Wipe Out

Hey everyone. Sorry for the major time lapse between posts. I kept saying to myself "post something tomorrow" and each day I came home more tired than the last, so I just kept putting it off. But here we go.

OK. Well there is a lot to catch you all up on. To make it a little easier, I'll break it down into three different posts, one for each day.

Monday:

We went to to the beach for the day, but the exciting part was Linz and I tried to do
some surfing. I haven't been on a surf board in about 10 years, and she had only done it once before about three weeks prior, so not a whole lot of experience to speak of. After about an hour of complete failure, I started making progress and eventually got a couple good rides. The funny part is the camera died before I got better, so there only pictures are me wiping out. Linz picked it back up faster and we got some good shots of her hanging ten. I think we are going back to try it one more time today, so hopefully I'll have some better luck.

One of the scariest parts when we first got out in the water was trying to control the surf board through big waves. I'm used to a little boogie board, and if there is a big wave you just dive under and let the water thrash the board, no problemo. But a big, hard, 8 foot surf board is a little more of a hazard to both yourself and other surfers around you. To complicate the issue more, there were some BIG waves coming in on Monday, and trying to navigate through and around them was definitely challenging. When we finally regained some energy later and went for a swim, the swells were still big, and since I was now on foot I had a better perspective of them. They were easily 8 to 10 foot swells. Swimming in them was a blast, but for a very inexperienced surfer, not so much.

That night the three of us claimed one of the fire pits on the beach, got a couple bundles of fire wood, and just chilled as the fire lit up the area and kept us warm. It was really nice being on the beach at night and it was unbelievable how many stars we could see. We walked down by the water and played catch with the light-up frisbee. It was a little challenging for me to catch though because I lost my contacts swimming earlier. Staying at the beach all day gave us the opportunity to see something which is apparently pretty rare in San Diego:

An actual sunset.

There are usually big cloud banks that swallow up the sun as it makes it way down and it is never seen or heard from again, or least for a couple hours. But this day the cloud bank was a little higher, and there was space between it and the water, so we got to see the sun disappear into the ocean. It was something I was determined to see since I got here, and it was well worth it. I even mustered up enough energy in my camera for two good shots of it going down before the camera totally gave out on me.