Long Run Off a Short Pier Puts Women in Touch With Nature

Summer passions.

* Two young women wanted to have some fun, so, being true San Diegans, they decided to dive off the end of the Ocean Beach Pier.

Did I mention that they were naked? They were.

About 10 p.m., the two dashed au naturel the length of the pier and did half-gainers into the water. Not a difficult dive, but startled/amazed bystanders still gave them top marks for their display of form.

Then somebody decided that the pair (who may have been imbibing spirits) might need rescuing.

A lifeguard boat was summoned. So was a truck.

The two nekkid adventurers were swimming merrily to shore when the boat approached from the seaward side. The madding crowd on the pier cheered.

“Hey, we’d like a little privacy here!” shouted one of the swimmers.

No such luck.

When they reached the beach, they were given blankets and citations (for diving off the pier).

“They said they’d been planning to do this,” lifeguard chief Chris Brewster said. “They didn’t plan too well because they picked a night with a full moon.”

* Ducking the heat.

You have to remember that political consultants Lori Anderson and John Kern are urbanites who moved to the country and want to be agriculturally correct.

Their 2-acre spread in Valley Center has 282 orange trees. It also has hordes of hungry snails, which can demolish orange trees.

But snail bait is expensive and stinky. So Anderson and Kern have ducks who eat the snails.

They love their ducks. Really.

But that love has been tested by the recent heat spell.

Gracie the brood duck has been sitting on a nest of eggs for several days. Right beside the air-conditioning unit for the house.

Turning on the a-c could blow Gracie, nest and eggs to bits. The a-c has stayed off.

“There were times,” Kern allows, “when the temperature hit 112 that we debated our devotion to Gracie, but Gracie won out.”

Moral: Nobody ever said gentleman farming was easy (or cool).

Of Radioactivity and Retirement

It says here.

* The subtle approach.

At a CalRad Forum press conference in San Diego on Tuesday, industry types (medical, utility, research) backed a proposed nuclear dump in the Mojave Desert.

At the front table--representing the alternative to the dump plan--were three 20-gallon garbage cans, each with the nuclear symbol and the scary label:

“Low-Level Radioactive Waste Coming to Your Neighborhood!”

* How well does police work pay? Read further.

The city Retirement Board has approved pensions for three top cops. All pensions are effective immediately and include annual cost-of-living raises:

Larry Gore, 51, 32 years service, a commander: $66,777 a year.

Cal Krosch, 51, 29 years, deputy chief: $65,998.

Charles M. Rice, 54, 32 years, deputy chief: $75,693.

* San Diego bumper sticker: “Practice Random Madness.”

* The latest budget victim at KFMB (Channel 8): former Padre infielder Tim Flannery, after three years doing “good news” features. Gone in a few weeks.

Despite an uncertain future, Flannery is chipper:

News director “Jim Holtzman has been nothing but fair to me. He gave me a chance to learn a new trade and helped make the transition from baseball much easier.”

* There’s always a local angle.

Cutbacks have military personnel worried about being dumped into the civilian economy where jobs are scarce.

That’s why psychologist John Pullen is just back from six days in Frankfurt, Germany, where he tutored U.S. Army chaplains on helping anxiety-ridden GIs to cope.

Pullen runs the Chula Vista-based Center for Help for Agoraphobia/Anxiety through New Growth Experience.

* Before you get too excited, the Naked City exhibit at the San Diego Zoo is for pink, bucktoothed, hairless (naked), ugly things called mole-rats.

Also known as “saber-toothed sausages.”

Restrictive Clause

Headline in the Espresso, San Diego’s “coffeehouse and cafe newspaper,” on a story about a policy change at the Police Department:

“Choke-Hold Rules Tightened.”