Pacific Ocean virgin no more

Before moving to California, you picture that once you get here, you'll spend all your weekends at the beach, swimming and tanning and generally living an outside-oriented life. Then you get to San Francisco, and you realize you'll need a sweater and long pants at all times and most definitely a wet suit to get in the water. So after 2.5 years here, I know better than to expect to get in the ocean when I go to it. Instead, my beach visits involve a lot of walking, a lot of lying out of the wind and reading, and whatever tanning the weather that day affords. Thus today was a real treat for a girl who grew up in a hot climate and loved it.

Today it supposedly hit 98 in San Francisco. I would not argue with it having been 90. It was so hot when I walked outside in a bathing suit and shorts that I knew I was doing the right thing in playing hooky for a few hours and heading to Fort Funston. I knew I was doing the right thing in lathering on the sunscreen, packing a book and a towel, and heading to the sauna that was the sea. Normally the wind blows cool off that water even when the air is warmish; but today, as I settled into the sand, I started to sweat immediately, with the air barely stirring, and when it did, it feeling like a hot breath blown all the way up from the equator. I can't say it was the most pleasant sitting-in-the-sun weather, but it felt great to be hot—that's a rare sensation to feel here.

Eventually I got so hot that I knew I had no choice but to enter the water to cool down. If you've ever swum in New England in summer, you know what chilly water feels like. If you've ever swum in New England in spring, you know what frigid water feels like. I once jumped into 45 degree water in Maine, and every muscle in my body clinched up; my breathing halted. Thankfully, after a second or two I regained control of myself and bolted out of the water; but clearly I didn't learn my lesson, as a few weeks later I found myself diving into water just 5 degrees warmer—and swimming my heart out to get to the next dock and get out. I would guess that the ocean here today was no warmer than 50 degrees. When you first step into water that temperature, it feels refreshing, especially on a day like today. But within seconds, your feet start to ache from the cold, and the smart thing to do would be to exit immediately.

The thing is, you can numb to it. And when it's sweltering out, that doesn't sound like such a bad option. I would take a step and then let my skin settle into the cold; take another one, re-settle. To my amazement, after five minutes I was thigh-deep. I dipped my arms in, splashed them wet. The sweat was evaporating; my skin relaxing. So when a wave came, I did something I would never expect to have tried in the Pacific Ocean—I knelt down to let it overtake me. It crashed against my chest—and then I ran like hell back toward the sand. That is one cold ocean!!!