Survival Of The (un)Fittest
Well, after a fairly uneventful day spent sleeping in late and finishing repainting and re-assembling my bicycle transport rack, I talked Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup into joining me at the beach on Sunday afternoon.
About 4 PM we loaded up a few things into the Suburban and I ratcheted both bicycles onto the rebuilt rack, and in about five minutes we were in the Old Coast Guard Station parking lot heading toward the sun and sand.
As the Turbo Pup and I bolted down the beach ahead of Pat who chose to walk instead of riding her bike, I noticed three young men and two women ahead of us that--from their pasty skin tone--were obviously...gasp...tourists entering the water and wading toward the sandbar which had been exposed during the 1:15 low tide.
The problem
all of the visting dumbasses lovely fair skinned visitors tourists don't understand about wading out to the sandbar down here is that our tide runs about SIX OR SEVEN FEET normally, and with the new moon, yesterday's tide was probably closer to EIGHT FEET from high to low.
Just last week a
32 year old woman drowned on the exact same sand bar chasing her own children, and close to a dozen people have died since we've lived here because of their insane desire to wander a half mile offshore without understanding the dynamics of the ocean in this area.
Any way, I spent the next hour worrying about the safety of these five souls, and marking lines on the sand to measure the advance of the tide while they lounged around on the ever diminishing sand bar.
Finally, after about 75 minutes, and trying to ignore the drama unfolding in front of me, I called 911 and reported their situation to the operator. After telling her who I was, where I was, and what was happening, the silly bitch tried to connect me with the State Highway Patrol, so I hung up the Cell phone and waited again because by then the stranded party had noticed their situation and started moving around.
After another ten minutes, when it was clear that they were still not leaving the sand bar, I pointed them out to another beach patron whom agreed that I should call the authorities on their behalf.
I dialed 911 again, and this time the operator had the presence of mind to connect me with the Coast Guard, and the gentleman on the other end of the phone started staging a rescue operation as I reported on the movement of the group off of the bar into the deep channel that had developed between them and the shore as the tide rose.
Before the authorities could really get things moving, other bystanders had entered the surf and the party made it across the deep water and started wading to shore, so we called the official rescue effort off.
I ended up talking to the coast Guard twice more on the cell and the Glynn county sheriff's department called me to verify that the people had made it back to shore, and I and another bystander gave them a good lecture as they stumbled onto shore quite embarrassed by the stir they had caused with their offshore expedition.
Two of the three men had to literally carry the third man part of the way to shore, and one of the two girls was also quite shaken by the event. If any one of them had suscumbed to the current, the entire party most likely would have been lost. They were carried several hundred yards down the beach from where they first entered the surf.
Still, I think that they really didn't understand that their experience wasn't just bad luck or some happenstance occurrence, but was a brush with a real and ever present danger that the ocean presents each and every day out of the year.
I've had the pleasure of growing up going to the beach quite frequently, and I've taken survival swimming classes in college, had Navy swimming training, in addition to being a certified scuba diver and spent hundreds of hours water skiing and operating powerboats on lakes and offshore, and I WOULD NOT HAVE GONE WHERE THESE PEOPLE WENT AND FURTHER, in my present physical condition I might not have survived the return trip.
Regardless, I was happy that they made it back and that we didn't need helicopters, rescue swimmers, or the coroner, but the whole experience basically ruined my afternoon because I didn't go to the beach to work, I just wanted to hang out.
I guess the most frightening thing I learned was how long it takes to get someone excited enough to mobilize a rescue effort on our beach during the offseason. I also believe that just because the government elects to pave a parking lot beside the beach, that every moron in the United States need to come down here to our little island and screw up my Sunday afternoon playing baby sitter for them and
their inbred kids little darlins.
And no, as some of my fellow islanders said today, the government shouldn't be expected to have to put up signs telling grown people to keep their stupid asses and the bodies of the aforementioned
inbred kids little darlins off of the bloody sand bar at low tide.
Lions, Tigers, Meerkats, and the rest of the animal kingdom still understand the concept of "survival of the fittest", and I think that it's about time that all of the government school educated, lawyer hiring idiots out there got a clue that an ounce of prevention is worth a whole damn lot more than a pound of government mandated and taxpayer paid-for cure for practically everything that potentially ails them.
For future reference, I'm telling you people (not everyone, but you know who you are), I don't think that you should expect any supermen to come racing to your rescue every time you choose to do something INCREDIBLY STUPID, so don't put yourself in the kind of position I saw these people in today else someone's probably going to a funeral.
Dammit...
