The Almost Man

The Almost Man

Everyone knows that Roger Bannister ran the first mile under four minutes, but who remembers that Earl Foster who ran it in 4.0.99 the day before?

Who doesn't know Sir Edmund Hillary's great accomplishment as the first man to climb Mount Everest, but Earl Foster, who climbed three feet from the summit a year earlier?

The answer to both is, of course, no one, because no one knows a nobody. Or as President Kennedy said, "Second best is still a loser."

Two guys were sitting at a bar bending their elbows pretty heavy. "What do you think, Earl? Where do losers end up, anyway?"

And Earl says, his tone only a centimeter short of belligerent, "Probably drinking in lousy bars with other losers."

The first was too soused to catch it. "Hey, Earl, you ever done anything great?"

"Not that's been noticed, but I feel one coming on."

The two left: Earl to the East on foot, his drinking partner to the West on a stretcher.

Earl knew he wasn't a loser and that life was not a downward spiral. He'd trained and competed enough to know the wisdom behind Yogi Berra's saying that baseball is eighty percent mental and the other half is physical. Foster well knew the importance of a good attitude, and at the moment his was zilch. He needed to pull himself together.

"Everything I've done has been on land," he mused. "Running and climbing -- if I'm going to change my attitude, I might as well change my medium. So it's the air or the sea. Now, if I mess up in the air it could be curtains. If on the water, I could drift. Yeah, water's the way to go."

Mr. Foster made another resolution that day: no more attempts at world records or even competition. From now he would do things just to be doing them, just for the fun of it.

Earl researched boats. It didn't take long to find that they cost an arm and a leg. He didn't want to sacrifice either. So he looked in a boat

magazine and found that kits sold for reasonable prices. He bummed tools from a neighbor and went to work. If the truth were known, the neighbor did more work than Earl. Bradywasa carpenter. Every time Earl's boards almost met it threw the neighbor into near-apoplexy. Still, in the end, Earl had spent enough time on the construction that he felt confident in saying, "I helped make this."

So Earl Foster put his labor of love in the water. Real sea folk launch theirs, but Earl definitely was not one of them, yet. Now, it doesn't take a seafaring man to know that a dry-wood vessel leaks, fills up, even submerges, the first night in the water. Earl didn't know that, so he almost cried when he saw his vessel on the bottom of the harbor the next morning. A fellow in the next stall said, "Looks like she'll soaked up tight, there. Probably even be seaworthy in a few days." That raised the neophyte's spirits somewhat.

Earl Foster never did things part way. So his vessel was not a ten-foot dingy or a twelve-foot canoe. It was a full-blown, Super-Model, thirty-two foot cabin cruiser. It boasted a modest cabin but not much motor to cruise with. Still, he thought it an excellent first try.

One old salt said, "She looks like she could plane pretty well if she gets a good wave under her."

Earl knew less about motors than he did boats, so the five horsepower outboard he hung from the transom looked like an egg beater on the Titanic.

"No problem, Sonny," teased the salt. "In an hour or two you might make it to the end of the wharf!" His cohorts all chuckled. "And if reverse works, you could get back by sun down."

It's good he's old.

There is no natural way that a five horsepower outboard motor will plane a thirty-two foot cabin cruiser or even create a noticeable wake. But our hero wanted to save money, and since he had no desire to circumnavigate the globe, he figured the smaller the motor the better. His land-locked mind concluded that all those shafts and cables and nuts and bolts going through the bottom of the boat to accommodate an inboard engine would just invite water seepage.

But in spite of the salts' guffaws, Earl did navigate hisRag-mundpast the pier, out of the harbor, and even beyond the breakers.

"Think we'll ever see the feller again?" asked a grizzled geezer.

"Don't reckon. But I ain't put'n no money on it. Miracles do happen."

"The only miracle I see is he missed the pier by two inches."

On went the remarks, but now out of earshot of the modern-day Megellan. And the truth was that even if he had heard them they wouldn't have fazed him. Because when he sat on the transom of the boat he'd made, he said, "I'm a winner!" He' not only made the boat, mostly, he'd put it in the bay, bailed it out, and even got the motor started. Moreover, in spite of wind, waves, current, and salty wharf-rat remarks, he, Earl Foster, was definitely on the high seas. No second bestthistime.

