AUGUST ULRICH - COLD FEETOR HOW I PLUNGED INTO A TSUNAMI AND BODYSURFED TO THE JERSEY SHORE

August has done fine art, worked/collaborated on screenplays with notable filmmakers from Italy, France, Russia, and Japan. He was a line cook at Michelin 3 stars and freelanced as cameraman for CNN, ABC, NBC while living in Rome. As a sys admin, August controlled the flow of info for an internet startup until it was vaporized on the 11 September 2001. Currently, he is working on his third novel and collaborating on an historical TV series about the age of discovery.

​Cold Feet
or
How I Plunged into a Tsunami and Bodysurfed to the Jersey Shore
(Cold Feet #1)

​ 
The three Hs. Don’t know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout? Too fuckin’ bad. Just go steppin’ on the molasses asphalt of the narrow, two lane State 27 that jettys abruptly to an end just beyond the cliff’s edge.
Ocean, soil, grass, smoking engine oil, and marijuana molecules composing the fugitive atmosphere have roosted themselves on my nasal cavity and the hairs snaking from my nostrils down my upper lip.
At the edge, fissures open and close in the asphalt as weight is added and subtracted from its surface.
Ain’t wise to weigh down the edge with the balls of my feet. It don’t stop me. Worst could happen, if the asphalt edge melts under my balls, is my swan song onto the jags the ocean waterboards endlessly. How far down? Don’t know, don’t care. It’s death so, like, what the fuck, you figure out how high the cliff, how far the drop in your own stinkin’ ‘maginations. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go, yeah, like it’d be long enough – in your dreams.
Looked down and across at the horizonless expanse. Gulls doin’ their thing, hovercrafts Hoovering under the bobbing and weaving surface.
The noise factor? Whaddya expect to hear where complacent solid and combative liquid harmonize under cadaverous gas.
Fuckin’ righteous swells corrugating the surface. Weather report got it right. Red Flags up on all public beaches – well not really up, the flags hang limp in the still of the three Hs.
Georgica crowd, gone. Air traffic control have their air lanes full of the prima donas jousting for position just high enough in the three H gas to blow out their slaves’, and every other poor schmuck’s, drums too poor to heli from and to The City. Those stinkin air lanes, more congested than the westbound L.I.E. on a Sunday night.
Gonna be rad surf for a few days. Swells big enough – more like huge – the likes of which ain’t never seen on the south shore nor the entire east coast. Climate Change! Bring it on! I’m ready. My longboard waxed and ready to ride, Sally, ride. The tide table memorized. Ditch is the place to start the day, then head west or east with the break, depending, and a quick break at Lunch for a lobster roll and a bowl of Manhattan. Manhattan! None of this New England mom’s milk in everything crap.
What I didn’t know, hadn’t heard, was that a mother of all mothers of all swells was jammin’ ‘cross the Atlantic in 64 beat time.
What I did see were the thousands of Hoovering gulls launch up and missile inland, no doubt knocking down a few helis in their paths. Where solid meets liquid, there was no longer any liquid. Solid, it appeared, had ousted liquid and sent it into retreat. Horseshoe crabs were scurrying around piles of junk tossed over the cliff. The jags were dripping dry, their waterboarding on hold, if not for eternity, then at least long enough to drip dry. It was not to be.
What the fuck! Did the texture of the horizonless expanse change? Did a quadruple take and blinked a flock of times. Yeah, there was a texture like fake flagstone siding where the shimmering three H gas should be. Craned up and found the horizon line. Easy to spot. The demarcation were caps of white foam that were rising, pushing the three H gas into an ever-shrinking space.
What a motherfucker of a swell! The weather service said the biggest ever! No shit! It was high! And don’t ask me how fucking high. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go. Get real. Not that any tape measure I could lay my hands on would be long enough to measure the wave’s height. And it stretched, like, forever in both directions.
Wait a sec. This wave ain’t part of the Cat 5 due to slam the east end in sixteen hours. This is a 64 beat bar timing it out of the northeast heading southwest, not out of the south heading northeast.
