The Greenroom

It was a great weekend! As I stated in an earlier post waves were on the way and we got some fun ones on Sunday. Sunday morning I got up early to get ready for Church. The winds were looking good and the buoy readings were promising. I attended Church and our ten/10 classes. (Sidenote: Dr. Harold Ivan Smith spoke about being in a "strangeland" and feeling lost with were you are in life. His presentation and illustrations hit me square in the chest like nothing I have heard in a very long time. Needless to say I am extreemly grateful that I got to hear that message.) Anyway, after all of that I headed home, grabbed my stuff and took off to the beach. One of the telltale signs that you look for when arriving at the Indian River Inlet is how many cars are in the parking lot (this applies to winter only). As I pulled up I saw no one. I assumed this meant that the waves were not any good. I was wrong. The waves were quit good and I surfed for about two hours completely by myself before anyone else showed up. Slowly one by one a fewguys eventually paddled out in the deteriorating conditions and then at one point the whole zoo showed up at once. No problem I was happy with the waves that I got.
As always it was great to surf with Chuck White, Joel Tice, Colin Hurlihey, Flaco, Andrew McBride and a few other guys that have been there for years.


Colin makes eveerything look easy weather he is surfing or bodyboarding.












Joel botom turing into a pretty solid springtime slab.












Jeremy logging some solid greenroom time at a place that has no shortage of vacancies. (How is that for a catchy caption!)











Me with a big bottom turn and an even bigger hood. (That thing is huge!)












I can't wait for the next swell as I continue to strengthen my knee, try to get back to normal and improve my riding.
All pics courtesy of SC @ surfingoc.com.

Here are a few pictures of myself that I am putting up since this is MY blog. :)

This sequence is from a day at SouthSide this fall. The waves were pretty solid and the guys from Surfingoc.com got a few good pics from that swell.











Here is another one from Southside. I like this one because it was just my brother and I for an hour or so this morning before work. I promise that I tweaked this invert. The pic was just taken before I got projected up and arched into the move. Many thanks to Phil H. for sitting on the beach and shooting while the waves were just rediculously good. You can sort of tell how good it was by the one that is coming in, in the backround.



I believe this one is from the same morning as the one above. Again this picture is by Phil H. I got a pretty decent backside barrel on this one and made it. I like this one because I don't think that I will be riding DK for a while since I messed up my knee. I am thankfull to get back in the water for sure but I think I am going tostick to prone and standup for a while.





This one is from the surfingoc guys again. If my memory serves me correctly this was from a very good session from the 04 - 05 winter. This was just one of those really solid sessions. The waves were pretty big probably getting close to 8 feet (East Coast Standards) The water was cold in the low 40 to upper 30's. You can tell that it is breaking pretty shallow. It just makes for a great picture representing what "real" East coast waves are like.




Alright well the clock is ticking down here at work so I will wind this one down. Hopefully I will be able to put up some more at another time.

Great news!!! There is finally a swell on the way to Delaware. If your a bodyboarder or surfer for that matter you can relate to this. If you aren't well then... try.
When there are waves in the area it is all you think about. How can you get out of any and all obligations to spend time in the water while the sun is up. When the sun goes down you go to bed extra early so that: 1. You are well rested for the next day of surfing and 2. Morning arrives that much faster once you have closed your eyes for the evening.
To my surprise this morning after working for a few hours and listening to an extremely exciting speech about the issue of design pressure versus mulling of windows and how bureaucratic the entire code enforcement subject is, I took a few minutes to check the forecast. I went to Buoyweather and to my surprise there is a potential swell on the horizon for the weekend.
Sunday morning 6' of swell out of the East at 9 seconds is a goldmine to someone who has been in the water only three times in the last three months and all of those days were back to back in early March. I praise the Lord for the blessing of the outdoors and that I am blessed with even the option of bodyboarding.

So my mom got me this book. 10 Stupid things men do to mess up their lives. Is this encouraging to me? Well I love my mom (and dad) and I know that she is simply looking out for me but I will tell you that I had an initial moment of recoiling and backpedaling at the site of that book. My instant thoughts were: messing up my life! NOOOOO! I hope I don't end up like that guy that I was always afraid of ending up as. Do I seem weird? And so on and so forth.
Backing up to before the book. I believe what prompted this action was a pretty major restructuring of part of my life several weeks ago (I won't go into this here or now but I do believe that most of my friends are aware of what I am referring to) There are several other areas of my life that I would like to restructure as well but I am trying to make these changes one at a time. I do sincerely pray that I am moving in the right direction and not making lifelong mistakes with these decisions.
Anyway, to tell you the truth this book is very useful and I would suggest it to any guy (or girl) that would be interested in a book with that sort of subject matter. It's not necessarily the kind of book that you set on your desk at work because (lets be honest) it would probably creep your coworkers out but a good read nonetheless.

I had no idea we were such a close knit family here. I just checked my user profile to find that I have had 16 views on my blog. This is a sad, sad story. Please get the word out if for only my self-esteem. Actually I think my self-esteem will be fine if my blog tanks... but just in case.
I will point out in my own defense that my links on the left hand side of the page are a wealth of information even though I still need to go through and add some much needed information. Also if you have any suggestions to improve my page just let me know and I will do my best to include them.

