Yesterday was my dad’s birthday. I really miss him. Had cancer not taken him in 2016 he would have turned 96. Still, he got to within 6 weeks of turning 92 and was darn healthy for all but the last 2 months. Just about everything out there is trying to kill people in their 80s and older. Isabel’s dad is now 85 or 86, still creeping around gently but definitely not just tottering off into antiquity, he’s arrived! About once a year (and the frequency is increasing) he gets a bladder infection or something else and it seems death is just around the corner. Darned if he hasn’t rallied and recovered each time, but it always gives us a scare. Now he’s worried about COVID-19! That seems a bit silly given everything else that the grim reaper seems to be throwing at him. He’s pretty safe, nicely isolated down in deepest darkest Cornwall (as they say) out in the country. Problem is he has access to cable TV and the internet, and the media is constantly working everyone up into a frenzy over the pandemic.
If everyone was really so worried about death and dying, maybe more folks would wear their seatbelts and get their flu jabs. Lots of folks die from the flu each year. More die in car accidents. Even more die from causes related to obesity, but there are fat bodies everywhere, happily wandering around stuffing bags of crisps into their pie holes, figuring their doctor will give them a pill to fix whatever damage they’re doing to themselves.
A couple days ago I had what at the time felt like a near death experience. Not the first one in my 61 rotations around sol, but the first involving an element of mother nature (she hate me) seemingly “coming for me”. This does come under the heading of “no sh_t there I was, thought I was gonna die”.
Soooo, after a day of self-isolation on JollyDogs and a couple of minor boat projects, the water was looking flat and the sun low enough on the horizon that sunburn wasn’t a threat. Time to go for a nice vigorous SUP paddle and work off that batch of cookies I baked a few days ago. And ate in three days, oink. Fun to explore near the shore of the nearby motus, wander up the hoas to look for critters, work on core muscles.
It is fair to note that this particular part of the lagoon is an obvious shark nursery. Lots of little black tip reef shark puppies paddling around in shallow water and shark teenagers visit us when we’re snorkeling. A while back I paddled over a bommie where rather large shark mommy and daddy sharks were lying motionless. None has ever shown any aggression and only a little curiosity. On the contrary, if a tiger shark acts curious, it’s time to exit stage left.
Suddenly there was a blur of movement in the corner of my eye and the SUP was impacted on the stern with a force that knocked me off and INTO THE WATER WHERE SHARKS LIVE!!! A shark, probably some surly teenager shark, had elected to investigate my lovely Red inflatable SUP as a dinner option. Can’t understand why. Doesn’t everybody know that vinyl tastes like, well, vinyl? Would you get vinyl on your pizza? Heck no!
So there I was spinning round, wielding my mighty SUP paddle in case the creature might make another pass to see what human flesh tastes like. Perhaps the encounter was too disappointing as I was left alone with plenty of time to squeal like a little girl with a serious adrenaline rush in progress. Quickly assessing my proximity to the shoreline versus JollyDogs, a command decision was made to swim/wade ashore, dragging my now flabby remnant of an SUP with me. Once there a bit of hollering got Isabel’s attention and soon she arrived by dinghy to retrieve her cowering hubby. Back on JollyDogs, after a shower on the stern (just in case I’d soiled myself) she filled me with restorative adult beverages, a nice meal, then patted me on the head.
SUPs are great exercise, but so far I’ve had difficulty achieving an elevated heart rate, except when pumping them up, and when being attacked by a shark.
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