{"id":1076,"date":"2011-08-31T23:55:42","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T14:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2011-09-01T17:51:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T08:51:48","slug":"running-on-the-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/31\/running-on-the-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Running on the Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine, if you will, a grown man, approximately 30 years old. Now imagine him, running across a beach.<\/p>\n

Now add an incredible downpour, take his clothes, and picture him leaping over suddenly-gouged runoff channels in the sand. Yep that’s me.<\/p>\n

Last Saturday night I went to Imabari, a city near Matsuyama, for salsa night at a club there. They’ve recently moved; the new location was taken over from a burlesque revue (which I had no idea existed around here), so it was much bigger and brighter than the old hole-in-the-wall location and I was excited to see it.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Yuko had already made plans with friends from work, so I went stag with Kevin. Manuel and a mutual friend of theirs rounded out the foursome, and Manuel drove us all in his minivan.<\/p>\n

As the dancing was winding down, Kevin reminded me that I still hadn’t been camping on the beach, and he and Manuel both happened to have their camping gear in the car.<\/p>\n

It seemed like a great idea at the time.<\/p>\n

We left the club a little after 2am and stopped at a convenience store to get some supplies. By the time we finished setting up the tents around 4:30am, the sun’s first rays were just peeking over the eastern horizon, and the first small water droplets were falling pleasantly around us. In fact, I commented that the nice patter might help us sleep well for our anticipated day of fun, sun, and barbequeing.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that small patter grew to a heavy drizzle, then a deluge. Manuel’s tent had not only been leaking while he slept, but it proved better at retaining water than shedding it, leaving everything inside soaked through. The tent I shared with Kevin was a little better off, we only soaked up a bit of water where Kevin’s lanky frame stretched the tent’s seams by his feet.<\/p>\n

In the morning, Manuel was hell bent on getting off the beach as soon as possible. Because all his stuff was already soaked, it didn’t matter that he was taking down his tent in the pouring rain.<\/p>\n

And because he was our ride, Kevin and I were faced with the difficult question of how best to keep our stuff dry while moving it from the beach to the car.<\/p>\n

We eventually accepted the fact that it wasn’t going to let up any time soon. However, we only had the clothes on our backs, and didn’t want them to get drenched while we disassembled the tent and moved everything to the car.<\/p>\n

Both of us being boys on an otherwise-deserted beach, we decided to strip down to our underwear and pack everything in the plastic shopping bags from the night before.<\/p>\n

Cue wet, naked beach running.<\/p>\n

After that, it was pretty easy. With our stuff safely in the car, Kevin and I even took a few minutes to jump in the sea. Heck, we were already naked and soaked, why not? The water was surprisingly warm compared to the cool late-summer rain falling around us, and unusually non-salty because of the downpour, but a few honks from the car reminded us not to stay too long.<\/p>\n

Would I do it again? Probably not on purpose.
\nI’m glad to have the adventure, though. =)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine, if you will, a grown man, approximately 30 years old. Now imagine him, running across a beach. Now add an incredible downpour, take his clothes, and picture him leaping over suddenly-gouged runoff channels in the sand. Yep that’s me. Last Saturday night I went to Imabari, a city near Matsuyama, for salsa night at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,60],"tags":[301,302,16,304,303],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-social-life","tag-beach","tag-camping","tag-rain","tag-running","tag-swimming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1079,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidhed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}