January 1, 2005 7:28 AM

Dude, I know it killed 150,000 people, but that wave was RIGHTEOUS

Briton Surfs Tsunami, Survives

Surfers dream of the perfect wave. I’m not sure finishing the ride in a hotel restaurant is what Martin Markwell had in mind, though.

I WANT A MARGARITA AND I WANT IT NOW!!

Markwell was paddling on his surfboard Sunday off the popular Hikkaduwa beach resort on Sri Lanka’s palm-fringed southern coast when he was swept up by a tsunami wave and sent crashing over a white sand beach and into a hotel restaurant.

“It was really terrible because I was surfing, I was really surfing on a wave I wasn’t supposed to be on,” he told Reuters.

“As an experienced surfer, when I saw the wave come I realized something was wrong, but I couldn’t escape because my surfboard was tied to my ankle.”

His wife Vicki and son Jake looked on in horror from a hotel balcony as he crashed toward the shore. Miraculously, he stayed atop his board until he reached the hotel, jumped off and waded to safety as the ocean rolled back to feed a much larger tsunami wave on its way.

The family regrouped and ran inland into jungle to safety just minutes before a giant tsunami wave 30 feet high crashed into Sri Lanka’s coast, killing more than 28,500 people.

In the midst of a tragedy of such unimaginable magnitude, it’s nice to be able to have a laugh at some aspect of it. The degree of death and destruction is so far beyond the ability of most of us to comprehend. Sometimes it helps to acquaint ourselves with a few of the individual stories, not all of which are tragic.

Of course, I’m not certain I’d recommend surfing a tsunami, but in this case it probably saved Markwell’s life, and he’ll have a hell of a story to tell the grandkinds.

So, Martin…other than that, how was the vacation??

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 1, 2005 7:28 AM.

More empty but highly entertaining gestures was the previous entry in this blog.

There is something to be said for starting with a clean slate...I'm just not certain what that something might be.... is the next entry in this blog.

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