Polar bear club

One of the great lies of this state is the California beach movie. The water off SF is frigid, colder than the UK thanks to a current bringing Arctic water down from Alaska, and swimming off the coast is almost guaranteed to bring hypothermia and bollocks that resemble half a walnut.

Nevertheless the sun was out and the beach called. We drove up to Stinson Beach (see photo) for some sun time and maybe a bit of swimming. The road there is one I’d like to drive in an MX-5 without a passenger – twisty, turny and with a sharp drop off to get the adrenaline going – but as chauffeur I took it calmly.

We got to the beach and enjoyed the sun for a while, then M announced she was going swimming. She loves the water and will spend hours in it. This love outweighs the fact it was bloody freezing, and she frolicked happily while I dozed in the sun. Then she came out and it was time to prove my manhood by going for a swim too. I was not looking forward to this.

I’m haunted by a horribly accurate routine Billy Connelly used to do about swimming in the North Sea, which is basically the Arctic Ocean by another name. You get in as far as you can but the worst moment is when it reaches groin height. You either get a slap of a wave to the happy sacks, or even worse it just rolls up your thigh and kisses the underside, leading to a tiptoe provoking wave of cold. But my woman had gone first – how could I back out. Besides, I promised myself I’d swim in the Pacific and now was the time.

The key to these things is getting it over with quickly. Wade in to sufficient depth and then just dive in and break the curse. Once you’re wet all over there’s nothing left to fear. Except the jellyfish, and the sharks. Thankfully there were few jellies around and they weren’t the stinging kind, and shark fins were nowhere to be seen.

The jellies were a bit of an issue – the mouth remained firmly closed and I blew air out of my nostrils when diving. I still have a nightmare or two about ingesting one of those buggers. Sadly jellies are becoming all the more common. Their natural predators, turtles and sunfish, have been decimated and now they are multiplying like rats.

So I did my swim, which wasn’t exactly enjoyable but refreshing at least. M went back in and stayed for half an hour, a fit of superhuman cold control considering how she complains about the temperature of the summers. We’re both water people, but I’m not a polar bear.

Earthquake!

I've been living in California for over three years now and I've never felt an earthquake. There have been a couple but I've always been somewhere else. Now I come to New Jersey and feel one within days.

It was around 2pm when we got to the beach and set up the deck chairs and umbrella before anointing ourselves with sunscreen and settling down for a quick picnic before going for a swim. As I sat down the chair I noticed it was rocking. M remarked on it as well, and we agreed it was probably just the wind. But the rocking didn't stop, in fact it intensified, before dropping away after about ten seconds.

A minute or so later someone in the group next to us started to talk about a tremor, so M popped over to have a chat. Turns out the wind wasn't that strong; instead a 5.8 quake had hit Virginia and we'd felt it a few hundred miles away. It turns out the plate that makes up part of the East Coast is fairly solid and unbroken, so seismic shock carries further than on the West coast, where the plate is more broken up.

It's my first US earthquake (I've felt one in the UK) and was exciting, and a little worrying. We shall see what the rest of the week brings...