The big annual shoe sale is on. A huge room filled with tables of countless pairs of shoes is either your idea of hell or your idea of heaven. If you want to stop reading now, you are in the first category. If you are in the second, I really don’t need to preach to your choir, but if you are new to the area, here goes. 

Every summer at the end of August, Shoe Inn has a warehouse sale. (Closing day this year is Sunday.) Shoes are piled three deep in boxes under tables, and by that I mean three boxes deep by three boxes deep. The tabletops are solid shoeboxes, again three deep by another three deep by another three deep. You cannot see the floor under the tables and you cannot see the tabletops. (Heaven or hell, you decide.)

As for the very tidy aisles, well, they are full of people trying on shoes. The corners of the room are full of people sitting on the floor, surrounded by their finds (gigantic IKEA bags are made available for your shopping pleasure). These bags are large enough to hold a child or a dog or both. They encourage shopping by their very vastness.

And no, it is not chaotic. The shoeboxes are open and they are organized by size. The prices are clearly available on posters on the wall. Maybe your heart is racing with the thrill of the hunt.

Take a breath. 

Imagine you are in New York, waiting for the Jitney. Bored, you wander into a shoe store to kill time and decide to try on a pair of shoes. Any shoes, mostly because you get to sit down. This is a process that takes a while . . . sizes and then they have to go get the desired try-on, one pair at a time. Sigh. There is not much fun in that process. 

Consider instead a rainy day in the East Hampton area. Not a beach day. You and a friend want to go shopping. At this warehouse shoe sale, you are your own salesperson. In other words you can try on everything without bothering anyone. Note to shoppers: Wear old shoes that slip off easily, and prepare to sit or kneel on the floor (there are no chairs). 

Wonder what that gold leather gladiator sandal (with fringe) with the six-inch heel would look like on your foot? Go ahead, try it on. 

This is kind of like Loehmann’s in the old days (but you don’t have to get down to your skivvies).

You might have a fun conversation with a nearby tryer-onner. “How does this look?” you might ask, and she might wonder if the studded flats are “Brooklyn” enough. You use cellphones to take pictures and show each other how your feet look (there are no mirrors). 

You both might conclude that the gold sandals will not be good for walking on grass (or walking at all) and move on to another table. There are hundreds of shoes in your size. Now you might hate them and you might not fit into them, but playing dress-up is an activity many women embrace like a extra piece of pie.

That there is no one rushing you, that you can try on everything (and put it back in the box, neatly, please, in the right size area) without a hassle is just a delight. There are helpers who pretty much know if they have seen that plaid flat with the tassel in a buried box, and they will happily look for you, but otherwise you are on your own. 

For total newbies: Upon entering you are gobstruck. It feels like an acre of shoeboxes, all open, ready to be played with. When you regain your wits (and if you have not fled) you are offered the Ikea shopping bag. At first you demur. How could I buy that many shoes? Oh, wait, that bag makes it easier, doesn’t it? Ah, yes, it fits over my shoulder. And you are off to find your size. Or sizes, because everyone knows that not every size 9 fits the same way, and sometimes an 11 (!) in that shoe is a better fit. That 91/2 you normally wear might be a 10 or even a 9 depending on the shoe (try them both, silly girl). 

By the way, if you feel like trying on Ivanka’s made-in-China shoes, they are there, and if you want to feel like you are besties with the Kardashians, their shoes are there, too. 

And from your spot in front of the first table of size 10s you might hear, as I did, some pretty funny conversations. 

Gentleman of a certain age shopping with a lady-of-a-certain-age (LOACA): “Honey, you have tried on every shoe in your size. . . . Do you want to start over?”

A pair of millennials: “Those look great. Try these and these and these. . . . I already got those yesterday; this is my third visit.”

And echoing from every shoe-size section the repeating chorus of: “I love those.” “They look like hooker shoes” ( clearly a mother speaking). “I am getting them in every color.” “I love these.” “They will go with everything.” “I need something glitzy.” “I wanted them in red; well, maybe they’ll have them tomorrow.” (Note: They restock daily.) 

And: “Wow, I can walk in these.” “I cannot walk in these.” “ Too high.” “Perfect, I love them, thanks for finding them for me.” “My boyfriend would love these on me.” “Try and find it in a bigger (smaller) size, please, mom.” “I have to have these.” “You have to get those.” 

