Stings like a Bee?

13 Sep 07 @ 09:30 AM  category » adventure

I just returned from a trip to the West Coast. My few days in San Francisco were lovely, catching up with old friends and seeing new additions to various friend's families; then a few days in LA where I stayed with friends up in the Hollywood Hills. I went for a run the morning after I arrived and, following a dirt track, turned a corner and found myself quite literally underneath the Hollywood sign, which towered maybe 200 ft above me. A pretty cool location to be hanging out in.

At the other end of town, I spent a couple of days surfing by the pier on Venice Beach. And now I find myself torn. If I were ever to live in LA - which I occasionally think about, mostly half-heartedly - then would I live in the hills, with the views and the breeze and the quiet, or would I live in Venice, so I could go to the beach every day? A dilemma. Since it can take up to an hour and a half to get from one to the other, there is no way of combining the two lifestyles efficiently with one home.

I decided I'd have to live in Venice so I can become a better surfer, but need to have friends or a partner who lives in the hills so I can escape for weekend visits.

So, there I am on Sunday, trying to catch a few waves before driving down to the iMedia conference in San Diego. I'm on a surfboard that's too short for beginner me, but I have a new wetsuit which I am most excited about, and is keeping me happy in the water for ages, and I'm having fun falling off all the time. That is, until I was standing there after a fall in the breaking surf, and felt a sharp stabbing pain in the top knuckle of my big toe. Combined with the breaking wave, this made me trip over, and I wrenched my big toe back. When I lifted my foot out of the water to inspect it, there was a small puncture on my toe and it was bleeding. And the stinging was pretty intense.

So I got out of the water and went in search of a lifeguard. It wasn't really a major issue, but I wanted to be sure it wasn't something to worry about, insofar as I was about to get in a car and drive for 3 hours, so some delayed spasmic reaction would not have been a good thing.

The lifeguard squirted it with saline, saw the blood, and asked me how painful it was on a scale of 1 to 10. I said about a 2 or a 3. He said in that case it could not be a stingray, and anyway, he could not see the spike in my toe. He said that I had probably been stung by a bee.

You're kidding, I said. I was standing in surf. My toe was underwater. Possible, he said: the bees get too close to the water, their wings get waterlogged, they fall in, and can't get out. But they take a while to die and are pretty frantic meantime.

OK, so I can't ever recall having been stung by a bee, so I can't say I know what to compare the feeling to. So I had to believe him.

Well, by Wednesday, my toe was really throbbing and strangely enough, my toenail was the most painful thing of all, Just touching it was inordinately agonising. I could barely walk. That might have had something to do with the fact that for 3 nights I'd been standing around in high heels at a conference (my only other shoes being flip flops), but anyway, it wasn't great.

And since I have a triathlon to run next Sunday in Sag Harbor, it was pretty clear that I may not be up for that now, or at least may not be able to do the run part.

Still, it's a story: I sprained my toe after being stung by a bee underwater while surfing in Venice Beach. You just can't make this stuff up...