So, like any fucker addicted to ocean waves and surfing them, I stared at the oncoming swell, appreciatively, appraising its potential as a ride. Fuckin’ perfection and breakin’ left. B’fore I realized it, the swell was seconds away from washing me, my 60s junk heap Corvair, don’t ask, and longboard off the asphalt and the cliff. Didn’t even have time to get my board off my junk heap Corvair, so I braced myself. Had to bodysurf it. Problem was I couldn’t get a fucking start ‘cause I was standing in molasses asphalt.
Slam! My body seized as the frigid Atlantic caressed me with the touch of a sledgehammer that buried me deep in the swell. That familiar rush of directionless, suffocating, rough, tumbling zero g felt oh sooooo good. Back home. Back in the womb.
The swell was movin’ faster than something or other. I gave a lazy kick to reach the face and pop out for a breath. Wish I had my wetsuit on. Fuckin’ glad didn’t go into cardiac arrest. Fuckin’ freezing. Extended my left arm, angled my body semi-parallel to the swell and was off, screaming along the face way faster than my junk heap Corvair went downhill when floored. If I couldn’t longboard it, bodysurf it was the next best thing. Actually, it was the only thing. Still, was pissed I couldn’t longboard it after all the prep I put into the board for the Cat 5, scrapin’ off the built-up wax and ‘pplying fresh. Had the time to kill, so shot-gunned a few Millers and splifs while I prepped.
What a view. Had to be as high as Everest. Ahead and below me, among houses and motels packed tightly together, were tons of people stampeding like the herds of buffalo before we, Caucs, slaughtered them for good eats – caught a glimpse of the Memory as I screamed past it. Jagger came to mind. Rolling Stones. Shit, nothin’ like rollin’ at all, not compared to this wave or any ocean wave. Guess the Memory was a memory along with Montauk, now. Beach front’d be cheap during or after the cleanup since not one of the people were in position, or had the wits to surf this one out, and were Davy Jonesing faster’n 64 time.
The power of this wave. True Force of Nature. Realized had to be a tsunami, DUH! Realized I was in this for the long haul and was most likely my final act before chumming in Davy’s. Had no complaints. Eh, maybe one. Wasn’t on my board. Couldn’t drop down the face and cutback. All I could do was ride mid-face like a juttin’ figurehead. Fact is, was stuck in one position. Couldn’t do a thing. Maybe change my angle a degree or so. That’s the problem with bodysurfing: it’s optionless. All you can do is scream along the face in one direction, arm extended for control and limited steering. Yeah, it’s exhilarating if you ain’t got a board, boogie board or canvas raft, but it sure ain’t exciting and it ain’t real creative. More like them big tech self drive cars that’re all the hype. Shit! Self-drive cars? Where’s the excitement in that. Fuckin’ boring shit.
The thrill is gone. Pretty quick, too. Can feel my feet, sorta, through the numbness that’s slithering up my legs and lower torso. Chuckled, dryly, that my angry inch was an angry millimeter, at best, or had disappeared completely along with my withered sack ‘o hazels. My wetsuit – if only. Had a stinkin’ Bible of if-onlys – was probly nearby in the trunk of my junk heap Corvair. Great fantasy surfed my mind: Me on my board that was on the Corvair that was juttin’ out the face surfin’ the tsunami – instant fame. Reality TV show, talk shows, ticker tape down Broadway – nah, scratch that if only. Decided it was feasible and flailed my right arm to see if I could locate my junk heap Corvair. No good. The flailing tossed me from my line through the face and back inside. Couldn’t say “under” ‘cause I didn’t go down, just slowed enough for the wave to speed around me. But it didn’t leave me behind and roll on. It kept me as one of its trophies.
