Life as Zenos

Mom, Dad, thanks for teaching me how to swim.

I was in Monzanillo, Mexico at the beach the other weekend with a group of friends.  We were all in and out of the water and having a great time getting sunburned.  I am always amazed that people will swim in the ocean without having read anything about it, or maybe I am just a prolific reader with an over active immagination and fear of death by drowning or something.  I've never got caught in a rip current, but certainly have read and seen pictures, and could tell that the beach we were at had some, albeit decently weak, currents going on.  I noticed four friends out in the water, Moritz, Ayami, Kyle and Hiromi and they seemed to just be swimming and having a good time but I could see that they were getting pulled out further, probably without them even realizing.  My friend Ai asked me to go swim with her, but I told her that I needed to go check on my four friends first.  I ran over to the water and swam out to where two of them were, Hitomi and Kyle, and as I arrived I could tell they were starting to get a little worried.  I grabbed the Hitomi's hand, and with the help of the other guy and some hastily shouted instructions we swam sideways out of the current and safely back to shore.  I was pretty tired at this point, but looking back I could see that my other two friends were still stuck out there and getting pulled out further despite them swimming back towards shore.  I ran back towards our group, and they did not as of yet realize that anything was wrong.  The guy that I had just come back to shore with me (Kyle) had his son at the beach as well and he was wearing a life vest.  I told my friend's son, about 8 years old, to give me his (luckily large) life vest, shoulted at my friends to get help, put the life vest on, strapped the top buckle, and ran back towards the water.  I could see my Moritz and Ayami struggling out in the middle of the current, and they were now separated, with the Ayami getting pulled further out.  Truly fearful now, I plunged into the water, and swam hard to reach them, the waves breaking over my head with frustrating regularity, and the life-vest impeding my ability to dive below them.  I reached Moritz, and he was swimming ok but I could see his frustration at not being able to reach Ayami and help her.  He yelled at me to go help her, and I yelled to him to go back into shore.  Swimming further out, I was terrified as I saw Ayami struggling to keep her head above water, lying on her back and hardly moving.  The waves would more often than not obstruct my view of her, but I was making progress, and she finally saw me coming out to get her.  I yelled at her to just keep her head above water, and wait for me to get there.  An agonizing few moments later, I finaly reached her and forced her to face away from me as I reached around her body with my right armto help her stay above water.  She was retching hard, trying to throw up the sea-water that she had already swallowed.  After a few waves breaking over our heads, she caught her breath, and was finally able to start helping us swim, and we started latterally to get out of the current.  Looking back towards the beach, I could see that there were now life-guards in the water and that Moritz was on a board getting help getting back to the beach.  Finally another life-guard reached us, and Ayami was able to get on the board and towed in, while I swam the rest of the way.

More life guards showed up and gave Ayami sprite to drink.  She's a cute girl and they then proceeded to hit on her and one of them actually got her number.  haha.  A crazy experience, I'm truly grateful that everyone was ok in the end. 

You are awesome Google.  In Gmail I typed a message in  which I said that I would attach a file and then accidentally did not.  Instead of sending it, gmail pops up a message and asks if I meant to attach a file.  I mean, that's really simple but kind of an awesome user experience. :)

So it has been a long time since I have actually sat down to write a blog, and this one won't be a long one.  With Neum's hard work of a single day (http://1inday.com), my blog has finally been resuscitated and I can blog again!  Come back soon for pictures and info about my travels in Shanghai and where my travels take me.  :)