Falling Behind

Day before yesterday... (my constantly referring to events of days past instead of events of the day is a good indicator that I am running behind)... the assignment was due at midnight. I was 75% done when the power went out at 4:30. Since this is not an unusual occurrence (careless drivers and power poles), I decided to go for a surf...

As there was good surf and no power, everyone and all their dogs were out. Cox was super crowded with locals. No one likes to surf in a crowd... but for me, there is the added discomfort of being surrounded by people whom I cannot recognise but who know me by name. It makes me wonder if I'm suffering from visual agnosia... which, as I've mentioned earlier, is a symptom of Klüver-Bucy Syndrome... frightening!

When I got out of the surf, there was still no power. I made a few calls, and found out that there was no power from Tofino to Campbell River-- apparently an entire substation failed somewhere near Comox-- and that the estimated time of resolution was 10:30PM. It was too close... so I got ready to drive to Nanaimo to finish and send off the assignment...

On my way out of town on the 2.5hr drive in search of electricity, I noticed that one of the hotels has full generator power... so I went there and plugged in... and Iwas going to mess around with downloading a file onto the blackberry via USB cable so that I could send it off... as it turns out they even had a working unsecured wireless connection! I hung out at the lobby and did my work while trying to ignore this 20 year old kid who kept trying to engage me in conversation, and-- this is actually a little amusing-- offered to help me with my writing assignment. After hours of this torture, I went to go get dinner. DCMS had invited me to join him at Way Worse earlier, so I called him-- it was 10:55, the kitchen closes at 11, and I was 7 minutes away... so I got him to order me a tuna burger and went and ate and watched DCMS play pool.

Now that I've had some time to think about it, I realized that small town life has managed to wear me down: two years ago, I responded with an appropriate measure of horror to an invitation from a dude to "watch [him] play floor hockey"... and now, the lameness of watching DCMS play pool didn't even cause the slightest of alarm... but perhaps I was just there for the tuna burger.

As part of his psychological warfare is sleep deprivation, I didn't get to bed till after 4AM. After two hours of sleep, I got up and made breakfast, went to work, and then immediately went for a surf. I was tired, but one is never too tired for glassy chest high peeling waves at Cox. I had a pretty good session... and as I was packing up my board to go home, DCMS walked into the parking lot... he must have gotten in and out after I did. He said hi, I said hi, and then I got the hell out of there... quickly. And that is how attachment disordered I am... for a few days, I thought it might be different... I thought I might be different. But people don't change, do they?

I went for dinner with a friend, and then later fell asleep over ten times while composing an e-mail... it wasn't even a long one... I was just that tired. I didn't even manage to get started on the second e-mail... or make that phone call.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

I'm sorry, I just fell asleep while writing this... I'm going to get some dinner and go for a surf... that's the one place where one does not fall asleep.... and especially not tonight... 2.5m on 14 seconds.

New reason not to procrastinate

Stupid tourists who don't know how to drive and take down power poles.

BLARGH!!!!

I hope to not have to drive to Port Alberni to send off this assignment by midnight. Anyone know how to get a word doc downloaded onto a blackberry? E-mail me if you do.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

I don't speak English...

E-mail and phone messages are piling up. Piling. I apologize.

I shall get to them soon... but now is a time wherein I either sleep or die.

Reality Check

UVic has a rabbit infestation: true.
Everyone wears hoodies: false.
Tall guys who casually use the word "Foucaultian" are hot: cannot be verified at this time.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

The Good Stuff...

I've been surfing and climbing to exhaustion. Surfing hard... and climbing hard. It's all good... but what's been missing is the sort of beauty that can only be found at the Met, Covent Garden, or La Scala... thank god there's youtube. Check out Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Renee Fleming singing Lippen Schweigen and La ci darem la mano. These two act amazingly even at a recital. This version of Lippen Schweigen kills me. I can't imagine watching these two act the whole thing out... it'd be so beautiful that I think my mind would explode from sensory overload.

Losing Stoke

I wanted to go for a surf tonight... but then I also didn't want to go for a surf. What I wanted was long, clean lines of glassy, peeling waves that go on and on. I wasn't quite committed to going out in dumpy bad surf, getting beaten up, and not catching any good rides. There are days when I do commit to going out in any condition, and then end up having a great time despite my expectation to the contrary... I've been pleasantly surprised in messy surf, big surf, and tiny surf. Tonight, though, I wasn't so committed.

I stopped at the north end of North. It didn't look great, but I ended up talking to a totally stoked American, who convinced me to at least check out the south end of North. His stoke helped. But there wasn't a parking spot at Mid, so I drove to South instead of the south end of North. South didn't look good... but I made a u-turn and drove back to the south end of North, and walked out and looked. It didn't look all that great. I stood there for quite a while, unable to make up my mind.

After watching for a bit and realizing that I wasn't going to be doing anything else if I didn't go out, I decided to go out even if it wasn't going to be great. It looked cold... so I put on my booties for the first time since June. I paddled out... got out surprisingly easily (I must be getting better at this)... and waited and waited and waited. It wasn't all that great for what seemed like forever... I caught a few close outs... and successfully made a huge drop which I for some reason barely felt (maybe I was in the air for a bit, I didn't feel the wave under me)... it wasn't a bad session... but it wasn't a super fun one for the first half... but because I was wearing booties, I was very warm and was able to stay out comfortably... then the surf got better, and I started getting much better rides.

At one point, I caught a peeling wave, and as I popped up, cameras on the beach started flashing at me... and there must have been over ten flashes aimed at me for the first few seconds of my ride. Tofino is, for the moment, filled with tourists.... and I am as watchable as a seal. Somewhere out there are pictures of me surfing that I shall never see.

Winter is coming... and I had better figure out how I'm going to keep the stoke.

Giving up

Here's another first:

Today, I gave up.

I went to North Chesterman after work today... the swell was 11.9ft according to the surf report. I went out, worked really hard to get out, got out, sat for a while, and after watching one gigantic wave after another come in and not break in any rideable way, I gave up, and paddled back to the beach.

I decided that I wasn't going to get any good rides in gigantic, big, dumpy surf... so I left to go check out other beaches. I went and checked South. At the end of the trail, I saw Ralph, who said there will be no surfing for him today.

I decided to not go out and get killed and not get any rides. So for the first time since I've been with Bluepath, I gave up.

I went home, got out of my wetsuit, put on a pair of jeans, and went to check out this climbing gym that a friend has been trying to get me to go to (who has the time, with all the good surf we've been having?)... so I went there and climbed. I'm climbing way better than I have ever climbed before... not that I've done a lot of climbing before... but I surprised myself. All the paddling must have improved my upper body strength... I was pretty impressed.

The good time climbing was making the evening pretty good... but the thing that topped it off was that the climbing gym dude's girlfriend came in... and said that the surf at North was nasty and big and NO ONE got any rides... one person got barrelled, chewed up, and spat out on the sand... not the water.

Well... looks like I made the right choice! Sometimes, giving up is the exactly right thing to do.