And finally, overheard from behind me while I waited to buy my (exact number deleted from text) shoes: “I will be buried in these shoes.”

Durell Godfrey is a contributing photographer for The Star and is also known as The Star’s Hunter-Gatherer in her frequent “Gimme” shopping columns. 

Until last weekend, I was in total denial about computer security. Sure, computers were being hacked, people were getting scammed, all the time — but not me. 

I have used Chase bank’s straightforward and convenient system for paying bills for a long time. On Saturday, planning to do just that, I was surprised when I went to Chase and, before I could put in my password, a pop-up window appeared telling me my account needed to be “authenticated.” I was surprised, but not surprised enough. I called the phone number given, and reached someone who identified himself as a certified Apple technician when I asked if he represented Chase. My computer is an Apple MacBook Air, so I took him at his word.

The “certified technician” said my computer didn’t have a firewall, which was necessary for security. He asked if I had ever used a security program and when I hemmed and hawed, he replied: “A ha! It was expired.” 

Satisfied that Chase had sent me in this technician’s direction, I engaged in a lengthy back and forth with him, ostensibly to correct the problem. He asked me to click on this and that, but, before long, when some of his directions didn’t seem to help me access my Chase account, he asked permission to access my computer remotely to complete the necessary fix. Someone a little more sophisticated or suspicious than I might immediately have recognized that as a red flag. But not me.

Providing him with access to my computer wasn’t easy, either. Again, he told me to do this and that and, fi nally, using some sort of remote desktop software, he was able to move around my cursor. (I know. At this point in the story you are slapping your forehead at my naivete, right?)

I was assigned a “Case I.D.” number of 1100478. The diagnosis was: “Security Breach and S.S.L. Certificate Missing.” S.S.L. certificates provide secure, encrypted communications between a website and an internet browser, but I had never heard of them before.

Blythely convinced I was in good hands, I went along with this whole process, taking note dutifully of another pop-up note that appeared on my desktop:

Error and Warning

IP address

Clean Network Connection

Malware 

Spyware

Optimize Computer 

50 to 70 Mins 

That was when I learned there would be fees. And they wouldn’t be small. Security and support for one year, the tech said, would be $299.99; three years, $499.99, and lifetime security and support, $699.99.

Aghast, I asked to whom the fees would be paid. The answer was “livepcexpert247.com — 888-331-8954. Tech name: Joe. Extension: 438.”

Finally alerted to what had been going on, I asked the man on the phone to wait a minute and sneakily asked my husband, who was half listening to all this in the same room, to dial up Geekhampton, the Mac store in Sag Harbor. Whoever answered the phone immediately recognized livepcexpert. com as a scam.

That should have been the end of it, but I had given whoever this was access to my desktop, where most of my passwords were stored. Fearing the scammers might use them to buy things or run up charges on Chase, Chris and I hopped into the car and drove to Sag Harbor for professional help. 

Before the whole thing was over, I had wasted the better part of a day. However, as far as I know, no financial harm was inflicted, although the egg on my face didn’t feel good. The moral of this story? I’m not sure there is one, but if some random website or pop-up ever requires you to phone a friendly technician, maybe you should go talk to the real, live computer folks in a brick and mortar store.

A hurricane passed well east of us this week. The storm was born as a low-pressure area in the Atlantic off the Turks and Caicos. Sometime around Sunday, it pulled itself together, and the National Hurricane Center gave it the eighth name on its current list.

Gert was, for us, the first tropical storm of the season. On land, one scarcely would have known of it, except for a rumble of suddenly high surf. At the beach, it was different. As the day ended Tuesday, the sea began to stir, and lifeguards at the village beaches talked about whether to drag their stands to higher ground for the night. 

At the popular surfing spots, the summer’s small-wave torpor seemed shaken off. Young men in pickup trucks sped into the parking lots, loudly checking with friends before pulling on their wetsuits and running down to the beach.

Hurricanes and big tropical storms offshore change everything in the water. Surfers from who knows where show up, tangling the lineup of locals used to one another’s ways. There is a subtle etiquette among the waves that may be unfamiliar to people from away or perhaps just not universally shared. What are unspoken rules here may not apply at breaks up west.

