umm...I wasn't planning on swimming in these sneakers

I started my day off well.  That I know.  I took the #30 bus to the UCSD campus and followed a steep and beautiful paved road with four switchbacks down to a parking lot with a lifeguard stand.  I guess this would be a popular surfing area...the sign said it was the UCSD access to the water...cool!  I walk down, passing the lifeguard with my confident swagger.  I ask the lifeguard just one question: "the tide is going out, right?"  I should have asked "is the tide out far enough to walk the beach below the cliffs?"  That question would have helped me out a lot.  As it was, I started walking and about a half mile down the beach, I reach a cove where the tide has not completely gone out, but I think I can make it if I run when the wave goes out.  I watch the waves...the undertow is strong.  Real strong.  The break after the fourth wave in each set of five waves is my best bet.  I make an attempt, but I find myself standing on a 20 inch tall rock in the cove, hands pressed firmly against the 300 foot tall cliff in front of me.  The surf hammers me. I get soaked...waves up to my chest.  Cold.  Salty.  Water.  Oops...oh shit.  This is the first time I have ever put my camera in the mesh pocket on the outside of my pack.  Under other circumstances, it would be stolen.  Now it is destroyed.  In one thoughtless moment I destroyed an expensive camera (a replacement of the one I ruined in Berlin, Germany).  Gone. Destroyed. Stupid me.  I want to cry. I don't.  I have made it out of an incredibly dangerous and stupid situation...having almost drowned below the cliffs before Scripps Pier in Torrey Pines State Park.  That is all that matters. I am alive. And wet. But, alive.  I continue walking the coast of LaJolla back to the hostel.  I have walked 8.25 miles today, but my feet are not sore...apparently having wet, squishy feet and varying my walking surface helps.  I take a shower with my clothes on. I wash my shoes and insoles in the shower.  The shoes will have to dry tomorrow.  I go out with everyone at the hostel while they do suicide shots.  How stupid do you have to be to do something called a suicide shot?  For those who are not familiar with suicide shots...these are the instructions:

1. snort lines of salt

My salty bath repels other beachgoers...they look at me, and then the lifeguard, as though being soaking wet is somehow contagious

2. squirt a lime in your eye (keep eyes open...no cheating!)

3. down a shot of tequila

4. try to recover

It is one of the hostel's many employees' birthday (Greg).  He does two suicide shots, and then receives twenty-seven hard spanks in honor of his 27th birthday.  I have had a long day...and I feel only half-commited to being at the bar socializing.  In the interest of not carrying a lot of weight on my back, I have only the clothes drying in the hostel and the long underwear and shorts I am wearing...but I am standing amongst eight of the Brazilian girls from the hostel, thinking how great it would be to have something slightly trendier to wear out.