Wasn’t gonna let this opportunity go to waste. Opened my eyes and scanned the murk for my junk heap Corvair. Fucking pointless, couldn’t see more’n an inch or two. Slammed my lids shut. Fucking fucked up, fucking terrifying. Lots of solid shit tossin’ and tumblin’ within my vision range. Was a real Wizard-of-Oz-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink – if only – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again – but there’d be no crash landing in Munchkinland from this tsunami. No return to Kansas. No Witches. No Great and Powerful Oz. Probly more’n a shitload of Totos washing-machining around in the wave. Was amazed none of the solids had finished me off. Sighed with relief. I remained unscathed. Fuck no! Live through this and suffocate by drowning, no way. Better to be crushed or crowned unconscious by some large solid object – fast and painless – least my junk heap Corvair could do for all the TLC I gave it. What the fuck did I do to remain alive through all this? Fucking surf! This was making that ninth circle of hell I read about in those Spark Notes seem like, to use some Brit word I picked up off one of ‘em, bloody heaven. Was way past that circle. Was in my own private slow-death horror fest.
Was running out of oxygen; needed some quick. Frog kicked a breaststroke and broke through the face. Oxygen. Maybe not such a good thing, ‘cause I was so concentrated on getting it in my lungs, I forgot to extend my left arm and angle semi-parallel to the face. Down the face I tumbled, bouncing off it, randomly, proving chaos theory in my own chaotic style. Eyes wide open, saw I was dropping fast but I still had a long, long way to go before I hit solid that was the swell’s floor. No, ain’t got no idea how far down I had to drop to solid. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go. Like, I could freeze time to measure. Like the tape measure would be long enough. In your fuckin’ dreams.
Time. Yeah. Maybe. Ain’t it ‘bout time I see my life pass b’fore me and I see that fuckin’ white light at the end of the stinkin’ tunnel? Well, fuck me! No way I’d be that fuckin’ lucky.
Instead, always got sloppy seconds.
Everything went into hyper slow mo ‘cause I had gone into hyper speed and managed to bend Time for my purpose. No! Don’t ask me how the fuck I slowed down Einstein relative-like. I ain’t got a clue ‘n’ I don’t care. Alls I know is that I had plenty of time to think and maneuver myself back into my surfing line.
Don’t know how I did that, either. Think I wiggled and extended both my arms, disrupting my washing-machining. Guess my arm caught in the face and jerked me sideways, allowing me to get my angle back, so I was on my line and figureheading along the face.
Now what? How long can I keep this up? Couldn’t feel my feet at all. Checked my position in the face. I freaked. Had tumbled down. Was low enough to crash through anything higher than – high enough to be higher than my fifty foot tape measure I didn’t have on me. Looked up. Figured I was two thirds down the face maybe more. Hard to tell. Needed to  cutback up close enough to the crest maybe even up and over. My stinkin’ longboard – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again.
Wondered if by using my extended arm, it would take me back up the face. Never bodysurfed a swell this big. Only surfed ‘em. What the fuck, ain’t never been on a stinkin’ wave this big before. Guess what I meant to say, was I never bodysurfed a wave long enough or high enough cause what’s the point of bodysurfing anything b’sides shorebreak if you got a board ‘n’ I always had a board. Well, truth be told, not always. First time I went out past shorebreak to surf, not swim, I had me one of them canvas rafts that flew in front of the face that you had to grip for dear life or it’d scoot out from under you. Once you got the hang of it you could kneel on it. Yeah, yuh could steer it kinda sorta by lifting the front of the raft and angling it ‘cause it didn’t have a fin. Sometimes it worked and you could raft across the face for a bit until it closed out or you’d just roll over; the raft would bounce high in the air and you’d bounce against the rocky bottom at Ditch or the sandy bottom at most other spots all disoriented, hoping the wave would take you to shore alive and conscious so you could chase your raft and get back out. Not much different than a board, really, least before some dude came up with the idea of installin’ a bungee leash tethered to a board you slip around yer ankle so when you wiped, you wouldn’t have to go retrievin’ yer board miles down the stinkin’ beach. Instead, the board would crash with the wave and drag you with it so when you finally re-oriented yourself you could pull the board to you, slide back on and paddle back to the yer spot.
