a dip in the North Sea

June 14. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. There were three of us, A, J, and yours truly. Ms. K had said her goodbyes and was on her way back to the airport to fly back to London.

There was one thing we had to do before moving away from the seafront and ducking down to the Newcastle Quayside. We had to duel the North Sea.

Now, I'm not one of your hippy-dippy gung-ho mountain-climber types. I don't have to "challenge Mother Nature" to feel good about myself. I don't go whitewater rafting and then say I've defeated the river. I don't go bouldering in random canyons and call myself a rock-god. I don't meditate on the burning sands of the Sahel and claim I've communed with the Great Spirit. I don't climb Mount Everest and think it's an unusual feat. Nature freaks and outdoorsy types generally make me sick.

But I've got this thing about oceans. They tick me off. They're high on themselves, for one thing. They think they're effing fabulous just 'cause they're composed of enormous volumes of saline water. They're all swept up in their own magnificence just 'cause they're self-contained transcontinental biospheres which support a vast majority of the planet's wildlife. Oceans and seas cover 75 percent of the world's surface, and due to that meager factoid these oversize aquatic masses think they own the place. Arrogant pricks. They're just big puddles. Tides, weather systems, storms, and a half-dozen unique and independent ecosystems Do Not Necessarily a Renowned Body of Water Make.

So I challenge the seas wherever I go. I throw down. I stand on the beaches, pound my chest like King Kong in his prime, and dare 'em to come on. I kick off my shoes and socks, stomp those bastards' tides right in, wade into them like the effing Colossus of Rhodes, and frickin' punch them right in the rollers. No major component of the hydrosphere messes with me and gets away with it. I learned the East China Sea real good last year in Haeundae, South Korea. That chickenshit excuse for a body of water won't be coming back for a second helping anytime soon. So there I was, fresh out of the Newcastle Priory and feelin' mean. And then bam, what do I see? The frickin' North Sea, sitting there all blue and green and grumpy-looking under that fresh blue sky, looking like it had a chip on its shoulder. Putz thought he was hot shit just 'cause he was sitting pretty at nine degrees Celsius. So I turned to my posse (A and J) and said, "Hey, fellas, we're not going to let this creep get away with that kind of attitude, are we? Let's show him who's boss." So we went down to the beach. King Edward's Beach, known by the locals as "King Eddie's Beach." Here, look:


Fine, fine sand. Velvety stuff, effervescent in sunlight, extraordinarily silky underfoot—the kind of stuff sandbox manufacturers would kill for. We selected our base of operations carefully: a rock outcrop at the southern end of the beach.


There we doffed all unnecessary articles of clothing and took the North Sea head-on.


...successfully, I might add. All we did was head-butt it right in the breakers and it went weeping home to Mommy.


Then (shivering slightly) we dried off, changed clothes and had a celebratory cider in the Turks Head.


Ahhhh, sweet victory!