Sandy Backpack

I left at 6:15 this morning not long after day break. I started off with a 7 mile run to Heritage park and then the Wind and Sea restaurant, then I covered both sides of the harbor island and finally up Cove Road and back to the parking lot. It was cold and clear and beautiful.

I quickly changed into my bathing suit and head down the stairs. I feel relatively warm after the run and only need a short sleeved shirt on the way to the beach.

It is almost exactly high tide time (8:00) and it is a deep high tide (6.8). Although the surf report claims 3-4 foot waves. Nothing is breking other than shore breaks that pounce right on the sand. Some of those are pretty good sized. I have to adjust my takeoff spot today and start closer to the ramp.

There is a small group of swimmers gathered on the ramp just above the sand and it looks like they have just finished.

I stash my pack up on the top of the rocks where I think it should be safe from oncoming waves then I head into the water and start swimming after just a few steps. It only takes a couple steps to reach waist high water.

My very first reaction is that this does not seem as cold as I was expecting. I am blaming this on the run I just finished which I figure has raised my core temperature. Of course the first thing I start thinking of is if this is some sort of a biological prank. Does this mean my core will plummet soon and I’ll become another statistic? Leave it to me to come up with this gloom scenario but fortunately I know myself well enough that I figure that is exactly what this is. Suffice it to say that that did not happen and I felt good the entire swim. As the bully in the Simpsons is fond of saying, “HawHaww.”

The water is very bouncy all along the beach. The surface is mostly smooth but the tide is so high that when these shore breaks recede back out shore, it creates another wave heading back out to sea and ripples all the way back to where I am.

I cut the swim short today due to time constraints. I head back to shore and a wave practically sets me right on the sand in front of my backpack, which is sandy and wet. Welp, I guess I didn’t stash it quite far enough. Fortunately my towel and clothes are not soaked and just my sweat shirt has a few moist spots.

Today I drive to my parents just 5 minutes away because my Dad and I are going to church together where some old time family friends are speaking. The topic is the second coming which is probably one of the subjects I have the hardest time with in Christian doctrine. If a literal reading of Revelations is correct then that seems to render so many other beliefs incorrect. How do I hold these conflicting literal truths together. I feel like they must be held together. Well not the literal interpretations. Those will box with one another until one falls.

I just don’t feel like I have the energy to debate these facts. Nor do I feel that it will lead to any fruitful result. Of coarse that does not stop me from slipping into debate mode. I’m trying to find the question here that the answers put forth in this talk are born from. Perhaps in the question I can find some poetry that brings resolution.