Last Friday, I found myself hustling up the beach. It was a few minutes after 8 a.m., overcast, and the wind was hard northwest. So hard, in fact, that it looked like a winter day, certainly not the middle of July.

The surf was … well, the surf was pumping. Well-overhead sets marched out of the Atlantic, lurching up and rifling down the beach. It was blustery and ominous, so unseasonal that there were only three people on the whole beach, a group of middle-aged folks, presumably visitors to LBI.