Carol Bontekoe

This blog has been keeping track of my adventures since 2004. The stories and the adventures have come from my college dorm room to Uganda, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan, learning Dutch in the Netherlands to living in the wilds of Homer, Alaska. I went back to school in Amsterdam to study Theaterwetenschap (Theatre Science) at University of Amsterdam. And now my adventures as a Fruit Fly, a Sexy Unicorn, and creating a movement with Team Sparkle in Chicago.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Working the job not letting the job work me

Last Wednesday was the lowest tide of the year. I was able to talk the higher ups at the police dept into letting me take a friend along in the ATV. My friend Howard is a Naturalist. He came with me to show me all the cool life that can be seen during a low tideI went from never having seen a Sea Star(commonly known as a Sea Fish) to having seen about 50.. I wore flip-flops(like always) while we walked along slick slippery rocks. I ended up biting it on a large rock. So, after Howard and I had walked a ways out on the slick rocks I tried to be smart and walk back to the shore on a sandbar. The sandbar eventually stopped and I tried to wade through what I thought was shallow water. It turned out I made my walk back to shore twice as hard as my walk out. I had to walk through nearly chest high water on top of slick rock with a huge amount of sea weed pulling me down. When I finally arrived to the shore with Howard and a couple that wanted tomake sure I didn't die(although who would they have called to save me? I'm the beach patrol.) were standing there watching me. I could feel my legs getting slashed open on the rocks, but it was so cold that it didn't really hurt. When I came out of the water I started to bleed everywhere. Howard and I walked back to the ATV I was muddy and bloody. There were a bunch of school children near by so Howard brought over a sun star to show them. I came with him and acted as if I didn't notice that my leg was completely red from the blood. .
I can only hope the children learned as much about sea stars that day as I did. And that they will remember that day as the day they saw a boat wreck survior walk onto the beach-not just some crazy stubborn lady who took the worst possible route to the beach.

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