‘Course, there was always the danger you’d wipe out, the board’d pop up into the gas, ricochet back down and crown yuh but good. Anyway, never bodysurfed a wave other than shorebreak. Figured extending my arm worked to keep me stable. I weren’t no stinkin’ physics expert. Guess it had to do with physics if that was the right word. Had no clue ‘cause I never made it past eighth grade, dropped out second week, and failed the GED – don’t know how many stinkin’ times. If they had school on boards then I might’uh been interested, but they didn’t, and saw no importance in goin’ to school when surf’s up, which was all the time ‘cludin’ winter thanks to some schmuck who was dumb enough to leave his sporty nazimobile unlocked with a pretty-as-you-please, brand new drysuit stretched out on the back seat. Would’uh taken his board but it sucked for surfin’ the east end. The idiot was an obvious beginner or maybe a diver. Never bothered to find out. Didn’t plan to stick around long enough to get caught. Of course, the drysuit fit me perfectly even if it didn’t. Like, waddya ‘spect, I’m rememberin’ all this shit now ‘cause it’s goin’ through my mind, my mind, while I try to get myself outta this mess.
Huh. Maybe this is all part of that life-flashin’-before-your-eyes yer supposed to have before you wipe out permanently thing. What I wouldn’t give for some shrooms right now and maybe a couple tabs of acid chased down with a few splifs and Millers. Eh. Lesson learned. Never leave yer stash in a junk heap Corvair ‘cause a wave might come along, take it one way and take you another. If only – shit! Again? So many fuckin’ if onlys! If only I had the time to mull through them all and change ‘em to, like, been there done that. Ain’t gonna happen. So, maybe if I angle my arm up toward the crest, it’d cut me back up the face and I wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout hittin’ some building or truck or roof or umbrella or drowning person. So, what the fuck. What’d I got to lose, anyway. Decided to decide to aim my extended arm up ‘cause Time, Time, it ain’t on my side, no it ain’t. Time to give it that ol’ GED try. Weighed the consequences of it not working more to delay my deciding than to weigh my odds of success. Worst could happen is that I tumble down or the wave passes around me, again, and I can’t frog kick myself back through the face.
Like, time to face the Unknown Future than the certain, Now, so I aim my arm up and stupidly catch it in the face, which whips me round so my upper torso crashes through the face and my legs and lower torso figurehead out the face. No good. I swallow a ton of Atlantic and flail my legs which catch on the face and cartwheel my head and arms back out. Before I can cartwheel around, again, I somehow stabilize myself, guess it’s instinct from spendin’ my 22 years ridin’ waves and I’m cutting along the face, coughin’ and sputterin’ ‘lantic from my lungs. Gotta try, again, slow and deliberate this time. I tilt my arm a smidge and sure enough, I inch up the face. It fucking works. I tilt my arm up higher, and up I cut. Wonder if I could do cutbacks. Nah. That’d be risking it. Have to wait till I get where I wannna get, up and over or up near the crest, then I’ll see if I wanna go for broke and surf this mother of all mothers of tsunamis.
Took a while, but got up near the crest and could’uh shot over it and find some jetsam to climb on while I wait for the water to recede or some Georgica beach crowd’s heli to copter over me. Nah, they wouldn’t pick me up. Wouldn’t wanna spoil their leather seats with salt water and some poor Bonacker schmuck who ain’t in their social circle. Maybe a news chopper. Of course, on my cutback up the face, I realized that when a wave breaks onshore, it recedes and that undertow can be a bitch. So when this mother of all mothers of a tsunami finally breaks, the undertow’d be tons of times more powerful than a ten-foot swell, and if I was hangin’ on some jetsam waitin’ for solid to surface, or some search and rescue heli to winch me gasward, chances are I’d be too far out to even see it or it to see me ‘cause of the undertow draggin’ me way out into the Atlantic. And let’s not forget about sharks farther out unless the ocean had churned up enough bottom silt to clog them sharks’ gills. Take a while for the silt to settle and the ocean to clear enough for the sharks let alone the other fish to breath so maybe I’d be okay bobbin’ on some jetsam long enough to be rescued. Nah, I figured, better to bodysurf the tsunami. I mean, like, this was a once in a lifetime chance and I bet I’m the one and only person on the entire planet who ever surfed a tsunami, while there’d been and will be tons of folks floatin’ on the high seas hopin’ for a heli or boat to come along and rescue them. This was Guiness Book of World Records ‘n’ stuff. Like, every talk show on the planet would be competin’ for me, and the cash rollin’ in was better than griftin’ and breakin’ ‘n’ enterin’ cause it was legal stealin’. Probly a Hollywood movie in it, too. MEGA BUCKS!
