During the winter of 2009, I took a job as a professional lifeguard for the Sunshine Coast Regional Council Lifeguard Service in Queensland, Australia. The reason behind my trip was twofold. A) There is no way a person will not have the time of their life when they take a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity in a land that is as far away from their doorstep as they can possibly go without coming back around the other direction, and B) I wanted the job as a means of some sort of professional development, sort of in the same vein as my much more mature and much more responsible friends had seemed…

The only thing that signals a significant heat wave other than the obviousness of the air is the plummeting ocean temperatures that coincide. The heat is brought to the island via a noticeable southwest wind, not only ushering in the suffocating air quality, but also pushing our pleasant Gulf Stream-influenced water back out to sea, waiting for the next northeast push to bring it back in again. The next most noticeable thing that seems to plummet is the positive attitude of nearly everyone around me (I’m not exempt from this, admittedly), as demonstrated by observations I made in my local …

I am a veteran of precisely two Harry Potter Midnight Madness events. First, in July 2007, I convinced the owner of the small bookstore where I work part-time to host a midnight sale of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." She said the event was mine, as long as I costumed-up and dressed the part (which I did with feeble results). Then, on Thursday night, I was hired to photograph the festivities surrounding the midnight opening of the franchise’s final theatrical installment, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2." But even though I have once donned a red and yellow scarf, wielded …

It all started somewhere around the third grade. I was in gym class. The way I remember it, I think it was probably a three balls, two strikes, and two outs situation during a rainy day indoor kickball game. I was leading off of first base, just looping the words “run on the kick” through my little kid, achievement-dreamer skull. I probably shifted my body weight left, then right, then left again, trying to psych out the pitcher who was getting ready to roll the nuclear-grade rubber ball to my teammate. I heard my teammate’s foot thwack the ball with that awful rubbery echo, and experienced …

As we sit on the cusp of the official start of summer, the doors are opened to relaxing weekends spent (hopefully) lying by the water and not moving a muscle other than to turn our bodies with the sun. With the longer days and (again, hopefully) a more simplified version of life on its way, cracking open a book has been my go-to for enhancing this downtime and keeping me from loafing on the couch in front of the TV as the sun shines all day. Below is a quick reading list I’ve assembled for those of you looking for a decent read for the summer. Pick your category of choice, check my quick …

I moved into my new apartment in Beach Haven on May 1, after a friendly argument with my new landlord over the cost of electricity. After cutting a deal to pretty much get two free months (God bless international bargaining skills), I sheepishly inquired that since June isn’t all that hot of a month, and July’s pretty much a crapshoot on the heat, and by August we’re all pretty much like frogs left in boiling water (Google it), could I just forego footing the bill for electric as long as I promised to never turn on the air conditioning? One steadfast "no" after another followed. Since my …

Over the course of the past few weeks, little snippets of college graduation commencement speeches have managed to find themselves on my computerscreen. The commencement speech — a genre in and of itself — has seemed recently to be an analysis of the modern world as the speaker sees it. A warning shot and call to arms to the capped-and-gowned students who amass themselves into a listening audience, awaiting a fresh start in a perceived new world. The web has been abuzz, mostly, with Denzel Washington’s invitation for failure, as the very real possibility of failure inevitably lies around the …

After a winter that was dominated by overhead surf, river-quick currents, and an offshore gale that felt like it contained teeth, the present transition into our warm season is a welcomed respite not only from the cold short days, but from the reliance on our beefed-up shortboards to get us through those sessions. As the spring has taken hold, the surf has mellowed out, and as the neoprene of our wetsuits has become thinner, the repertoire of our boards has been allowed to adapt to the pleasant change in conditions. With the exception of maybe just that one memorable all-time swell in April, …

After years of affectionate abuse, old surfboards tend to find themselves replaced with new equipment and dispatched permanently to dry land under dirty crawl spaces, tucked above garage rafters, or sardonically placed on display in one’s living room (that last one usually applies to ironic people who are single). My first board, a hulking and perpetually water-logged behemoth of a mass-production longboard, has somehow materialized in a municipal garage in Beach Haven, stuffed snugly behind thick water pipes, yellowed and duct-taped as the last day I had seen it, probably three or four years…

A few weeks ago I heard an astonishing statistic: Only 30 percent of Americans possess a passport, while 60 percent of Canadians have one, along with 75 percent of Brits. Reasons and arguments run the gamut as to why this is so. Most notably, pundits on the subject have reasoned a solid defense for America, insisting that we not jump at our own throats and accuse ourselves of not being more "worldly," as much of the world seems to have supplanted itself right in front of us. After all, America contains such a diverse population that almost every conceivable culture in the world has found …