Here, there is sort of a rotation. If you catch a wave from a certain place, I have an expectation that I will be next for a shot. If I miss my chance, the next person in this rough line gets his or her chance. Surfers maintain a polite distance from one another, don’t sit in front of each other, and don’t paddle aggressively past someone to get quick priority. It’s all a bit like waiting at a takeout counter; in the absence of a line, hungry folks get grumpy fast.

There is a point where the order breaks down, even among locals. When too many people gather at a restaurant or a surf break, the cues become harder to read. We glare, look for familiar, commiserating faces, and roll our eyes. Then we catch a wave or get our dinner and all is well again.

Gustavo Morastitla said in answer to a question I’d posed following Jordan’s Run at the end of last month that the summer, after all, was only half over.

I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel a chill. That, I suppose, is the difference between 17 and 77. 

Soon, very soon, summer will be over, I’m telling you. You can already see dead leaves, signs of change, but as Al Franken in a former incarnation used to say, “And that’s okay.”

I know I don’t look it, crepey skin and all, but I feel pretty good — even now, near the end of the actuarial line. Just about everyone’s 70 in the tennis club where I play, as I was reminded the other day, and on the courts we battle as hard as we can. Surely it’s comical, creaky as we are, but while the flesh is weak, the spirit is sprightly. And like Gustavo we’re bent on improving — the only difference being that because we’re bent we don’t improve, or, if so, not by much. But that’s okay.

Ever in search of an edge, I’ve begun to swing kettlebells too, a discipline that done correctly ought to help me to straighten up and fly right, to strengthen my core in short, in shorts too. 

I’ve always been attracted to the lightweight T-shirts they have at Truth Training, though the words on the back, such as “This Is Muscle” (in my case it should be “This Is Muscle?”) and “Earn Your Beer” make rather grandiose claims. 

“Oooh . . . Truth Training,” I hear some at the club whisper. As I say, whatever will provide an edge.

I entered the 70s singles tournament in a rather fraternal frame of mind, I would do it to give a fellow septuagenarian a game — no thought of winning, mind. And now, having barely scraped by in the first and second rounds, saved in the first by the fact that after almost two hours of mano-a-mano, my opponent had to excuse himself to pee, thus providing me with a restorative respite in the shade (Note: You must go in for a terminal alliteration treatment as soon as the summer’s over), I’m foaming at the mouth, uttering oaths, defying the gods, and not serving as a very good role model for my grandsons, which is probably not okay.

That I’m averse to change can readily be seen if you step into my car, a 2002 Solara. When, after the second-round agon, my daughter Emily did, she said she was doing so at risk of anaphylactic shock. It would, she said, as she wrote “Emily Was Here” in the dust and pollen-covered dashboard, be a perfect place for an allergen immersion treatment. When she and the kids alit at Indian Wells, I gathered some of the dog hairs into a white mustache before saying goodbye.

Justly shamed, after they’d left for Connecticut, I washed it and vacuumed it, and was especially proud of how neat the trunk, untouched in the past half-dozen years, looked. I knew because our late Lab Henry’s blanket was still there, under the leaves and sand and detritus. I teared up as I held it. Summer was half-over and I felt a chill in the air, though there was a match yet to play.

The Ethiopian-American population of the United States is 2 million, with Ethiopians second only to Nigerians among people of African origin. The number is significant even given Ethiopia’s current population of an incredible 104,396,011, as estimated by the United Nations.

One of the world’s oldest civilizations, Ethiopia is also one of the world’s poorest countries, with per capita annual income estimated to be $590. Primarily agricultural, it has experienced hunger and poverty for most of its long history and malnutrition in children remains prevalent. That is probably the most common public face of Ethiopia, but those who know the country think of its grand history, of castles and the Queen of Sheba, when the subject comes up. Ethiopia became Ethiopia (Abyssynia) a thousand years before Christ was born, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity began when Europeans were still pagans. 

Parents brought their kids to the ninth annual Ethiopian Heritage and Culture Camp in Virginia last weekend so the kids could get to know others who share their heritage, and so the whole family could learn more about the culture of their roots. Mekdes Bekele, an Ethiopian-American who had herself struggled to raise a bicultural child, founded the camp and has met its complicated challenges remarkably well.