I quaked violently like a dyin’ flounder thrashin’ around the deck of some obese amateur fisherman’s rented Boston Whaler. The cold. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore and I was fuckin’ freezin’. Hoped it wasn’t hypothermia, knew the signs and these were they. Needed to hold out, needed to warm myself. Had no clue how. I mean, like, in the middle of the Atlantic? In not on.
So, what a fuckin’ realization. Didn’t matter if I could or couldn’t feel nothin’ from my waist down. Chances are wasn’t plannin’ to do much of anything b’fore I wipe out for good. Had no plans to see the world ‘cept maybe surf spots, but that cost the big bucks and transportin’ my boards, pain in the fuckin’ ass without my junk heap Corvair. Wasn’t good enough to get a sponsorship. Never would be. Nah, just liked surfin’ for surfin’ and ‘specially on the south shore from Jones sometime the Rockaways to Ditch and the point. Anyway, hated competition and hated watchin’ competition, any competition ‘less the babes were hotter’n whatever you can imagine, and even then, I’d get bored really quick. Always preferred the doin’ rather than the watchin’ others doin’ the doin’. Watched others grift, con, pickpocket, break bones. Listened to ‘em reminisce ‘bout ‘the old days’ and how fucking amazing their teachers were. Seems they all had teachers. Teachers – waste of time. Yeah, spent some time in lock up for blowin’ a couple of cons – nope, not what I mean – when I was a juvi and followed the advice of a ‘pro’. Realized in my second go round ‘pros’, real pros, don’t know shit and don’t know to teach shit. The con, hustle, grift, pickpocket, hit, whatever their specialty just comes natural to ‘em.
Well, if this is it, best I could hope for is some news chopper catchin’ me on tape. Bet it’d go viral and bet I’d become a legend for the books, just like Davy Jones. Legend of the Tsunami Surfer. Nah, maybe not. Rather have the scratch than the legend. What good is bein’ a legend if you ain’t gettin’ any benefits outta it. Better to be a legend like Genghis, Napoleon and Adolph. Least ways they got the benefits b’fore they was offed.
Whoa, mama! Ain’t possible this rollin’ tsunami is gettin’ higher and pickin up speed? Just missed clippin’ a seagull that looked like it was on a kamikaze mission at full throttle.
Finally settled in for the ride, figured I’d look around. Help distract me from my fuckin’ freezing, chatterin’ self. Nothin’ to see, only ocean all around. Seems like the swell’s shrinkin’ but it’s still rocketin’ on, holdin’ its own. Must be over deep ocean.
The three Hs must’uh taken a powder. I’m getting hit by a cool wind. Could be it’s keepin’ the swell formed. Least ways enough for the face to remain high enough for me to maintain my line. Can’t lose it now. Wonder where the fuck I’m gonna wind up? I’m tellin’ yuh, where was this stinkin’ wind when I could’uh used it? When I wasn’t fuckin’ around with hypothermia and shakin’ my breakfast, harder than Bond’s martini, yeah, martini. He got that wrong. That’s with Gin, ain’t no Vodka in a stinkin’ Martini. Look it up if you don’t believe me. And these stinkin’ idiot sophisticates and cityiots come preenin’ into the bar all sunburnt bronze and ev’rything asking for Vodka martinis like it ain’t got it’s own name only can’t remember it now – too fucking cold. What’s the matter with its stinkin’ right name. Guess it’s fuckin’ too lowbrow for these masters of their own self-glorifyin’ to call it anything other than a martini.                   
