Monday, Leap year, Feb 29, 2016

Monday....

That 41 hours I went without eating didn't work out too well.  Turns out food and sleep are important, even if you're having fun.  Eight pounds in 3 days isn't such a big deal, if you're at the top of a weight range.  The problem wasn't so much the weight loss as it was the lack of energy.  Sunday reminded me of Guiness,  my really awesome dog that died after 14 years, eleven of which were in my care.  She could run like a deer.  She actually ran after them and in the first one hundred yards, closed the gap on them in her first year at my harn. She was like a streamlined gazelle.  Little puffs of cloudy dirt erupted as she ran.  Her back stayed completely straight, but her legs moved like lightning.  Her strides were gorgeous.  Ok, so the only part that applies to me and that Sunday in question is that she would lay on my couch for a complete day after running like that after a deer.  I spent the same amount of energy chasing waves as Guiness did deer.  My lower back ached.  Lethargy took over.  I was smoked.  It was a beautiful Sunday here, most of them are.  My kiting buddies all took off to go camping somewhere up in the lagoon.  They  took their Zodiac boats and headed up about 2 hours north of Kwaj to some deserted island.  They took a beating to get there, but I hear it was great.  It worked out perfectly because I needed time to just lay on the bed like Guiness, even if I didn't.

Here are some random pics that have nothing to do with any of that...

This would be my little corner of the shoebox. 

this is the other side of my half, which has yet to be filled.  I'm happy about that, but if we have a third person move in our company pays us each and extra $750 a month.  My room mate tried to sell me on getting two other roomates, where he would rent out his bed and live outside in a tent for $2250 a month....funny...but not going to happen
 

This is shot from the Surfspot on the west side of the island.....no surfing this night
 

A shot of the cement pile by the batch plant...because I know people wanted to see it
 

Feb 27, 2016

Saturday, Feb 27, 2016 -

Its been slightly over a year, and with the exception of a maybe 3 months I have gone surfing on the west side of the island at least enough that my misconceptions of how easy(read: difficult )surfing actually is, have been overly tested.  The Command (I've no clue what exactly that means, but I've always  taken it to mean "the Colonel") at some point last year said no more surfing on the east reef.  It looked even sketchier to me than the west reef, cause the winds come from the east (normally).  Surfing is one of the few non powered things they let you do out here still ocean side.  It makes sense.  The ocean is kind of big, the lagoon is too, however the idea is you could get blown into a reef or island before being lost at sea I guess.  It turns out they don't want you to die or get lost at sea out here, apparently its kind of expensive the whole search and rescue in an open ocean deal.  Spending money on defense justifiable items doesn't seem to have limits.  Spending money searching for some idiot who was lacking a bit of common sense seems to press buttons.  The point of all this is surfing is the hardest sport this guy has ever tried.  Its been a year, and finally things are coming together.  It is completely physical, it has been completely mental for me, and then there is the challenge of figuring out the waves.  Where to be, how to place yourself exactly where you need to be to catch the damn  things, where to be to avoid getting the crap crushed out of you when a big set comes in.  Recognizing when a big set is coming in and never forgetting to keep an eye on the ocean is a pretty big deal.  Having the brains (read: having the experience of looking at a 10ft wall of water coming at you knowing you've let yourself be where its going to crash on you) to realize your limitations has turned out to be a handy little skill learned thru a completely black and blue ass cheek that lasted a month.  Paddling back out after finally riding a wave is another completely brutal part of it.  Its just so easy to give up.  The white water (the wave crashing in front of you) pushes you back about (insert any number between 40 and 200) feet depending on several criteria.  One criteria being luck= how close to the breaking wave were you when it "broke".  Second would be your ability to divert the water...and depending on the size of the wave and the power, sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, you're going back to the place where you mentally can't believe you're going to start over from.

I've gotten stronger though, or more correctly "because of".  Tonight we paddled a quarter mile ..maybe a third just to get to the spot.  The more waves you catch the more you paddle back to get to the "breakers".  I'm catching a lot of waves lately, which leaves me paddlng a lot to get back.  It finally feels good, no great, to take the beating of getting back out.  I went to work at 3am yesterday, worked thru any meals that were served at the cafeteria, and then headed out to go surfing before the last meal would be served.  We surfed until dark.  5pm to dark.  This morning high tide is at 7am, the sun wakes up at 6:30, looks like another meal will have to go to the wayside.

Feb 25, 2016

This is a copy of our local monthly (I think ) Island news......