I was privileged to be one of six grandparents among the 215 adults and 160 children there last weekend, and I was constantly surprised by the range of programs available for children, who ranged from toddlers through high school. Most of the children were adopted from Ethiopia. Several older teenagers were returnees who had become counselors-in-training. There were plenty of games (not just soccer), lessons in traditional dancing, music-making, pottery, fishing, swimming, cooking, hair and skin care sessions, storytelling, and lessons in Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language.

While the kids were busy, adults could enjoy Ethiopian coffee, made with ceremony while sitting on the ground, or attend discussions on such topics as raising first-generation Americans, traveling in Ethiopia, and mindful parenting. They also could try some Ethiopian dancing, pottery-making, and cooking of their own. An adult program that mimicked one for the kids was an introduction to spoken Amharic, and I have to admit to being phonetically challenged, or, to put it mildly, a slow learner. I did learn that many words are differentiated by gender, as well as to say the words for “hi,” “peace,” “okay,” and “it is.” Other adults went on to speak in simple sentences.

Because I had gone with my daughter to Ethiopia when she adopted her second child, I was familiar with the grain called teff, which is cooked into the traditional Ethiopian flatbread called injera, with which one scoops up food from the plate with fingers. As it turned out, I enjoyed the two Ethiopian meals we were served much more than the American fare.

The program for adults that I found most moving was presented by four women in their 20s, who shared, often tearfully, personal stories about how they had been treated by other children as well as adults while growing up in this country, and the overwhelming challenges of trying to figure out what their identity was in America.

An emanation of human warmth had been evident from the moment we arrived at the camp. It was symbolized for me by a sweet 41/2-year-old Ethiopian child who spent a lot of time playing with my granddaughter. This little girl didn’t have much English, but she heard my grandchildren saying hello to me and quickly figured out what my name had to be. Thank you, Amara, for calling out “Grandma” whenever we met.

I awoke Tuesday to the cries of fledgling ospreys soaring overhead. Every year about this time, the young occupants of nearby nests launch into the air for their first flights at the beach and, exuberant, at least to my ears, screech in evident delight as they earn their wings.

I did not know this sound as a child living near the same beach. As recounted in The Star’s most recent East magazine, which came out last week, osprey were once all but extinct. Among their few last refuges was Gardiner’s Island, where, although in a single 1905 count a local naturalist had found a nesting colony with as many as 600 breeding adult osprey, they had dwindled to a point in about 1966 at which only three or four fledglings survived.

Scientists knew what was going on: DDT, a common mosquito control pesticide, was weakening the birds’ eggs to the point that they would crumble in the nests before the year’s young could hatch. Once DDT was banned nationwide in 1972, the osprey came back.

The path to the ban, however, was not smooth, as Glyn Vincent described in the recent East. Dennis Puleston, an amateur ornithologist, and Charles Wurster, a biologist at Stony Brook University, took the osprey’s protection to the laboratory first and then to court, suing the county mosquito commission to stop the use of DDT. Publicity surrounding the case eventually led to a state ban.

From New York, the anti-DDT movement spread widely. Soon, the Environmental Defense Fund, which grew out of the Long Island effort and was headed by Mr. Puleston, scored a victory in federal court, which ordered the then newly created Environmental Protection Agency to take DDT off its approved list. Slowly, the ospreys returned.

Osprey are relatively plentiful these days, to the point that they almost are just part of the avian background, like seagulls or starlings. Though, as the young ones just out of the nest make their first madly joyous flights at the beach, I cannot help but pause to marvel.

Jordan’s Run, in memory of a young hero, wasn’t of course just a race, but a time to reflect. 

The memory that our government’s incursion 14 years ago into the cradle of civilization was impulsive, with profoundly tragic consequences, only serves to compound the suffering it has spawned and to widen the circle of compassion that attends it, even unto the small towns where the death of a soldier — a Marine in this case — comes, as Joi Jackson Perle said the other day, as a shock. 

And so it was that when Steve Xiarhos, a police officer from West Barnstable, Mass., with whom I’d been talking near the finish line, took off from his wrist the bracelet commemorating his son, Nicholas, who, like Sag Harbor’s Jordan Haerter, had also given his life in the Mideast, I said, truly, that I was not worthy.

He gave it to me still, saying, “I think you are, I think you have a good heart.”

“Maybe it will make me stronger,” I said, putting on the band, which said, “Cpl. Nicholas G. Xiarhos, USMC, 7/23/2009 * Garmsir, Afghanistan.”

