The sun was out, so Nick Haartz and David Brownell were out, so everything else was too.
They lay on towels near the center of Cheesman Park, which allows public nudity if it doesn’t include fondling or other sexually explicit activity.
But neither sunscreen nor the law can protect them from water balloons.
It started last summer, when Haartz got hit with a water balloon. He saw a man riding away on a bicycle, but before he and a friend could pull on their shorts, the bicyclist was too far away to catch.
Since then, at least four other people have been hit. They have tried sitting in different parts of the park, but the man always manages to find them.
“We stopped a policeman, but the more we got into the story the more he seemed to think it was humorous,” Haartz said. “He said he’d take a report, but we don’t really want to be under police surveillance.”