Feb 22, 2016....I think

Monday here.  Normally we (we as in the batch plants 2 guys and James and I at the lab) don't have to work unless one of the contractors orders concrete.  They ordered 120 yards starting at 4 am, which left us going into work at 3am to prepare.  At the lab, our part ended at a little after 8 am, which left me room to meet up with my kiteboarding friends at 9 am.  I didn't make it to the Marina until around fifteen minutes after nine.  The Marhallese guy, Gary, who runs the small boat marina sees me with the kite and backpack and says that I "just missed them", "they just turned around the end of the pier".  Gary is around 5'6" tall and fairly thick.  He has a round face and a bit of a week old beard all the time, and is always smiling.  "I can call your friends on the radio and have them come back" he says.  I tell him thank you, but no, I was late.  We ended up talking for a bit longer and he tells me to come into his office cause he has something for me.   I had given him one of my old kites a few weeks ago, and he needed me to fill out the paper work so he could take the kite thru the Harbor patrol security, and back to Ebeye on the ferry, where he lived.

There was a private boat out in the harbor a few minutes later.  It looked at first like it was heading out to the lagoon, but it started turning back to the docks.  They must have just taken it off the trailer and were docking it for a later trip.  I went down and saw one familiar face Tom.  He's a KPD (Kwajalein Policeman) married to Amy who is a nurse or maybe runs the hospital I'm not sure which. One of my kites had a small rip in it so I posted on the local facebook page for someone who might be able to repair it.  Amy messaged me back and that's how I met Tom.  I wasn't really sure it was him when I approached the boat that had just docked. People out here wear so much sun protection its very hard to see who they are.  I asked the "captain" (guy driving the boat) if they were going up the east side of the lagoon, because I just missed my friends heading up to Ebar.  Joe and Jobe made up the name Ebar, its a cross between Ebeye, the island most Marshallese live on, and the sandbar just south of it.  Its not even much of a sandbar lately, the east winds are pushing it back to where it came from on the other side of the lagoon 2 miles away.  The captains and boat owners name was Don.  He told me they were heading up to Bigej, but not until noon or so.  "Oh, ok, well no big deal, I should probably chill anyhow" I tell him as I turn and walk back up the dock.  He says "I can run you up to Big Bustard if that's all you need".  I resisted for a bit, not wanting to put the guy out, plus my wallet wasn't with me to pay him gas money.  He kept insisting it wasn't a big deal, and I accepted telling him that I will hunt him down to give him gas money and thanking him profusely and he kept insisting that the gas money wasn't necessary.  Nice guy.  Chief of Police it turns out.  His name was Don, and his wife Shmay (that's my phonetic spelling) were both really nice people.  Strange way to meet someone, but really really nice people.

At that point it really wasn't that I needed to go kiteboarding that badly, The shock value to the friends out there at Ebar would be great.  I grabbed my board, harness and waterflask and jumped on board.  The whole shock value worked.  They all wondered what this boat was doing heading in to Ebar so closely, then they saw a body jump off.  It was quite the swim to get to them cause Don was a little afraid of the shallow water, even if it wasn't as shallow as he thought.  I was just happy he took me out there.  It was a little over a mile to Big Bustard from the Kwaj small boat marina, and it was completely nice he did that for me.  I will chase him down and give him $25 tomorrow.  Turns out I could have walked.  It would have taken forever walking over the reef from Kwaj to Little Bustard to Big Bustard and then to where their boats were parked.  The entertainment value of showing up that way might have been slightly better than showing up in some random boat, because I didn't get to the marina on time.

So kiteboarding ended around 1pm and by the time we got all the kites and Joe's boat all rinsed off and put away it was around 2:00pm.  High tide for surfing was around 5, so I told Kristen, who loves to surf, that I would be at Met Rocket at 3:30.  "Met Rocket" is a surfspot on the west end of Kwaj about a half mile south of the "Shark Pit", where most of the surfing was done up until bout 4 months ago.  For some reason, Met Rocket is the new place to surf.  My ultimate Frisbee game on Mondays starts at 5pm, so surfing for me had to end around 4:30.  I kind of wondered how not stopping moving from 2:30am until 5pm would affect my Frisbee game.  I wasn't tired, but I definitely was not energetic, and my stamina wasn't normal, and my lungs didn't seem to be working as well as they might have. 

Its 9 pm now.  Lights are going out soon.  Unfortunately, I'll probably wake up at 3 am.  Sleep is strange for me: when I need it the most that's when I wake up the earliest....