“Maybe I can help others more. . . .”

I was deeply touched, deeply affected. I asked, “How old was your son?”

Twenty-one, he said. “How old was Jordan?”

“Nineteen.”

Nick, who was to die in combat 15 months later, had been one of those saved by Jordan, who stood his ground and fired when a truck packed with explosives was speeding toward the Marine barracks in Ramadi, Iraq, in the early morning of April 22, 2008. That act of heroism, of self-sacrifice, earned him, posthumously, the Navy Cross.

The rightness or wrongness of our representatives’ decision years ago is beside the point, which is that Jordan and Nick were honorable, and that they have united us in suffering and in compassion and, yes, in the joy that was so evident at the foot of Pierson’s hill that day, July 30, which would have been Jordan Haerter’s 29th birthday. 

Apparently, dogs go through a teenage phase. This according to the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Science in England, which, after much research, found that our canine friends display traits that are similar to those of human teens.

No offense to the learned institution, but I’m not buying it. With an actual 17-year-old human in my house, as well as a dog who went through his supposed teen phase a few years ago, I feel I have empirical evidence to invalidate the university’s conclusion.

Teenage behavior in dogs, say the scientists, which occurs when the puppy is just under a year, is characterized by refusing to respond to commands they sweetly obeyed when they were younger, outright rebelliousness, and a tendency to be impulsive, distracted, and erratic. “Training a dog during this phase is crucial or an owner could soon be living with an ill-mannered, undersocialized, hyperactive animal,” concluded the researchers.

While I will concede to a few tenuous parallels here, my own painstaking research in the field has led me to question whether the scientists delved any deeper than the mere periphery of the full-blown, kaleidoscopic teenage experience.

For a start, there is no mention of a teenage dog’s incessant need for Wi-Fi and phone chargers, or the arguments and eye rolling engendered by this need, especially when traveling. Or the long and ultimately irretrievable hours spent playing Xbox, an important and defining phase for at least male teens on the human side.

And if we really are to think of dogs as teenagers, how does one begin to explain their complete indifference toward Snapchat and Instagram?

Then there’s this: If a used, balled-up sock is lying on the floor, there’s a good chance you could get your dog to pick it up in its mouth. True, the probability of the sock then landing in the laundry basket is slim, but with hours of training, involving treats and kind words, it could happen. Not a chance with a human teen.

But it’s not their fault. Apparently, the human teenage phase includes a long spell of selective blindness that renders balled-up socks invisible, along with wet towels and discarded clothing, and also used cups and plates and half-empty bottles of soda.

What about the insatiable appetite of the human male teen, in particular, that often leads to eating mounds of pasta and meat snacks at 1 in the morning? It’s true that a dog too would happily scarf down the pasta and anything else in the middle of the night if presented with the opportunity, but that’s not a teenage phase for a dog — that’s just being a dog at any age.

Ever needed to have a conversation about pot smoking with your four-legged teenager? Or sex? I should hope not, since, at the very least, the latter was probably taken care of a while ago with an operation at the vet’s.

Plus, there’s the heartwarming human energy that teenagers devote to friendships and sociability, which I am often reminded of during 1 a.m. culinary exploits, involving clanging pots as a group of them attempts to make mounds of pasta and meat snacks. My dog, on the other hand, would have had such a hard time sharing his pasta with his friends that it could never have been so endearing an experience.

In fact, it is this ease of human teenagers to spend hours around one another that will always set them apart from dogs. What with their total self-sufficiency as a pack, their freedom to please no one but themselves, their never-ending openness to experimenting with the new, the strides they have made toward connecting with scores of people around the world, many of whom they’ve never met, and the mind-set they frequently exude that the future is all theirs and that it will be entirely compliant with all their expectations, why shouldn’t they spend the entire weekend in bed? I never got any of that from my teenage dog.

Frankly, I think dogs have a long way to go before they can do “teenage” properly.

Judy D’Mello is a reporter at The Star.

It was one of the hottest days so far this summer, but it was one of the best.

Grandchildren visits are exactly what grandmothers crave — but this one was most unusual. One of my 7-year-old grandsons made my day by getting me to do something I never, ever thought I would do. I can safely say it was the first time in my life that I pitched some baseballs.