Sometimes neophytes over do. Sometimes under do. Earl weighed in somewhere between the two. He over did the water: stored two hundred gallons. He under did the food: two columns of saltine crackers and a quarter-jar of peanut butter. Planning was obviously not Earl's forte.

It was when he was offshore about three miles that he sensed he was in trouble. Other than being short on gas, he also forgot to take a funnel. And even if he had one, the motor was too weak to push a thirty-two foot, water-soaked vessel against the current, rising wind, and waves.

Blast. How do you get to shore? Everything's pushing meaway.

He would loved to have said MAYDAY or SOS over a radio but he didn't have one.

Even he knew he couldn't start a bonfire.

Not being a quitter, he managed to get some gas into the motor, but it did little good since the short-shaft outboard spent more time fanning air than churning water.

Since nothing got him closer to shore, he leaned on the truism that the better part of valor is discretion. So he surrendered to Fate and sat quietly in his modest cabin sipping water. He would have eaten but he'd finished the crackers and peanut butter long before.

I wonder how long a man can last on water alone?

Had he known what events were forthcoming he wouldn't have thought about water. He would have put all his energy into praying.

It started with a low roar in the distance, like a locomotive a mile or two away from town. Then there was the wall. It was too high for water.

But the locomotive grew louder and the wall became dominant. Had someone yelled Tsunami it wouldn't have meant a thing to the land-dweller. Faults, plates, continental drift, underwater earthquake -- the vocabulary belonged to the geologist and seismologist not to Mr. Foster. Earl could only think about being at the mercy of the sea.

That's when he realized that the noise did not belong to a train and that

vertical wall really was water.

The cause of the giant wave was not a phenomenon to scientists, but the chance to observe one up close was a godsend. After the fear that the San Andreas Fault was not going to slide into the Pacific and that the Tsunami was heading West, not East, everyone from million-dollar cruisers to small fishing boats dashed seaward. Governmental scientists and expensive research institutes were close on their heels. But the first on the scene were the camera-laden helicopters.

The Cost Guard, Navy, and State Police all sent teams, mostly to warn people in front of the wave and to pick up the pieces of those who had already been visited by the Big T.

"What in God's name isthat?" the Coast Guard Commander asked, spottingRag-Mund.

"You guys see what I see?" squawked a Navy Captain over the radio.

"I've seen California surfers," said a Trooper, "but this beats all."

For there, teetering precariously on the crest of one of the most destructive forces in Nature, was a thirty-two foot cabin cruiser. And the skipper, seemingly unconcerned, sat calmly in the cabin sipping a drink.

"Is he nuts, or what?"

But we know that Earl Foster, cruiser extraordinairre, was neither crazy nor a daredevil nor even an attention seeker. He was simply an honest citizen who had cast off for a little buzz around the bay but happened to get swept up by a Tsunami. While it looked insane, we know his wild surf board ride was an accident: he wasn't tempting the Tsunami voluntarily.

A plethora of hot-blooded radio personnel jammed the air waves asking to lend assistance.

"Won't do any good," said a Commander. "It's beyond human help."

"Agreed," said a Trooper. "As long as the vessel doesn't veer North or South, it seems safe until it gets to Hawaii."

And then the Commander, who was obviously bucking for Rear-Admiral, made a decision.

"We're going down."

"Down, Sir? Isn't that suicide?"

"Down!" ordered the Commander, when he saw all the cameras.

"Man the rescue cable! Smith, the harness. We're going to get that tourist out of there if it's the last thing we do." He didn't see the humor.

Naturally the army of cameramen shot the rescue and it splashed

immediately over local, national, and international TV.

Down went the cable, harness, and volunteered Seamen. And up came Foster, smiling innocently as he waved to the cameras. Then, in a burst of honor for his vessel, he salutedRog-Mund. It would not be the last time he nor the news-hungry world would see her, for the thirty-two footer, permanently situated on that monstrous wave, captured the attention of the entire world minute-by-minute all the way from off-California to the beach waters of Hawaii where the Tsunami dissipated. And so great a story had the "Tsunami Surfer" become that a TV station flew him to the pineapple state, lowered him safely onto hisRag-Mund, where he nonchalantly egg-beatered into Pearl like nothing unusual had happened.

The next edition of the World Record Book featured the boat as the Fastest-Ever Traverse from California to Hawaii By Sea. It was close enough for Earl Foster to claim that he had finally come in first. Through every fault of his own.