Pitiful Pool Pumps

Pumps at the pool broke! On the day the new slides were open to the public. Quite ironic. No work for 2-3 weeks. Can you say broke?!

"So You Like Tae-Kwon-Do?" "Hi-YEAH!"

The Life and Times of Golden Gate's Most Infamous Little Tike.
COMING SOON.
By: Sarah Wickham, Celebrity Blogger

Favorite.

Working Hard for the Money

Lightning: A Lifeguard's Best Friend

My favorite days of the summer? The ones where I wake up to go to work and it is already storming! It’s almost the equivalent of waking up on Christmas morning. Almost.

Too bad it’s the end of July and it’s only stormed at the pool a total of 3 times this whole summer. Unbelievable, right? Sometimes I swear there is a vortex over our pool that repels any form of rain, lightning or thunder. I can’t tell you how many times storms on the horizon looked so foreboding that I thought they were bringing the end of the world and they get within one mile of the pool and just disappear. And we go back to having a hot, humid, sunny day… perfect for pool-goers. Yippee. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and do enjoy the sunny days, but sometimes it is nice to get some freebie breaks every once and awhile. Those are the times where I’ve had some of my most memorable moments of this job, come to think of it.

I’ve mastered the art of OJ Pong, seen someone eat the hottest pepper in the world and live to tell about it, learned how to play poker, witnessed the most outlandish conversations I’ve ever heard in my entire life and have probably laughed so hard I cried more times than I can count. This is where the lifeguard bonding occurs, folks. Just yesterday, we closed for three hours because of lightning and created the most incredibly heinous masterpieces through “The Drawing Game.” It’s funny how your imagination kicks in when you have limited entertainment.

I know it all sounds like all fun and games, but we definitely have days full of oh-so-fun manual labor during those storms. Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Clean the deck, scrub the bathrooms, mop the floors, organize the storage closet, clean the refrigerator, scrub the foul-smelling trashcans and recycling bins, file the entire world, pressure wash the lawn chairs…definitely the downside of those stormy days.

I have a 9hr. workday ahead of me today. I’ll do a rain dance and hope for the best.

Lotioning and Oiling, Oiling and Lotioning[I can't take this no more!]

Biggest lifeguard stereotype? Come on. Sunscreen (or zinc oxide, rather) on the nose, everyone knows that hahaha no pun intended. Little known fact: I have not met one lifeguard that actually does that. I probably should, however. Between the months of May and September, I permanently look like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

But let’s get serious. As a lifeguard, you are putting yourself at high-risk for developing skin cancer whether you like or not (one of the not-so-glamorous sides of lifeguarding, I’d say). I remember when my sister and I told our dermatologist that we got seasonal jobs as lifeguards. She looked as if she had seen a ghost and gravely warned us that she didn’t think that was a good idea. Did that stop us though? Nope. It doesn’t stop most people these days, either. Out of our staff of about 30 lifeguards, a few have already had bouts of skin cancer, which is scary considering most of us are between the ages of 19 and 24. And sad, quite frankly, with the amount of sunscreen stored in our guard room. Tanning oils, SPF 15, SPF80, baby sunscreen, a big jumbo pumper of sunscreen (that never seems to run out, come to think of it) and even lip sunscreen. Full protection is definitely provided to all. So why the dislike of sunscreen? Smelly? Greasy? Oily? Yes. Definitely. We’ve all had those moments where someone bursts into the room, only to ask the most dreaded of all favors… “Will someone put sunscreen on my back?” All of a sudden, three people are on the phone, two need to go talk to the supervisor and one needs to desperately go to the bathroom, and who’s left? That one loner in the corner who never pays attention….sucker. It gets worse if you had already put on sunscreen earlier and your hands are sparkly clean and dry… oh man, what a bummer. But the worst? Applying sunscreen to bacne. Yep, I said it. Back + Acne = Bacne. I won’t even go there.

Moral of this post? Wear sunscreen. I’m sure a lot of you out there have seen the recent Grey’s Anatomy episodes where Izzy has/had Stage IV Melanoma (Btw did she die? They left us hanging!) - Either way, sure did scare me into wearing sunscreen more often. I think we can all agree the greasy, smelly annoyance of good ole’ coppertone is probably worth the trouble you’d go through without it.

Summer: The best of times or the worst of times?

We all remember the scene in the infamous movie "The Sandlot" where the boys decide to hit up the pool on a hot summer day and trick the lifeguard into saving one of them just so they can receive "CPR." Is that what lifeguarding is really like? Is it glamorous? Easy? Fun? Like Hell?

I'm a lifeguard at a local waterpark in south Florida, and I am here to document my days as a lifeguard. The waterpark I work at consists of slides, a "kiddie" pool, diving boards, lap lanes and an open swimming area. I absolutely adore my job for the most part. The majority of the time I spend my days making friends with the local kids, judging their splashes or rating their dives. It's a good time - let me tell ya. But every so often, we will have 500 kids come in, running around like chickens' with their heads cut off; all of them determined to be the first one in line at the slides. Those, those are the days where I wonder (only for a split second) if I should just quit and get a mindless job working at some kiosk at the mall.

Through this blog, you can decide for yourself: Is lifeguarding all its cracked up to be? I'll take you through the good times and the bad times, from the funny kids to the troublemakers, through the sunny days and the thunderstorms, from the serious rescues to tiny cuts. Get ready to see the real side of lifeguarding.