Hold my beer

This past week, on our vacation to Acadia, my wife and daughter and I were enjoying a picnic lunch on the granite ledges above the shore between Sand Beach and the Otter Cliffs. I spotted two men (in the photo above) near the shore, and their behavior gave a hint of some excitement to come.

Let me start by saying that the rangers had posted signs saying "Dangerous Surf" and "Use Extreme Caution". A few years back, a 12-year old girl had been washed off the rocks nearby and was killed, so the warnings were not to be taken lightly.

The man on the right in the photo was in a typical photographer's pose with the camera held in front of him, but was also motioning to his companion to move closer to the water, where the waves were breaking over the rocks along the shore.

I was imagining the account in the newspaper about the man being washed off the rocks, with the usual descriptor "and alcohol was involved". As you can imagine, the wet rocks were quite slippery, and, while we watched, he slipped on the wet rock and landed face down. Miraculously, he did not end up getting washed off the rock, but whatever he was holding in his right hand (cell phone? beer?) was apparently broken or spilled.

He was able to regain his feet and did not appear to be injured. After this apparent near-death experience, one would think that the two of them would move away from the surf to a safer location. You would be wrong. The photographer was again motioning to his companion to move closer to the surf, and his buddy was doing so. I don't know if they were disinhibited or stupid or both, but it did not look like it was going to end well.

How did it end? We didn't stay to see how it worked out. We had finished lunch and decided to continue our sightseeing, entertaining though this was. I am assuming that, since I didn't see anything on the local television news about someone being drowned in the high surf, that nothing bad happened, but it's possible the photographer did not want to try to explain an incident that started with "Hold my beer."