FUKUSHIMA FEVER OR BEER

A model of Fukushima tsunami height, not a radiation model. It just looks like a radiation model with the hot red. via beforeitsnews.com

That red line aiming for Oregon hit me with a wave of Fukushima Fever.

If you don’t live on the Oregon coast, you drive to the Oregon coast.

That’s how it works.

If you don’t like the drive, you move there.

I grew up on the Oregon coast so every time I go to the beach it feels like going home even after family members all moved to drier climates.

Maybe it’s the same homey feeling with people raised in Portland, but I doubt it.

While the beach is always the beach, Portland has changed enough to make you look twice. Old timers might not like the changes and stop coming back.

The beach doesn’t do that…until now.

Coasties know the beach rules better than anyone. If they screw up, and know better, they’ll hear about it the rest of their lives.

What are the rules?

Never turn your back on the ocean.

Beware of the sneaker wave.

Know where the tide is, ebbing or flowing.

Don’t climb on the rocks at Sunset Bay and get caught. The Coast Guard has better things to do then pluck you in a panic.

Those are the DO NOTS.

The do list is shorter.

Bring warm clothes and a towel.

Bring a beer cooler with cold beer.

Bring food to share.

It’s pretty easy.

You won’t have a chance of becoming an old fart if you think you’ve got the ocean figured out.

It only takes one mistake.

Mine wasn’t fatal, but it could have been.

After tipping a few cold ones I walked the beach with the idea of jumping into the water when nature eventually called. It did, and I did.

Was it cold? No more than the usual numbing cold.

Did I get my feet wet? I got in up to my shoulders, and it was quite nipply. And no one else was in the water.

Later in the evening I got a hack that didn’t stop until the next day and a dose of cough syrup.

Of course I got chilled in the ocean, but more than that I got the Fukushima Fever.

You’ve heard of Fukushima Fever?

The fever is more than a tanked up baby boomer making things up to convince his wife he didn’t drink too much.

The Coast Guard didn’t need to send the rescue chopper; no EMT’s were necessary.

Getting chilled to the bone is standard after a dip in the May time Pacific Ocean. You expect it.

I blame the rest on Fukushima Fever, which is different than a brown bottle fever that makes you call in sick on a Monday.

My personal history with accidental nuclear radiation began on my 1986 wedding day, an outdoor affair on a rainy day when residents were advised to stay indoors. Why?

The Chernobyl radiation plume.

In an odd coincidence for 1979 The China Syndrome came out on March 16, followed by the Three Mile Island meltdown on March 28.

I saw the movie in a Brooklyn, NY theater and heard the movie line, “An accident of this magnitude could render an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.”

The entire audience gasped in unison. I thought of that while I gasped with Fukushima Fever.

Should we be nervous about Pacific Ocean radiation? Should we avoid contact with the water? Stop eating seafood?

Or do we just calm down, take a dip when we feel like it, and carry on?