By TIM KELLY
They’ve seen the light.
Sea Isle was abuzz with activity in the waning daylight hours on Monday, which would have been around 5 p.m. before Saturday night. But thanks to the clock adjustment for daylight savings time, plenty of folks were out and about and enjoying everything Sea Isle has to offer more than an hour later than standard time.
Our unscientific survey was unanimous.
“I like it a lot better this way,” 13-year-old Brianna Wilson said of the time change. “Before, there was no time to do anything after school. You could see it starting to get dark around 4. Now we can go outside, go to a friend’s house, have a play date, all kinds of things you could not do last week.”
Brianna, of Mays Landing, was with brothers Xavier, 14 and Elijah, 7, and the Mix Siblings, Adrianna, 11, Alexandra, 7, and Caiden, 5, also from Mays Landing.
They were holding a footrace, in front of the basketball courts on JFK Blvd., where Sea Isle resident Shannon Lane was shooting hoops.
Shannon Lane of Sea Isle City shoots hoops at the courts on JFK Blvd.
A former varsity player at Ocean City High School, and college player at Stockton, Lane got the urge to fire up some jump shots after doing some shopping.
“I realized there was still plenty of time to get out and enjoy the weather, so here I am.” said Lane, who works as a cook at the Sea Isle Yacht Club. “It’s just a beautiful day to be outside. I’m definitely in favor of (daylight savings time).
For Jordan Carcaci and Courtney Hall, both Glassboro residents and students at Rowan University, the decision to come to Sea Isle was spur of the moment.
“We both had the day off from classes, and we were just driving around,” Jordan said. “We were thinking about what to do, and I told (Hall) that I knew a really cool back road to Sea Isle. It took us less than an hour to get here.”
The friends headed off to the beach, where they planned to get some sand between their toes and probably wade into the mighty Atlantic.
“I really like the change in time,” Courtney said. “It makes the day feel longer and it makes it feel more like spring.”
Back at the playground, 5-year-old Charlie Ciseck and sister Lola, 7 climbed up a ladder while their mom looked on.
“This is great. Maybe they will burn up some of that energy,” their mom said. (Full disclosure: we forgot to get her first name.)
On the Promenade, Glenn Brownhill and wife Patty of the Clermont section of Dennis Township, were enjoying a walk and heading toward the beach.
Glenn a retired health and safety official at Sunoco, and his wife, who works for a local realty firm, said the mild weather lured them to their favorite beach town.
“I left work and realized there was still plenty of time to get out here,” Patty said.
The natives of Aston, PA, said they had been coming to Sea Isle for years, and in 2005 decided to buy their nearby retirement home.
“We were down here for a week’s vacation and before we left (Patty) said ‘wait we have to look at a house for sale,” said Glenn.
“We bought a new house on the way home,” he laughed.
