The Shore – An Internet Adventure

By John Peter Davis

It’s a Sunday morning in August and I’m sitting on a porch with a laptop balanced precariously on my lap. I am in

New Jersey; in an area better know as The Shore.

The outside temperature is eighty-eight degrees and the sky is a pale blue.

The cicadas are singing in the heat.  For those of you not familiar with them, they are an insect that sits in trees and makes very loud, humming sounds, something like outside electrical wires sometimes make.  They make you feel as though your ears are ringing.

In front of me is a yard full of tall oak trees, not really old ones, but old enough to cover the lawn below completely in shade, with just the odd sunbeam poking through.

A blue jay is nattering endlessly in the tree above me.

A swing hangs from one of the branches in the center of the yard, sadly waiting for a little boy to swing on it.  He was enjoying it earlier in the weekend, but as life so often goes now, he is with his mother for a few days until dad gets him back on Wednesday, again for a few days – the weekly ritual.

Beyond the swing hangs a net style hammock that beckons to me mercilessly, promising me a good time, swinging in the breeze.

I resist, for now, because I must share with you what has happened in the last few days.

It seems so surreal at times, but at others, it feels so natural.  I am experiencing that déjà vu feeling like I have lived through this situation before, you know, where it seems so familiar, but you only get little flashbacks.

I hear you asking yourself “Yeah, so you’re on a porch in New Jersey. So what?”

Well, let me tell you why this is worth explaining.

I don’t live in New Jersey, nor do I live anywhere near New Jersey.  In fact I live almost five hundred miles away.

Last Friday, I was sitting in my living room, talking with my good friend, my current interest.

She has lived in New Jersey all of her life, having spent the last twenty plus years in this area, about twenty miles north of where I am.

She had come to stay with me for a while, just over a month ago, because her current situation found her homeless and penniless.  There was no other course of action.

I was glad she did, because although I was virtually penniless also, I felt that together, we would succeed with our goals.

Her situation, involving money and an ended marriage, required a lot of legal attention.  Phone calls and endless emails were not resolving anything.  Both types of correspondence produced countless unanswered messages.

Her story, however, is another matter, not a topic for today.

This is about the Jersey Shore and some very special people.

We decided that the only solution was to be in New Jersey, where all the key people are located.

The problem was we had enough money for gas to get there and that was about it.  We couldn’t return home without some sort of miracle or closure.

But we are adventurers, and had set a target date of the fall to start meeting our individual dreams of living in Woodstock, New York, and our respective ventures – mine is writing and hers is an antique shop.

However, we didn’t have a place to stay back at the Shore.  Either no one was able to put us up, or didn’t want to.  You know how people are when you get down and out, or have problems.

They close their eyes, turn their heads, and hope you will go away.

It is amazing how selfish and self centered people become, even, or should I say, especially, relatives.  That is when you find out who your real friends are, and sometimes find new ones.

Before I get into the details, I have to tell you that I met Toni in a chat room on the internet just over fifteen months ago.  The rest is a story in itself – a very unusual tale (my published book - Brick Wall).

It was around supper time last Friday, and I found the phone number of another friend whom I had met on the internet in a game room.  I thought I had lost it, but there it was, in my Yahoo address book where it should be.

You know how sometimes you get yourself so organized that you can’t find anything?  Well that is what happened with Jake’s phone number.

The strange coincidence was that Jake lived within twenty miles of where Toni needed to go. What are the odds of that?  Coincidence or divine intervention?  I believe in the latter.

I had met Jake on the internet about two years ago and we talked a lot, but strictly on the internet.

He had a lot of bad things going on in his life and we hadn’t talked that much recently, but often bad things happen in order to pave the way for new and better things.

Without a place to stay, Toni and I didn’t know what to do.

I decided to call Jake, if I could find his phone number.  Well, as you know, I found it, and called.  We had never even spoken on the phone before.

It took him a moment to figure out who was calling.

I proceeded to tell him the quandary we were in, and immediately Jake said we could come stay at his place, for as long as we needed.

Like, WOW!!!

Remember, Toni and Jake had never talked before, not even on the internet, but knew of each other.

So, yesterday morning, Toni and I set out in my pickup truck for Jake’s home at The Shore, with enough money to get us here.

“Are you guys nuts?” you’re now thinking.

We had a great drive here, as always.  I had been down to the Shore a couple times previously, and stayed at Toni’s mom’s.  But we couldn’t stay there this time (long story).

We arrived at Jake’s around 5:00pm, having survived the slow drive on the Garden State Parkway (or Parking Lot as people refer to it).

Jake has a fairly large corner house, with a sizeable lot, about a quarter mile from the Bay.

As Toni and I sat in the kitchen and Jake leaned against the sink, we were all staring at each other like, “well here we are – what now?”  But, while it may sound odd, it seemed so natural to be here, in a perfect stranger’s house.

Jake made us feel totally at ease, although I’m sure this was a very odd experience for him also.  His young son was here and Jake’s ex was coming to take him away in about an hour and a half.

Jake has a twenty-five foot boat – a cabin cruiser.  I remembered him telling me on the internet about working on it over the past while.  It was one of those dreams that people get – of using the boat to vacation down the coast, a dream, that in the end, he shared alone.

Jake told us he was taking some people out on his boat that evening and that we were invited along if we wanted.  A friend had put down a kitchen floor for him, and in return asked for a ride on the boat.  The friend was going to bring along his girl friend and some others.