Looking out my window every morning this week, it’s looked the way I envision Dickensian London: fog that settles just above your head, limiting the distance of your gaze and causing street lamps to be strangely blurry at night. Welcome, everyone, to the end of April on LBI. South winds that don’t garner much in the way of wave production, and an ocean temperature that is still settling down somewhere in the 50s have dominated the end of the month. While the warm air has been a welcomed change, it has still managed to leave us draped in fog day in and day out this week. I have had many …

This happens every so often to New Jersey: A much talked about barrage of swell appears via a fast-moving storm that ignites in the Mid West, steams laterally through the American Heartland, and then brushes up the coast from North Carolina all the way up to Canadian Maritimes. Cue spotlight on N.J. When this type of storm comes, New Jersey tugs at the attention of the surf world, not just because of how perfect the waves look, but because of how perfect they look for – of all places – New Jersey. When it comes to surfing, New Jersey has always been little David, waving his arms at an …

I’m beginning to find that one of the huge not-much-talked about parts of growing up is the searing nostalgia that you start to feel for your adolescent years. This subject has been a big reason for me finding myself in deeply invested, eyeball-drying "stares," where I not only miss the whole lack-of-responsibilities thing, but also find myself longing for the days of relying on pure chance in order to find the waves of my life. What I miss most about my early days of surfing was my naïveté to surf-forecasting. There were many mornings I experienced where, on a whim, I had ridden my bike up …

Shortly after the February 22, 6.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, I started to worry about my Kiwi friend, Paul. Paul is a Christchurch firefighter, which would put him right on the front lines of a natural disaster. The only message I had received after immediately trying to contact him was a, “Hey all, I’m OK, get back to you when this is cleaned up,” type of auto-response email. It wasn’t until a few days ago, however, that I received the personalized response that even though he is in fact physically OK, Christchurch is in a much worse state of …

One of the upshots to my current general unemployment status is that I’ve had a lot of time to read.Taking heed of the words of Mark Twain (I know, I know: Insert pretentious obligatory literary quote here – just bear with me), who said, “A person who won’t read good books has no advantage over one who can’t read them,” I've started to just read whatever it is that happens to come my way, regardless of how stange or intangible the book may seem at first.From this accept-all-books mindset, I have come up with some material that has had the distinct advantage of forcing me to think much harder …

Two of my close friends and fellow surfers, Matt and Bill, lived the dream of an "endless summer" during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter of 2008-2009. While I received the invitation to join them to lifeguard on Australia’s East Coast, I could only counter their offer with the frustration of my commitment to a year of graduate school. As I suffered through classes and lived through yet another blustery New Jersey winter, I continually thought of my friends’ travels Down Under and grew envious. I vowed that, regardless of whatever ensuing job offer may come my way, I would defer and instead …

As I walked outside of my apartment a few days ago in an attempt to fool myself into thinking I had something important to do, I was approached by three plumbers. The first two informed me that throughout the week my water would be periodically shut off so that new meters could be installed. Not wanting to shoot the messenger, and understanding that these orders came from above (i.e., from the Condo Association’s property manager), I grit my teeth and accepted my having to temporarily give up the modern convenience of indoor plumbing. The third plumber’s face was disguised by a large pair of …

A good friend of mine who resides on the east coast of Florida (and who is a surfer) used to try to sell me on rock-climbing. He would often say that climbing is what surfers in Florida do when the ocean is flat. Truth be told, these guys spend a serious chunk of their life scaling granite. What I was at first ignorantly confused about was how one would go about becoming such an avid climber in a region that is more renowned for its high rise condominiums than any mountain or craggy peak anywhere within logical driving distance. He described a climbing gym with a man-made 30-foot climbing …

In this weekly column, LBI resident Dan Duffy will offer a surfer's perspective on life on the other side of Barnegat Bay.  So it’s been awhile for all of us on Long Beach Island. Not much in the way of waves has been offered up since 2011 began, and from that comes the usual dose of frustration and the feeling of betrayal from good ol’ Mother Nature.  It’s easy this time of year to let the lack of light, lack of swell and lack of warmth lead you to your couch and start cracking open the beers and setting your sights on the welcoming warmth of springtime swell. But as our winter of 2011 …