Lifegaurding

I, I, I wanna be a lifeguard (help, help, help, help!)
I, I, I wanna guard your LIFE!

(lifeguard)
hardly any clothes,
(lifeguard)
sand between my toes,
(lifeguard)
white stuff on my nose!

Anybody remember Blotto!? 80's new wave from Albany - Pahahaha! Ranks right up there with "When I Go To the Beach" by the Slickee Boys

 

Run Swim Runs

Run Swim Run is all I have to say. I guarded for yor years for the DE state park system and had a blast doing it. Just to let you know, there is some work involved. First, dealing with stupid of the most stupid people can be a challenge. Next there are some physical requirements as well. Run swim runs are a b***h!!!!!!!!! Where you spint as fast as you can then swim out and in as fast a possible and do it again a few more times. Some of the exersices can be pritty tough but it is a great job!!!!!!!!! Rescues can be a huge rush but if things don't so so well it can waer on ya.

Good luck I rec. it.

 

dont you have to be 17 though for ocean city

 

Lifeguards are not kooks

well some are...but I sir am not a kook. The job is good at the right place. I work for a private beach north of bethany and its great. 30 min workout each morning and and hour break. Now im making $11.50 an hour and its sweet. You can surf when the waves are to big for swimmers so pray for swell. You get off for rain and thunder too. Just find the right place and you'll be happy.

 

yea plenty of lifeguards i know that are definitely not kooks. It's just like anything guys, in every sport there are three categories on the bell curve. Lower 25% are complete kooks, average 50% are normal, and top 25% are the hardcores or the freak of natures.

I did junior lifeguard when i was a kid and it was pretty fun. since i was so young, i thought it was awesome swimmin out way past the jetties and then swimming parallel to the beach, it felt so extreme. but then i picked up surfing and i realized that if i couldnt surf as much as i wanted then i didnt want to do it... thats part of the reason i almost gave up football, but i decided to stick with it just cause i love the sport!

 

Lifesaving:

SORRY SO LONG, I GUARD!

This topic always pulls out the wanksters. Like anything in life, it's what you make of it. Some people hate school, and for all intense purposes they usually didn't make anything of that. Guarding can be the same way.

The reality check point:

First off, peoples lives are in your hands. People can die. I have given CPR to people that died. It's not BAY WATCH. That feeling never goes away for the rest of your life. I have held people with a Hawaiian Sling using In-Line-Stabilization. Their neck was broken, nose bleeding on your hands, and they are asking you, "Am I going to be ok?" If you guard in Delaware, this day comes for everyone.

There is a rush in saving people in the surf line, but you have to be on your toes, bug-eyed, and physically fit so that when it does go down you can do what needs to be done.

The up-side and more positive note. My best friends came from surfing or lifesaving. Like many of you, I jumped into lifesaving for the always constant wave check, social atmosphere, and the ability to stay in tip-top physical condition. When there is serious surf, the beach is closed. I mean 6' plus and then we surf. If it is smaller or mushy, we bodysurf/bodyboard. I get to work with my friends and I am on a schedule in the summer that lets me surf AM/PM sessions with my friends. And last but not least, the training. If anyone on here knows me or my friends, they know we train hard. If you don't know us you would think we are all mentally insane.

What started off at 16 years old as local paddle board races to stay fit, turned into a lifestyle that I would call a WATERMEN. Over the next 15 years old I began to meet WATERMEN from all over the world. We train all year round and we don't wait for swells. We train for them. There are quite a few top notch surfers who fill the void that some of you had already mentioned as the top 10% on the bell-curve of lifeguards. Every beach has kooks, descent guards, and then a couple core people who usually go by the name, "LIFERS!"

The east coast is the only place that I have ever seen that has a gap between surfers and lifeguards. Cali, Hawaii, South Africa, Oz, NZ, etc., will have guards working one-on-one with each other. But like some of you mentioned, these parts do have a lot of KOOKS trying to be guards. They usually last 2 or 3 summers tops!

Go guard. Get into the sport and compete also. That's what gives every local agency it's validity. There is sprint running, distance running, sprint swimming, distance swimming, paddle board, surf ski (kayak), open ocean rowing, ironman (paddle, run, swim, surf ski), and there are even some other crazy events like beach flags and rescues. All of which are competitive locally, region, nation and world wide. It's one of the top 5 largest sports in the world.