When my kids were that age, their father was on hand for sports and other such activities. He was more of a sailing man, but was able to throw a ball if the kids were interested.

As I said, it was a very hot day, and the sun was beating down on the grass in the front yard, with no clouds overhead. Teddy’s mother and sister had gone off to participate in some artsy acting project, and he and I were alone at my house when he found a cardboard box filled with old baseball bats, wood and metal, and started swinging them about.

He is a most remarkably persistent person, this grandson, and lately he has been telling his mother that he is going to be a professional baseball player when he grows up. (Even though the only baseball game he has ever seen was the Sag Harbor Whalers versus the North Fork Ospreys a couple of weeks ago. He’s never even seen a Little League game yet.) Teddy went back into the cardboard box, pulled out a regulation baseball, and began cajoling and encouraging me to pitch to him.

I followed him to a shady part of the lawn and he began swinging for the bleachers.

After a few tries I began actually to be able to get the ball to arrive in the general vicinity of boy and bat. One of his early hits flew quite far. “Home run!” I shouted as he ran around an imaginary diamond behind a tree and back to home base. He was wearing his favorite hat, a blue baseball cap with a “B” for Brooklyn Dodgers.

Honestly, I was a little afraid. The ball seemed very hard and quite heavy, to me, heavy enough to be dangerous. Would I throw it so badly that it would hit him in the head? Would I be too slow to get out of the way of a fly ball falling back down to earth? Yes, I guess I understood that I was supposed to catch a ball that was in a trajectory to hit my shoulder or face or stomach — or whatever body part was in the way — but I have never been too good at catching things, even when I was a second grader like Teddy.

Determined to play ball, my grandson rummaged through the box again and came up with another ball, this one soft enough for scaredy-grandma.

The game went on.

Teddy apparently took my pitching in stride, as if it were something I had done all my life. At least, he made no comment on my skills or lack of them.

I don’t think I was throwing strikes, but I was astonished to discover that I could throw the ball into the zone where he could reach it with his bat.

Amused by my prowess, I wished someone in the family had been around to video this unexpected octogenarian achievement. Had his mother or his father or sister or any of the cousins been around, he would no doubt have convinced them to play ball, instead, and I would have missed my chance to demonstrate that it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks.

Teddy is aware that the Dodgers no longer play in Brooklyn and spent a few weeks in July trying to decide which major league team was going to be “his.” I’m told he has settled on the New York Mets, and plans to become a fan. Maybe he’ll take me out to the ballgame one of these days in Queens. Do they still serve Cracker Jacks?

I stand very much corrected. Last week, I wrote with some frustration that it was now impossible to find a parking place at Ditch Plain in Montauk after 10:30 on a sunny weekend morning. I was wrong.

When I rolled in around 9 a.m. more recently, vehicles were backed up from the main lot onto DeForest Road. Others, left by drivers in no-parking zones, tempted expensive citations once the town traffic control officers got there.

The next data point was my friend Tim’s text saying the lots there were full by 8:45 a.m. on Sunday. Then, Russell in the Star front office moved the dial back to 8:30 a.m., when he had taken a pass through all three lots without luck.

Saturday had been cool and blustery with a hard wind from the northeast, so no one much went to the ocean beach, which might have contributed to what economists call pent-up demand. Sunday morning was lovely, with moderate wind and a bit of leftover ocean swell of the slow and easy sort Ditch surfers know and love.

I circled Dirt Lot, slowly, behind my friend Jeremy in his beat-up pickup, who apparently gave up and left. On my way out I was nearly in position to grab a lone spot that opened up by the portable toilets, but a driver on her way in saw it at the same moment and, being nearer by just a car length, began a 94-point turn to snatch it away from its rightful occupant — me. I did not particularly care and went downtown for a scone.

Well, it is not entirely true that I abandoned my surfing mission with equanimity. As I made my left onto the highway, I ruminated grumpily about how backward this town is in not providing sensible drop-off areas the way they do at some beaches on Martha’s Vineyard. And I groused to myself that I was damn sure that no one on the town board had tried to get a parking space at Ditch on any weekend recently — or else they would have done something, right? (Note to self: Remember to ask the candidates for town office about this when they come around in October.)

Everybody is saying that the driving here is the worst they can remember. That may be so, or maybe it’s not, but it’s inarguably the pits where beach parking is concerned.