Coupeville Sports

Taste me, tourists.

Every time you eat mussels, you taste a little bit of me.

I am the special seasoning in Penn Cove’s culinary “treat,” and let’s just say it’s a lucky thing I’m not prone to frequently whizzing in the water.

The seals … I’m not so sure about those ornery lil’ bastards. They do seem to be giggling a lot out there.

There are many nights when I want to go into the restaurants in town, look at patrons slurpin’ up the slimy suckers and sadly shake my head and quietly intone, “You know … those were harvested from my bath water. So, there’s that.”

Today, day 129 of twice-a-day swimming in the briny, sometimes stinky waters of Penn Cove (as I head relentlessly, screaming like a little girl, for my 2011 record of 167 days) went just like most days.

It was cold. It was salty. It slapped me in the face.

A giant demon pelican-lookin’ bird dive-bombed me and sailed two feet above my scalp as it whistled by, coming to rest on the beach. A rocky, Godforsaken hunk of land covered in barnacles and cracked mussel shells where the bird promptly gave itself 23 cuts while hopping awkwardly around.

I laughed, then hit an underwater rock that had somehow moved its location in the last 24 hours. The laughter turned into some uncomfortable swearing, mixed with a bit of me sucking down way too much salt water.

The bird stared at me. I stared back at the bird. We both stared into the abyss, and the abyss that is Penn Cove stared back at us.

Somewhere over my shoulder, a seal took a whizz and another chef prepared to sell the scum of the ocean to unsuspecting tourists from North Dakota.

And the universe rolled on.