It was Thursday, April 8, and I was standing on the Fifth Avenue boardwalk, at a press conference to celebrate Asbury Park's new CAFRA permit.

One by one, state officials including Governor Jim McGreevey, Environmental Protection Commissioner Brad Campbell, and Community Affairs Commissioner Susan Bass Levin congratulated the city and Asbury Partners on obtaining the all-important environmental permit that will let us start beachfront redevelopment in earnest.

And City Manager Terry Reidy had a special announcement: Just days before, the city had earned its first-ever bond rating from Moody's Investment Services and we'd completed our first successful on-line bond sale - quite a victory, considering that the state had threatened to take over Asbury Park's battered finances only weeks before we took office.

At last, the crowd and cameras dispersed, and I saw my chance. I slipped down to the Fourth Avenue boardwalk where McGreevey and an aide were having an animated discussion and carefully avoided eye-contact with his ever-present bodyguards, identifiable by their dark suits, black sunglasses, and convincingly thick necks.

Then I shimmied around a chain link fence into the boardwalk construction zone.

At last! There it was, in all its breath-taking glory: a brand new boardwalk stretching all the way to the Casino!

No more rusty nails and splintered wood to rip my favorite pants. No more indignant calls from a friend who'd fallen knee-deep through the boards. No more plywood patches and yellow caution tape to keep Katie Couric and the Today Show crew from crashing down onto the sand.

Yes, finally, unbelievably, it was under my feet: a beautiful, solid boardwalk - rebuilt from the pilings up, and scheduled to extend all the way to Seventh Avenue by the Fourth of July.

"Oh, baby! Where are my roller skates when I need them?"

Never mind that the first call I got would invariably be from a beach-goer complaining about a loose nail near Second Avenue or demanding to know why we didn't use the same South American hardwood that the last council installed just south of Convention Hall.

"But it's not really endangered wood," people had already argued. "The city agreed to use certified hardwood that was recovered from a lake bottom."

"That was the original plan, but the lake wood wasn't available and they shipped uncertified hardwood from endangered rainforests instead."

"But rainforest wood is supposed to look nicer and last longer than traditional Southern yellow pine."

"That's true, but we want the planet to last a little longer, too…"

And, standing there in the April sun, it suddenly occurred to me that my excitement wasn't entirely due to this empty, pristine new stretch of boards.

Rather, the boardwalk that really excited me was strong and weathered and baptized by years of sandy feet, mustard stains, and ice cream spills - the record of thousands of happy vacationers who flocked to Asbury Park's beach.

But instead of imagining the fabled Asbury Park of thirty or fifty or a hundred years ago, I was finally - unmistakably - picturing the Asbury Park of the coming decade.

And, yes, the fact that this fabulous stretch actually exists at a time when the city still has a $2 million budget gap for 2004 seems nothing short of miraculous to me.

I glanced over my shoulder to ensure that Mr. Thick Neck wasn't looking in my direction and did a quick victory jig on the boardwalk.

The sweetest moments aren't always the ones captured by the television cameras.