why i like lifeguards

Today's blog involves a little bit of reading... I wish I had pictures, maybe I'll draw one and post it later.

So here is the story of how Jane had to get rescued by the lifeguard today.  We were over at Hanna's cute little studio, which is a half block walk from Wind & Sea (such an awesome location!)  Jane and I usually go to La Jolla Shores, where the split between surfing zone and swimming/boogie boarding zone is clearly marked.  Since at W&S there were no cones set up, we just headed into the water that we saw straight in front of us.  We did notice that there were quite a few surfers out there, but no big deal.  After we got over the cold of the water, we paddled out and barely caught one wave before a surfboard-riding life guard told us we had to have fins on to be out there.  

Feeling quite defeated, we headed back to shore.  But we got the brilliant idea to ask the lifeguard where we could go if we only had boogie boards sans fins.  He points us to an area where a bunch of swimmers were sort of wading in the water.  Side note: between the two different areas, there are some rather large rocks.. ones that look like you'd get hurt on if you swam into them.  So with much excitement, we head out to the swimming area.  We swim a bit past the swimmers because we didn't want to risk running over them.  We noticed Mr. Lifeguard on his surfboard, and he comes to say hello to us.  We have a little discussion about how fins are important and he warns us of the rocks in a few areas as well as a rip tide.  We thank him for the info and then part ways, but he keeps hovering around our area.  We begin to paddle away, but realize that we're not going anywhere... hm, strange.  Jane notices that there are a few swimmers that have made it to where we were chilling, and they are using the lifeguard's board to kick off of to get them going in the right direction.  How interesting, I've never seen that before!  So Mr. Lifeguard comes back to us and tells us that we're lookin' good but soon becomes concerned when I begin trying to tug on Jane's board.  Background:  every time we go out, I always end up pulling Jane's board out past the waves, just to make sure we're together and because she's too lazy to get herself where she needs to be.  At this point, it's becoming pretty clear that we're caught in this rip tide.  So he paddles back over and apparently asks Jane if she needs some assistance and she says yes, thinking that he's just gonna let her push off his board.  Instead, he says, "up on the board" and makes her get on his surfboard with him.  I see them paddling towards me, and I'm thinking that we're just gonna swim into shore together.  So I begin kicking and paddling towards shore, but he points to me and says, "you too, up!".  

So now the three of us are on his board, trying to get out of the rip tide.  It's not working so well, so he turns the board around and we go the other way.  Using a few of the waves we caught he navigates us around a big mound of scary rocks, and drops us off at the shore.  Actually, the last wave we caught in knocked us off the board, but we were in shallow enough water that we just managed to take care of ourselves from there.  

There you go, your tax dollars at work!