I panicked. Casually, I had pulled up the surf report app on my iphone and was now doing a double, bug-eyed take: 7-9 foot waves, with excellent conditions. The morning was already halfway over, but I had a show out of town the next day, and work for two days after that. It texted my car pool beach buddy, no response. It had been flat all week, so I decided not to wait. I threw my stuff into my ‘91 Explorer and raced the 30 miles from Eagle Rock to the Manhattan Beach pier.

I found beach side parking without effort. There were only a handful of people out. which didn’t surprise me as it was a weekday morning. Although it was mid-October, temperatures were mid-seventies, no wetsuit needed. I uploaded a picture of the beach to Facebook and gloated to all the office workers before I went in.

Sets were steady, and I managed to ride several tunnels on my boogie board, getting off on time so not to have to paddle back too far. Then it happened. A tsunami dawned on the horizon, and excitement, with a hint of fear overtook me.

I started paddling, but soon realized I was in a bad spot. I hesitated, and ended up being slammed down from the crest of the 11 foot wave, and tossed around under water for about 5 seconds before the ocean allowed me to surface.

To me, the helpless feeling of the angry sea slapping you around is bliss. Drinking sewage is simply like the nausea before a healthy dose of mushrooms takes effect: a rite of passage before achieving a goal. I have been fortunate enough to walk away from being trashed by waves in Indonesia, Hawaii, Central-America, the Middle East and Europe, without serious injury. Aside from some scrapes from my board’s leash, and a couple of shots of urban ocean water, I had gotten away unharmed yet again.

Or so I thought.

As I was walking off the beach, one of the spectators on the pier asked me “how’s the water smelling out there?”. Weird. Aside from some the usual patches of brown water and green foam on top, I hadn’t noticed anything unusual. When I returned to my car I noticed my car pool buddy had finall texted me back. It read:

“Dude we should wait. storm runoff.  Five months of Human feces, dead animals and trash in water”.

My stomach turned a little, but I still felt fine. I replied:

“You big pussy, have another cigarette”

When I came home, having potentially swallowed sewage, I googled “water quality LA after rains”. The result was alarming. Apparently, all the surface crap gets washed into the ocean through stormdrains. One of them is right by the Manhattan Beach Pier. An article in the LA Times reported:

“..public is advised to steer clear of urban beaches after rain, when storm water contaminated with animal and human feces can carry bacteria into the water and sicken swimmers.”

I was fucked.

The next day I felt fine, but the day after that, I began having flu symptoms. 5 days after, I have a sore throat, queasy stomach, and sinus misery. It could just be a flu bug I got from shaking hands after my band played. It could also be the bubonic plague, or cholera, from ingesting human feces.

Today I am visiting Kaiser Permanente Urgent Care.

To be continued…