Although we were tired from the drive, it seemed like a great idea, a great way to wind down.

Jake’s ex showed up to take his son and shortly after, a van pulled up. Out jumped three people, two men and a woman.

Jake only knew his friend, having met the girl friend just once, and had never met the other gentleman before, who was visiting from a nearby town.

We were all introduced, piled into the van, and headed off for the bay.

So here were Toni and I, going out in a boat with four people we had never met before, having the day before just been sitting around at my place with no plans for the weekend.

Does this seem surreal or what? Would you have done all this?

The boat was docked in a small canal off the bay.

Let me tell you that I’m not really a swimmer, and prefer walking on water (on the ice in the winter), not boating, but what the heck, this was not your normal weekend.

As soon as the boat got out into the bay, I looked at the depth finder.  It was reading eight hundred and forty-five feet and then nine hundred and forty feet deep.

Oh-oh!!!  This made me think twice about having decided to come out.

As Jake started to increase the speed, the bow of the boat was rising and to me at least, the back seemed to be getting very, very low in the water.

Realizing that speed wasn’t a good idea under these circumstances, Jake decided we would just do a slow crawl across the bay.  This was more than fine with me.

George, the man from the nearby town, was behind me, leaning against the corner of the boat.  I was busy looking at the moon and the sun, almost at equal heights on opposite sides of the boat.

Suddenly I heard a voice behind me ask “Do you like baseball?”

It caught me off guard and I pondered for a minute, wondering why he asked me that.  I muttered some sort of reply about how I had lost interest after the strike a number years ago.

That quickly ended that conversation.

A couple of minute later, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted George going over to the other side of the boat, and sitting down on the floor. At first this seemed rather odd to me, and I wondered what was wrong.

George then held his hands up towards the sun, framing it in his hands, and enjoying the view of a setting sun, and feeling its energy, bonding with nature.

A few minutes later, we reached almost to the other side of the bay.

Toni was enjoying herself looking at familiar landmarks, having spent so many years here.

Peter, the man who had laid Jake’s floor, decided he wanted to go swimming.

I am thinking,  “Is this guy nuts? It’s like nine hundred feet deep here.”

Jake decided to anchor the boat.

Meanwhile, being a writer and having a very vivid imagination, all kinds of thoughts are going through my head. It feels like one of those movies.

I pictured them stopping the boat, taking Toni and me captive, and performing some sort of pagan sacrifice, after all, hadn’t George been doing some strange ritual with the sun?

My focus snapped back to the boat stopping.  Jake went up front and dropped an anchor.

As Jake settled back in his captain’s seat, Peter got on the platform at the back of the boat.  He was facing us and talking away and just as suddenly, did a back flip into the water.

Holy smoke!

And then George, just as quickly, stripped off his shirt, and jumped out of the boat.

Oh man, this seemed so, ah, ah, I’m at a loss for words, but you know what I mean - twilight zone.

I looked at the depth gauge and it read five feet ten inches… hmmm… how did we get into shallow water way out here?  What happened to nine hundred feet?

I asked Jake about it. Apparently the gauge isn’t accurate while the boat is in motion, and this now was an accurate reading.  The nine hundred feet had been a bogus reading.

Phew, I could breathe easy.  Being six foot four, I knew that if I fell, jumped, or was thrown in, my head would be above water.

It turns out that this is Peter’s birthday weekend (Sunday), and this was a part of his celebration.

It was such a beautiful sight as the sun was starting to dip below the horizon on my left and the almost full moon was getting higher and higher in the sky on my right.

The two guys were rolling in the water, floating, swimming, and chatting.  They were having an awesome time.

It turns out that the two of them had known each other since they were kids - Peter will be thirty-eight on Sunday.

After about a half hour of swimming like porpoises, they got back in the boat.  Jake raised the anchor and we set off back across the bay.

It was getting fairly dark, and the moon was reflecting off the fairly calm water.

What a beautiful night.

As we were cruising up the canal, there were people with a huge dog outside at one of the homes.

Although we didn’t know them, we waved, and they waved back.

Toni laughed, saying that Brittany’s wave (Brittany is Peter’s girl friend) looked like the Queen’s royal wave.  Brittany referred to it as her “Miss America” wave.

As she stood there, leaning against the side of the boat, waving, she reminded me of the Statue of Liberty, and that this is America, where people can truly live their dreams.

It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.  It was truly a memorable life moment.

We arrived back at the dock, piled in the van, and drove back to Jake’s.  Toni, Jake and I got out, went in the house, and the three new friends who had been complete strangers, just hours earlier, drove off.

Back in the kitchen again, the events of the last two days swirled in my head.

I sat there, thinking and smiling. It was like a dream!

Twenty-four hours ago, Toni and I had an insurmountable problem of being almost penniless, and not having a place to stay in New Jersey.

Suddenly, it had become achievable, because while I was playing a game on the internet, some two years ago, I said “hi” to someone in the room nicknamed “clyde.”

Who would have thought…???

***********

The above episode happened during the period of my book Brick Wall but is not included in it. It is a stand alone episode of what can happen in life if one is willing to take chances.

Check out links for the books at Amazon & Barnes & Noble at my website.

earHeaCopyright John Peter Davis 2008

Books to Touch your Heart

http://johnpeterdavis.com/