” gull swallowed the loot during a hard right bank.

Stereotypical photos of advertising plane and sand turtle should be appearing here, with a rare glimpse of the hitherto unknown waterproof pager, which this guy wore on his bathing suit! If you’re that important, and you may be urgently needed at any time, how do they let you go to the beach in the first place? (Paging Dr. Greely, where are those nuclear attack codes? Is it 34ytu or 33ytu to launch?)

Another guy says to me, “Can you read that iPod here in the sun?” (“No, I’m just staring at a blank screen trying to find inner harmony with technology.”)

Off to the mission church and then dinner at Martini Beach, one of our favorites.

I’m writing from the Borgata in Atlantic City. We made the run down here from East Greenwich in a tad under five hours. We’ll spend the night and then head for Cape May in the morning. It’s always interesting to us to be driving through our old stomping grounds in Jersey.

I pulled up to valet parking at the hotel and there must have been 75 cars outside waiting to be parked. The valet captain sauntered over, we looked at each other, looked at the car, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll put it in the VIP area. It will be right next to the cashier when you check out tomorrow.” Tip gratefully tendered, we found a cozy nook inside to read in and snack on truffled fries until the suite was ready. Tonight we’ll dine at Fornelletto for southern Italian, then try some gambling.

My plan is to write the second chapter of The Consulting Bible on this trip for Wiley. McGraw-Hill has told me that Million Dollar Speaking and Million Dollar Coaching may both be released in January.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.