On The Road Again

They shooed us off the beach on Monday when it started to thunder. Ken said that he felt he had a right to go swimming in a lightening storm and I told him he most certainly could, provided his life insurance policy was up to date and he wasn't on a town-owned beach. Lifeguards apparently are charged not only with saving our lives but from saving us from our own stupidity.
So we leave Megansett and head home and the sky is getting darker and darker and I'm remembering how the grill cover is open and how I put the clothes on the line in the morning, which is what caused the rain in case you're wondering (I caused yesterday's brief shower as well), and we get to Old Silver, where a mass beach exodus is taking place and then, just as we're about to pass by, some guy in an orange shirt and Hawaiian pants leaps out in the street to stop traffic so cars can get out of the beach parking lot.
Now I ask you. Why is it that the line of cars in the beach parking lot at Old Silver need some traffic vigilante Jimmy Buffett look-a-like to stop traffic so they can all leave? There was no emergency - unless of course they all had laundry hanging out - everyone was out of the water and the car is one of the safest places to be during a lightening storm. Those of us beaching at Megansett managed to get into our cars and merge into traffic without incident.
There really is no beach etiquette at Old Silver. People going to there seem, as soon as they are in sight of the beach, to forget that they are even driving on a road at all.  Drivers come to complete stops mid-street, not just to let a passenger jump out but to unload coolers, beach chairs, coolers, and a neon-colored assortment of noodles. Pedestrians forget that there is a road in front of the beach as well - meandering out into traffic, starting across and then stopping or walking straight down the middle of the street and then when a car approaches, giving them a shocked looked as if they'd just discovered someone driving a vehicle on a bike path.

song: On the Road Again • artist: Willie Nelson