At the Beach We Saw: Lifeguards

Note: This is (hopefully) the first in a short series about things we saw at the beach.

Lifeguards take a morning run before beginning their daily duties at Lori Wilson Park in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

We always like to get to the beach early when we are there. That way, we can get a good spot on the beach, even though sometime during the day someone else comes and sets up their beach chairs/umbrella/tent/whatever right in front of us. The nerve! Anyway, we also like to get there early to enjoy just sitting there a bit before things get crowded and while it is still relatively cool outside. And besides that, we just like the be there as long as we can each day, since we don’t get to go to the beach all of the time.

One of the interesting things about being to the beach early is that we get there before the lifeguards go on duty. They usually arrive around the same time that we do, but before they go out to work, they have a group meeting and some warm-up/exercise time, which usually includes a run down the beach, as you can see here. That’s good, because if I were drowning, I wouldn’t want some fat, lazy guy trying to rescue me. I want someone who can actually do the job!

Fortunately, we didn’t see them have to do any life-saving work, because everyone seemed to be safely swimming on the days we were there. We did see one of the lifeguards take off quickly on one of their wave runners one day, and we wondered what that was all about. But we finally figured out that they were just having a training exercise when the lifeguard brought back a couple of red beach balls with anchor ropes attached to them, which had been put out in the ocean earlier as “targets” for the exercise. Once again, nice to know that they are trained to do things like that. Just in case.

So thanks to the lifeguards who were there watching over us each day. We tried our best to be safe!

About the photo:
A single RAW exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about the photo software and gear I use at the camera gear page.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Olympus 14-42mm IIR