OH NO!!!

I am hanging on to the tailgate of the wagon... my feet drag a little in the dust... my forearms are sore and my fingers weary... the tailgate is rattling its hinges as the wagon bounces over rocks and ruts... it's moving faster and faster and bouncing harder and harder... and I am barely hanging on.

I have been doing a lot of climbing... so my grip should be stronger... I should be able to climb back on... everything should be okay.

I do NOT want to fall off the wagon!

Just say no to falling off the wagon! Hold on! Hold on! Hold on, hold on with a grip so tight it dams my blood and makes my head feel light...

Merry Christmas!

Any ideas as to what was meant here? This is on a washroom door in a restaurant in Edmonton. There is another note just like it on the men's washroom.
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Jean-Paul Sartre was here...

I'm at the end of this very cul-de-sac, and have been for nearly a week. The passing of time is accompanied by dermal desertification. Blood oozes from the cracks, magma-like. My nose is always bloody.

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Buying vs. Earning

Good news, The Time Traveler's Wife is turning out to be a good read... and my nieces are actually pretty fun to be around. The age gap between the two of them makes for a bit of awkwardness... and perhaps my sensitivity to that awkwardness is because I'm acutely aware of what the little one won't remember 30 years from now...

Edmonton reminds me a lot of Montreal and Ottawa... cold, flat, and grey... but like Montreal and Ottawa, Edmonton happens to be the place where people who mean something to me live... so since it's not possible to get these people to move... I guess I'll just have to get used to paying tonnes of money to fly to cold, flat, grey places every now and then.

I got my grade back for my course. I got an A. I made a frighteningly minimal effort and got an A in a graduate level course on a subject that I knew next to nothing about. I'm starting to worry that a master's degree is not so much an education as it is a purchase. Either that, or I'm a genius.

I'm missing the surf already...

First thought

I'm sitting in the Comox Airport waiting for my flight. I begin to read a book recommended most recently by the playwright, less recently by Cleone. I decided to buy _The Time Traveler's Wife_ for airport and plane reading. So here I am, at the airport, without my copy of _Infinite Jest_, worried that I may have made a horrible mistake-- the first paragraph is not at all promising.

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Good timing...

As it turns out, my flight doesn't leave until 2:15 from Comox... which means that if I get up really early on Friday... I can get another surf in on Friday before I leave! This realization brightened my entire day.

I cleaned the bottom and rails on my NSP today. There are a LOT of paint chips in that board... I should definitely be more careful... and but now, I really really want to refinish it in black... and name it Ortho Stice.

I decided today to stop challenging myself on difficult climbing routes... instead, I'm going to work on endurance on easy routes... which will build up strength... which will make difficult routes less difficult in the future. I climbed the green route six times without rest, then climbed it may more times, but with breaks between every two or three. I think I've got a plan.

On a completely unrelated note... I am failing even to realize what a relief it has been to be completely done my first semester of the MPA. On my way back in the new year, I'm going to take the ferry to Victoria to pick up my textbooks... and make another visit to Munro's...

Two more nights of climbing and one morning surf before I go and freeze my ass off.

An altogether-satifactory day...

Today was a day off... but... I had an appointment with a dental surgeon in Nanaimo... so most of the day would be squandered on driving. Knowing that I'm not going to have another opportunity to surf until after I get back from Edmonton, I got up super early to go for a surf. I was in my wetsuit and out the door before first light... by the time I got to Cox Bay, however, there was already someone in the water... a shortboarder in the corner.

I paddled out at LBL, and caught a closeout right off the bat. Keeping in mind the advice to be more selective about which waves I go for, I let a lot of them go by... which was good... because more of them than not were closeouts. For the first half hour or so, I made two big drops that quickly closed out... and decided that maybe today wasn't really the best day for a surf that has to last me two weeks. Whenever there are big drops, there aren't chilled out peeling waves... which are what I'm all about. I considered calling it quits and going home and getting organized to go to Nanaimo... maybe get there early and do some Christmas shopping... but this was going to be my last surf until at least the 28th... so I stayed. Good thing I stayed! I ended up catching three super awesome long rides that were totally overhead! The buoy report said 6 feet... but it was definitely bigger than that... the reason why I know it was totally overhead was because all the waves I saw other people catch were also way overhead... and they did not look like extraordinarily short people. When I was about to leave (had to get back by 9AM to shower so that I'd have plenty of time to get to Nanaimo), I decided that I would paddle out just one more time... and catch just one more good one. I paddled back out, and as soon as I got to the outside, this perfect looking wave started coming my way... I went for it... and it *was* perfect... an overhead peeling right... and I was in the perfect spot for it... it was all very... perfect. I really wanted another... but realizing that that one was a gift from the conductor, I left, grateful for that perfect ride on the perfect wave.

And then it was to Nanaimo... the dental surgeon's office, where I ran into someone with whom I surfed on Saturday, who had also driven all the way from Tofino! We could have carpooled!

After the appointment, I went and shopped (I hate shopping!)... and got a huge pile of groceries for $37 that would probably have cost me $80 in Tofino. It took me almost three and a half hours to get back from Nanaimo. The huge storm that's blowing right now was a blizzard all the way till Kerr Creek... it was probably the most demanding drive I've ever done. Dark, stormy, white-out conditions... and that narrow highway shared with buses and semi trailers.

But what fun! Where else can you surf big waves in the morning and then drive through a blizzard in the evening?