You are a surfer and you show up at the beach one early morning to catch a few before work. As you walk from your car to check the waves you are greeted with the pleasant site of perfect 4 foot waves peeling right in front of you. A quick glance to the right and you see "the pack". About 15 people all sitting right on top of one another waiting for a two wave set to role through and hopefully be close enough to the peak to claim that wave as their own and not get snaked. It lookes pretty good right in front of you where empty wave after empty wave peals away unridden but there must be a reason all of those people are surfing that one spot. You are drawn in and paddle out to the crowd, all the while empty wave after empty wave peels away unridden just a few yards away.
Most modern surfers are drawn to the site of a crowd of people rather than the waves themselves.

It was a summer Friday afternoon when the regular crew (I don't know exactly who was there but it was pretty much always the same people) headed off for another one of our concert road trip adventures. The general direction we were headed was North and West into the Pennsylvania wilderness. Our road trips during the late nineties were always an adventure and in general (to me at least) we didn't care where we were going but just that we were leaving the mundane traditional routine of daily life. All the standard stuff that goes into a 16 year oldish (not exactly sure how old we were, old enough to drive and thats all that matters) road trip: Show up late, Directions... Who cares, Danny, "I forgot something. Can we swing by my house?" Josh,"Danny. I don't really think your house is on the way", and the list goes on and on.
You may be wondering, "What amazing band were they going to see that would prompt such a trip?". It was Dogwood of course.

Anybody who is anybody listens to Dogwood (duh!). We are some of the only people who could be considered Dogwood regulars at their East Coast Shows. My brother jumped off of the stage into the audience of 25 -30 and nearly killed himself when he got knocked back into the stage. The band stopped playing to check on him. The night went on without a hich.

Of course the first place that we headed after the show was Denny's. Any self-respecting road tripper does this to signify the beggining of the trip home. Who do we run into at Denny's after the who but Dogwood! What luck. The budget these guys are operating on must be HUGE to be able to eat out at Denny's after every show.

Alright this story is starting to get long so I will try to expedite things a bit. Plus I am getting tired of typing.

The Trip Back...

We somehow ended up in Baltimore (we were not supposed to end up even close to Baltimore on our return trip) heading the wrong direction on the interstate. Don't ask me how it happened I blame the car in front of us. Then to recover from our near death, wrong way on the interstate eperience we turned off of the nearest exit and headed into what must have been a pretty shady neighborhood because we got pulled over by the bpd and told to get out of wherever we were. Most of this is a bit of a blur to me simply because at this point it was about 3:00 A.M.

Finally we escaped the streets of Baltimore to the empty roads back to Sussex county. Up next... Hurlock. Now Hurlock is your typical small Delmarva town. One road in and one road out. We found the Road in but where in the world is the road that leads out. We tried everything. Turned down every small side street that little town had. We were unable to escape. Trapped by the deadly grasp of smalltown America (that was entirely too dramatic). At this point most everyone nerves were shot and we had played about every traveling game imaginable. The sun had also started to come up which was nice, but I knew that I had a ten hour workday ahead of me since it was now a Saturday. Finally somehow or onother we found ourselves out of town and on a B-line home. We had been on cell phones regularly throught the night with family and friends trying to have them talk us though the roads on their maps. We didn't need a map because we were to cool for school and planning was for adults of course. We were going to fly by the seat of our pants and make this trip happen.

Finally we made it home. I put on my work clothes and crawled into bed for an hour of sleep before waking up to head into work. It was one of the best trips of my life and I think back on it often. From that point on whenever friends and I are together and want to remember a good time we simply say, "All roads lead to Hurlock".

Well it's not exactly the ninteys, but it would be fun if it was don't you think. No more work just school. I had no idea how utterly amazing school was until I left it (as the old adage goes, you don't know what you had until it is gone).

A mortgage... that's for the birds (not really, but you catch my drift).
Your friends... everynight was a hang out night (don't get me wrong guys I still love hanging out)
Work... work requires a buttoned shirt w/ a collar and pants (no more shorts and a t-shirt for me. I wish I could get sunburnt at work, but that is pretty tough unless your computer minitor starts putting off UV Rays)
Sleep time... (good grief don't get me started)
Wake up time... (AHHHHHHH, even worse)
Bills... (Cell Phone, Car insurance, Mortgage, Gas .... $$$$$)
My body... (How much more hair can grow out of my skin from the neck down, How fast can it fall out above my neck? What do you mean knee surgery? I'm 24 for crying out loud.)

As you can see from my coments above I have had a fundamental shift in my outlook. I used to see the glass half full, now I look at the glass half empty (at least my glass looks that way to me) so today I am starting the new me. I know that I have been truely blessed, and my outlook should reflect this. My parents are amazing, I live near the beach (my schedual revolves around weather or not there are waves), I own property (how many other single 24 year olds can say that), I have friends and family who would truly sacrifice everything for me as I would for them.

I started this post as a gripe against the circumstances that suround my life, I am so thankful to the Lord for what my life is, blessed.