Just got back from a week long vacation on Hilton Head Island. \u00a0Rather than a day by day run-down of the trip, I thought a topical overview would be more interesting. \u00a0 So, the Ocean.<\/p>\n
I swam 10 miles over the course of the week. \u00a02 miles per day, usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon, though the last 2 days had me going twice in the morning so I would have the afternoons free. The ocean wasn’t very rough and the currents weren’t as strong as I expected. \u00a0It was actually a little boring at times. \u00a0I know I can do a mile in about 40 minutes in the pool, so I timed my ocean \u00a0trips and decided that if I swam 45 minutes, that would be about a mile’s worth of effort.<\/p>\n
I did have to take a break in the middle for a day since I was attacked by a Kraken. \u00a0 And by “Kraken” I mean a shell that I tried to pick up off the floor of the ocean with my feet. \u00a0And by “attacked”, I mean that the sharp edge of the shell cut my left big toe. \u00a0Enough that I was bleeding by the time I got back up to the beach. \u00a0I poured water over it to get most of the sand out and then put on flip flops to hobble back to the condo. \u00a0I got it cleaned up, slathered on the neosporin, and slapped a band-aid on it. \u00a0It still seeped for a couple days, but the waterproof band-aids I got did their job and I was back in the ocean.<\/p>\n
Along with the “mystery shell of death” aka “RELEASE THE KRAKEN!”, I found a lot of sand dollars (living), a bunch of small empty shells, and several broken horseshoe crab shells. \u00a0I saw some dolphins in the water on the way across the bridge to the island, a couple jumping fish, was nearly dive-bombed by some pelicans, and \u00a0– on the last day – a jelly-fish. \u00a0Sharks don’t really worry me much – the odds are against an attack – and I know how to handle rip tides. \u00a0But a jelly-fish? \u00a0I don’t mess around with those.<\/p>\n
Another danger of the deep – well, the shallows – were a couple of asshole surf-casters. Despite the clearly posted signs at the entrance to the beach prohibiting fishing from the shore since it was a swimming beach, there were a couple guys out on different days doing just that. \u00a0 I yelled at one of them as I swam past that it was dangerous for him to be fishing while there were swimmers in the water. \u00a0He yelled back that I was far enough out that it wouldn’t matter.<\/p>\n
That, of course, is not the damn point. \u00a0I was pretty steamed, but since I couldn’t find a lifeguard and I was done with my swim for the day I didn’t confront him further. \u00a0Still. \u00a0The shell was pretty bad, but I can’t imagine how much it would suck to get hooked.<\/p>\n
The ocean part of my trip ended peacefully though. \u00a0Took a couple of late night walks on the beach and enjoyed the sound of the waves, the stars overhead and cool breeze. \u00a0Too bad I couldn’t take that with me – though the sunshine during the day did give me an excellent tan that will last a while as I go back to work in my windowless office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just got back from a week long vacation on Hilton Head Island. \u00a0Rather than a day by day run-down of the trip, I thought a topical overview would be more interesting. \u00a0 So, the Ocean. I swam 10 miles over the course of the week. \u00a02 miles per day, usually one in the morning and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}