 

Hope I didn't send the wrong message with my remembrence of some humorous old surf tunes! Got nuthin' but mad-respect for those that train that hard to lay it out when the time comes - and it does come! OBlove nailed it. I've never been a lifeguard but over the years I've been involved in 4 rescues - 2 surfin and 2 more in freshwater digs. Thats serious biz and will stay with you forever no matter the outcome. Go for it bigSURFsk8 but don't take it lightly, and here's to happy endings!

 

i know what it feels like to see someone die. my dad and i were driving in the country after going to a friends house and my dad had to give cpr while i was on the phone with 911 and when they cam they took him and we didnt know the guy at all so we basically followed the ems all the way to the hospital and when we got their they pronounced him dead and that trully hurt me alot as i didnt know the guy but that was trully the first time me or my dad have had to use our cpr trainning and that trully hurt me. and that whole car ride home (1 1/2 hours to be precise) we were just in agony. and still to this day i think about it.

 

im not a lifegaurd but want to be one one day. but our lifegaurds down here in wb are pretty cool. like one day as a dawn patrol surf i had the gaurds were down at my spot body boarding and surfing and had the "wb lifegaurd surf off" and it was funny they were all lose and what not. but yeah i know they can be a b!tch sometimes but trully when you like surf with them they are actually pretty fun to be around.

 

even the kooks still know how to party and its not like you have to spend all day with them.

 

first of all, its "Lifeguarding", not "Lifegaurding" - i used to guard with some friends at assateague in the state park many years ago (ABP ruled at one time!) - and we covered each others' water every day when there was swell, so we surfed all the time when it was surfable!. ,, but we worked, too, and took the job very seriously - we pulled people out every once in a while (but no "show-offs", only when swimmers were "in" trouble - not when they were just "having trouble", like the "heroics" i've seen with the OCBP or RBP!!! - but nowadays, though, guards are just like "cops", or sometimes maybe, just power-freak nazi's! (i expect there will be some heated responses to this, if so, too freakin bad! i was there!) i will say this, though - when you get "good" at it (and it takes a while to do it well) - ten years after you stop guarding, you will not enjoy an easy day on the beach - even if you're not in a stand, and not an official "guard", you'll still function like a guard - you'll watch the water,and keep an eye out for people in trouble - and this will lesson the enjoyment of your casual time at the beach with friends! (unless you're in the water surfing)

 

Well put matey. Lifeguards aint kooks either, they are some of the best watermen in any given area. And yea, we surf at work.

 

salty right on

true salty. i can not sit on the beach on my day off. its not possible anymore. and true again. i hate the police aspect put into the job. the core end of it is it can be for watermen. i never call myself a beach patrol guard. i am an ocean rescue guard. and i compete in lifesaving. my life is on the blue just like the AssaBP guards once were. Jesse rules down there though. Tough girl.

 

agreeeeeed

oblove and slaty def know whats up. i do agreed its overdramatized today in some aspects but not enough in others. like ordinance enforment is def ***** work but you gotta do what the people that pay you tell you to do. it does make you feel like an a$$ when you gotta tell a dad you cant play ball with your son near the water cuz he might accident become a victim. o man. but other times its very humbling. i mean how many times can the average person say that if i wasnt there someone wouldnt be alive right now. ya know?!

 

Not even trying to say I know more then others,... . Only experience I have is over twenty-five years in and near the ocean.

For sure there are some straight up kooks up in those stands, ones that have in no way shape or form, any real,..long-term knowledge of the ocean and how it can be different by the minute, hour, day, week, or month.

Some ****s as well who seem to hate on the locals for some reason?

I thought that there was different levels as well, at least in OCMD, so at times you may not have the most experienced person watching over a section of beach?

I have also talked to more then a handful of young ones who had no clue about surfing or waves in general. Lets not kid ourselves, many of these guys are not local and it is only a summer employment for them, then they go back to college, in-land.

Good thing they have those that come back every year.
Other, then the once in awhile BS, the track record for OCBP is great, in relationship to the numbers that hit the beach around here. I think that has more to do with the core group that is here year in and year out, though.

