Re: Pennsylvania Trip 2009
Just noticed that what I thought was the last post was the 2nd to last. Bassy, if you end up in New Orleans, please feel free to PM me - I'd be happy to tell you a few things to do here.
Flathead, I thought you were doing great until the blanket condemnation of the Jersey Shore. I would of thought that a gentle warning would have been appropriate, but to say that the entire Jersey Shore is a dump, just isn't accurate, or fair to the people who live there.
I just did some surfing and it appears that the medical waste thing has come up again just this week, as it did briefly in 2007. The last time previous to that, I could find was in 1988, 20 years ago. I actually remember that because I lived in the NYC metro area at the time. I can tell you that during that period, I used to take my 4WD on the beach in other places and surf cast for stripers. I never saw a thing on the beaches that even remotely resembled medical waste. I did have a really fun evening once, however, watching a guy fight a 40 pound striper on a small rod with 17 pound line on it. He managed to keep that fish from breaking the line for something over a half an hour, and finally landed it by walking into the surf up to his waist. The only thing he was bummed out about is that, for the first time in their relationship as father and son, his boy didn't come fishing with him that night.
So, three times in the entire history of the Jersey Shore, this has happened in limited areas. The first time (1988), the waste was tracked to a landfill on Staten Island (which was fined $1,000,000), and this time they have serial numbers on the syringes found, which will eventually lead them to the disposal facility involved. I absolutely agree that this situation "inhales," but let's not condemn the entire shoreline of New Jersey over this, in a public forum. Its much like the flak the state got for years because people driving through the state would see the landfill and refineries along the turnpike near Newark/Meadowlands, and think the whole state was like that.
All I am saying is to be fair the the state as a whole, including non-affected beach areas. Besides, if you want to see some truly terrible beaches, come to SE Louisiana! We have Mississippi River mud, not sand. In fact, the closest thing that we have to beaches is the Mississippi coast, to our east .... and their beaches are not natural, they literally truck the sand in from other places!
Watch the video.