Wonder if they’ll find that asshole’s fucking corpse in the trunk of my fuckin’ junk heap Corvair? Doubt it. ‘lantic’ll see to that, I hope. If only – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again. Well, it’s kinda apt, ain’t it? If only that fuckin’ rich kid hadn’t caught me liberatin’ his drysuit for my betterment. I mean, like, the kid had no clue. Just to look at him. His fuckin’ bronze tan and his fuckin’ gleamin’ grill that was 10,000kw blinding even on that overcast day. Not to mention, stinkin’ perfect.
Yeah, some stinkin’ rich kid who spent his entire time in the gym pickin’ up boys, probly. All big and well put together and stinkin’ rich. The dude just happened to park his nazimobile on the wrong beach on the wrong day and wander back at the wrong time. Really didn’t wanna get caught. Really didn’t wanna resort to my survival instincts, been on a streak lately and needed to cool it, I got too many ‘explained’ and unexplained corpses fillin’ the Star instead of social shit like parties and such. Even made it into the Times. Maybe went nationwide, don’t know. Don’t care to find out. Wasn’t lookin’ forward to adding another. No worries, it wasn’t a problem any longer. All them stinkin’ corpses pilin’ up under the water – thousands, maybe millions – unless by some quirk, my stinkin’ junk heap of a Corvair’s trunk don’t open and they find the rich kid – should’uh just let me take his drysuit and go buy another; but no, the asshole thought I was a stinkin’ pushover and comes at me with his fists. His fists! What a fuckin’ idiot!
Me, I always got a stinkin’ wrench on me. Great weapon, wrench, and always get away with havin’ it, even on pat downs – the one good thing about a junk heap Corvair that’s, like, older than my dead mother would’uh been if she were still alive – got what she deserved, the fuckin’ alky – is that it’d always need to have this and that adjusted to keep it runnin’ so always gotta carry a wrench.
First thing, I go for was Rich Kid’s grill, turned them 10,000kw whites into a sea of strawberries with their seeds shinin’ pretty as you please. He crumpled, surprised and woe-is-me-ing ‘cause, I’m guessin’, though it was obvious, he was expecting some fantasy of a fistfight, wrestlin’ mano a mano kinda thing he was sure he could win. Sure wasn’t ‘spectin’ some dude who’d pull out a wrench. Sure he thought this shit never happened on the east end in the summer when ev’ryone had to be stinkin’ rich and frolickin’ in the ocean mists and the worst crime was gettin’ busted for drugs or drinkin’. Anyway, he was burbling and sputterin’ strawberries for mercy, holdin’ one hand up, palm out, and the other wrapped around his former grill all sticky and gooey with strawberry crush, as if he was tryin’ to save his already shattered grill.
It was a good laugh. Turned his entire head into a strawberry stew then threw him into the junk heap Corvair’s trunk and lit outta there and, well, didn’t have time to get rid of him till today. Surfs been too good to pass up. Was gonna do it today, and you know the rest. Here I am bodysurfin’ the mother of all mothers of all tsunamis and freezin’ my stinkin’ ass off.
 The tsunami’s risin’, again, and leavin’ me too low. Gotta cut up to keep near the crest. Gotta concentrate on the face so I don’t wind up back in the soup. Angle my arm up a tad and sure enough, I shoot up to the crest, which is gettin’ higher and higher by the second. Once I know I’ve got a good line, I scope out ahead of me. Way down below and approachin’ rapidly is shoreline. All that sand pin-cushioned with the full color spectrum of umbrellas and fast moving freckles, like, right outta some disaster movie, tearing inland away from their umbrellas. This don’t look like anywhere along the south shore. A boardwalk, maybe Coney but don’t see no Cyclone.
Fuckin’ Jersey! Gotta be, fucking Jersey. What the fuck! I hate Jersey. Surf sucks, people suck, can’t drive worth a shit. Garden State, yeah right! Fuckin’ should be called Swamp State the way it stinks all the time. Now more than ever the way this tsunami is freight trainin’ toward the shore. Sure will be the swamp state in a couple of minutes.
Fuckin’ wow. Gotta cut ba – Holy fucking shit! I’m headin right for . . .
. . . THE END