We have all seen our share of bad LGs or BPs, and you can already spot them before you even paddle out. But over all, other then a few over aggressive retards and lazy dumb asses, which is dangerous,..most are cool and do a good job when you consider the complete retards that they have to deal with during the heat of the summer. I will and have spoken ill of some at times,... they deserved it,... but try standing around watching parents let their kids, small kids,.. do as they please and not watch over them,...swimmers who keep going back to the same rip sections, over and over and over...people diving into two inches of water,.... people turning their backs on the ocean and having waves break them in two. The list of dumb assess goes on and on, none of them think that the nice fun warm water can hurt or kill them,... it is just a day of fun at the beach, and besides, the lifeguard is up there in the stand, so I can be stupid and not worry where the hell my kids are at...or whether my fat husband is getting ready to cash the life insurance check for me because he refuses to stay out of that rip, because he is there to have fun and the young punk on the stand blowing his whistle at him can go to hell, he is on vacation.

I have seen and heard it all, made rescues myself while out in the water, and the crap is the same every year.

Sounds like a fun job.

 

90 percent of the ocean guards are power hungry kooks who suck at surfing and hate surfers. the other 10 percent are super cool guys who are kick ass watermen (usually these are the people who actually live year-round in the towns they guard in)..

 

I just thought of a funny story. I was walking down to surf OC inlet a couple of summers ago and it was a late summer afternoon. A storm had blown over probably 45 minutes earlier so the beach was pretty cleared. I suit up and start to walk down when a BP truck pulls up and someone starts yelling at me out of the driver's seat saying "Hey idiot, get off the beach, do you want to die??" Now I'm not old by any means, but it kinda hits me the wrong way when someone talks to me like a child, as I'm in my late 20s. So I instantly get brushed the wrong way and walk over to the truck.

It's filled with your a-typical baltimore transplant summer guards.....18-21, riding about 6 deep in the truck laughing, giggling, you know the deal. I ask the driver what he means about me dying and he says there's a huge storm coming and I'm going to get struck by lightning. I look up at the clearing and completely bright and sunny sky to the west and say, no the storm is going to miss us it's down south (assa. is total black sky conditions), but thanks for the warning anyways. I will definetely not be chilling in the water if I see lightning obviously.

Anyways, lifeguard guy ask me how I know the storm isn't coming here, and I simply point at the sky. He says...and I quote, "Well you can look at the sky all day but I have this little thing known as technology" Opens up his blackberry, pulls up the weather map, and then points to a red blob moving over the hook on assateague island. I say, "Like I said the storm is missing us" He starts laughing and pointing to his blackberry to his fellow companions and then proceeds to tell me I should stick to surfing and not to question him on geography because he's going into his senior year at the UoM. All the while he's pointing at the hook and saying it's the ocean city inlet.

I could do nothing but walk to my car, unfortunately you can't argue with the educated technology slaves.

 

Hey man, i work on Beach Patrol and let me tell you something...the only reason they do that is for the publics safety. Someone sees you out there and ten people start complaining about why cant they go in blah blah. The reason they are so strict on it is for the fact that a few guards HAVE been struck by lightning while trying to get idiots off the beach. 1 guard sacrificed his life trying to save anothers while in the middle of a storm trying to blow them out of the water in the late 90s. And quite honestly you have to be a **** down at the inlet with the crowd that is down there. Half of them dont even speak english!

I understand your point though about the way they talk to people..i know who you are talking about and yes he can be a tool. As long as you know it is just for your safety man.

 

lifeguarding

Been a lifeguard going on 12 years now, teacher during the year. Great job for the summer. yes there are many other jobs that let you surf and what not, but it definitely is a good one. I lifeguard out at Sandy Hook, and I'll make about $10,000 this summer because it's a federal job. I'm making $16.57 an hour, with time and a quarter every sunday and double on holidays. Garaunteed 40 hours a week (42 if you count sundays). We always need people out there, so take the test, at Monmouth University. Check for a schedule online or call Carl Martinez for test dates (look up his number online) Don't hate on lifeguarding, it's all about quality of life, whatever makes you happy.