Summer Surge Slowing in Newport

After leaving town for a few days, I come back to find that things are pretty tame. There are definitely plenty of tourists still running around Thames and Bellview, but there are not nearly as many as, say, early July. Maybe things are winding down?

Hopefully this is not a fluke. With so many people vacationing in my new town, it really brings me down. I try to go out and have a good time like (seemingly) the rest of the town, but I don’t have enough money to. I try to chase the beautiful girls dressed in their sundresses, but I don’t have enough money to. I try to drink every night at Pour Judgment on Broadway, but I don’t have enough money to.

I know this is largely my problem. Who else can I blame? But still, it brings me down to see the rich happy people getting drunk and having the time of their lives while I sit in a park and poorly play guitar.

I hope the summer surge is slowing, and it probably is. The weather is certainly starting to turn. I was awoken the other night by a frigid blowing through my window, a sure sign that autumn is coming. I haven’t seen Newport, or even Rhode Island, in the fall and I’m looking forward to it. I wonder if it can compete with the amazing beauty of Western Mass.

Surfing Newport RI

Finally, after weeks flatness, the Ocean kicked up enough waves for Southern Rhode Island to go surfing.

I hauled my soft pale frame onto Second Beach along with dozens of other desperate surfers, aching to peel down a monster.

At first it seemed like competition would be rough with so many riders in the water, but I quickly realized that there was plenty for all, and everyone had a smile.

I, too, soon stretched a grin across my face, the first I can remember for a long time. It’s a strange paradox: the summer usually makes everyone happy. It’s really everyone but surfers. There are no waves in the summer, and it becomes maddening.

In the winter the water turns frigid but the waves turn mean. You can see surfers carving in December with a nor’easter blowing in, having the times of their lives. They don’t get tan, but they get crazy.

I paddled till my arms could paddle no more and I hit up Vicker’s Liquors in Newport on my way home for a bottle of wine to relax and cook dinner.

“Thank God,” I said to myself. “I was starting to lose it there.”