Less a sequel than a continuation to the previous Surf Science article, right here.
So let’s get right back into rubbish.
Okay, Trident asks you to raise your hand if your idea of fun is standing in chin high piles of your own waste. Yes, Weird Bob, we see and waving your hand frantically and grinning like a loon. Anyway, we hate to break it to you, but we reckon you’re pretty much alone in your enjoyment of being enveloped in filth. ‘Coz the rest of us find it distasteful to say the least.
Glassy eyed.
As we all know only too well, plastic rubbish is everywhere. However, there are other kinds of rubbish so ubiquitous we almost forget it’s there. Like broken glass. Jeez. Trident’s exact phrase in the previous article regarding this scourge was: “But hey, is it kiff getting changed into your wetsuit pre-surf in the parking lot with broken glass beneath your sensitive tootsies?”
Trident can’t claim to know what the surroundings are like at any particular surf spot across the country. Let alone the world. Perhaps your local surf spot is an idyllic postcard perfect paradise. Blue skies are the norm, with tanned senoritas in thongs serenading you as you walk across beaches with sand the colour of sunlight. The only pollution you ever encounter is the flower petals thrown before you by adoring locals as you stride towards the surf.
Sadly for the rest of us however, broken glass is a common hazard. And for surfers in particular. How come? Well, ‘coz unless you’re one of those fruitcakes who wear shoes and change into their wetsuit right at the water’s edge like Weird Bob does, most of us need to walk barefoot across parking lots and beaches before we even hit the ocean. (Rocks are another obvious hazard for bare feet, but Mother Nature came up with that one, so rant to her all you want.)
Don’t bottle that righteous anger up.
In South Africa, much of the broken glass comes from shattered car windows. This is another hazard of surfing in this country, discussed in more detail previously here. Anyhow, the aftermath of some doos helping himself to whatever he wants in your car is often the broken window glass on the ground. The plus side of this? Not much, but this glass tends to break in little blocks from the treatment car windows receive. So although Trident wouldn’t recommend using this glass as, say; an abrasive face wash – it tends to be slightly safer to accidentally walk across. Slightly safer.
However, the more common form of glass comes from bottles. Often bottles that were once filled with alcohol, although drinking at the beach is ostensibly “outlawed” and “frowned upon”. Pfft. What a crock.
As the Black Eyed peas (and everyone else too) says: “Drank“.
If any given weekend is cursed with nice weather, in Trident’s hood the okes gather to drink en masse at the various beaches.
10 am in the morning too early to drink? No, don’t be silly! The ou’s get so dronk, they stagger about like faulty marionettes, wandering into oncoming traffic like they’re begging to be hit by cars. Like that scene in the original Robocop, when the one baddie falls into a vat of toxic waste. Then the oke literally begins to melt, all the while wailing like a faulty flushing toilet before meandering into the path of an oncoming truck driven by his baddie pal. The end result? Splat. As would be the end of those drunken fools “braaiing” at the beachfront’s public fireplaces. And dead bodies all over the beach roads would probably be aesthetically unpleasing. Okay yes Weird Bob, it would not look aesthetically unpleasing to you. Your point is made, thanks, we get it.
So, glass all over the place. It gets cleaned up, but there is always a tiny shard of glass, virtually invisible to the naked eye that will embed itself in the soft part of your foot.
Jeez, 2 articles and we’ve barely scratched the surface of beach pollution. Tragic.
