Hot Summer Nights

Well, Christmas has come and gone, and I can’t believe it went so fast.  It seems like yesterday that I was having Thanksgiving dinner!

I spent Christmas in Michigan with the family, and it was great.  Getting there and back, however, was a different story.  Delta lost my luggage on the way there, and then rescheduled my returning flight for the next day at 6am.  I officially hate Delta!

It was ridiculous.  When contacting the Delta/Northwest baggage hotline they said they could send an email to the Detroit Metro baggage office to see about the status of my bag.  They said, quote, “we can’t actually call them because we don’t have their phone number.”

Wait, what?  The baggage hotline for  a major airline can’t look up the number for an airport’s baggage office?  Are you kidding me?

Adding insult to injury, they are now charging $20 to check a bag.  Thanks, I just gave you $20 to lose my bag.

Then on the way back it was quite an adventure.  First, the nosecone of the plane was scratched and they had to replace it.  Then, taxiing to the runway we hit a pothole.  The captain got on the intercom and basically told us “That pothole you felt back there was nothing, everything is fine.”

But it wasn’t.  Apparently as we were taxiing around some passengers heard a strange vibration noise from the right engine.  Then the stewardess heard it.  So they stopped the plane and had to get everything looked at.  When we taxied back to the gate and the pilot and mechanics came to the cabin to investigate I kind of knew we weren’t taking off that night.  I didn’t want to fly on that plane anyway – as all this was going down one of the flight attendants said to the other attendant that she would “rather just get off this plane.”  When the FLIGHT ATTENDANT says that, you know you have a bit to worry about.

So we had to go back to the airport, wait on line for an hour, get a hotel voucher for $13 (which was useless because everything was closed), board a shuttle for the hotel, and get 3 hours of sleep before waking up at 3am to make the shuttle for the newly rescheduled 6am flight.  PLUS, adding even more insult to injury, they didn’t let us have access to our checked baggage.  ANOTHER night without any clothes and toiletries.  After we boarded our rescheduled flight we had to wait 2 hours on the runway because they forgot to stock our plane with any beverages or food.  Didn’t much matter to me because they only give any worthwhile food to first class anyway.

In sum:  I hate Delta.  They gave us a $100 voucher for future use with their airline.  Thanks but no thanks.  In another few months all that $100 is going to be good for is checking a bag.

Well, enough about that.

I’m currently up in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, for a weeklong snowboarding trip with my friends Lori, Barb, and Val.  We are staying at Barb’s fantastic apartment for free.  New powder is expected for New Year’s Day.  I’m so excited!

I will update hopefully with some more news about the trip.

I’ve gotta say, even though it’s nice to travel, I will be so happy to finally get home after this trip and get back into a regular routine and schedule.  I just want to relax, and for me it’s hard to do that when I’m traveling – especially sports traveling like surf trips and snowboard trips, where people want to make the most of their time and you can’t always make your own schedule.

I’m kinda getting the travel bug again.  As if it’s not enough that I’m going to be spending the Winter in San Diego!  The thing is, I get a little depressed when making changes – such as picking up and leaving.  I’m going back to California on the 27th, and while I’m really excited about that I’m also sad to be leaving here.  I mean, it’s kinda silly in a way because it’s just going to be getting colder, greyer, and more boring here as we stretch into the colder months.  But still, that’s just the way I am.  I’ve always been that way.

Anyway, my method of coping with the slight depression is to make plans and goals for things that I really want to do.  Right now that means I’m thinking of some places I want to travel to.

One of my big goals is to surf the Mentawai’s in Indonesia.  So recently I’ve been reading and browsing the Kandui surf resort website, drooling over the pictures and videos.

The waves range from user-friendly to advanced.  I was looking at the different waves and it’s not like you have to surf deadly double overhead grinders into dry reef.  Some of the waves just look like perfect, head high peelers in crystal clear blue water.

I’d love to go to Bali too.  Last night I was talking to Katherine, and I had no idea she did so much traveling in that part of the world.  She traveled and surfed in the early 90′s when she was my age, and she did it alone.  She went to Australia and Bali and the Indonesian islands a bunch of times.  I was so stoked to be talking to her, and it was so weird because I had just been thinking up all these crazy ideas about doing some traveling on my own.

I mean, I really would love to travel with friends, but life doesn’t always allow people to simply take off for two weeks and blow money on a surf trip.  So, if I can’t latch on to some trips with people this year, then I might consider taking a trip on my own at some point.  Maybe not Bali right away, but somewhere.  Caribbean, Costa Rica, wherever.  I also want to work on my surfing a bit more.  I’ve made a lot of progress the past half year, so I’m stoked on that.  If I’m going to these places I want to be able to surf and know that I know what I’m doing if I want to take on more challenging waves.

The thought of traveling right now is appealing because I want to live life and do as much as I can before I potentially settle down with a family or whatever.  And there’s no rush for that.  I really want to have a family, but right now I’m free as a bird and I want to take advantage.  Plus, when you get older it’s harder to surf hard without fearing injury too much.  That’s just a fact of life as you get older.

I want to take risks and have stories to tell.  I don’t want to just live my life in a safe little bubble.  Some of the people I respect most are those who get out there and experience the world.  People who have crazy stories and misadventures in the far corners of the world.  My favorite story to tell people now is about our trip to Mexico and how we had to search in the countryside to find the Ranch, this out of the way surf spot.  It was 4 girls in the rental car, 4 boards stacked on the car, and our directions led us to this dirt road in the middle of the woods.  I was freaking out, thinking of all sorts of scary scenarios – like getting killed by drug lords and nobody knowing for days.  Anyway, the directions said “take the fork that looks more traveled.”  So, every time we got to a fork we would sit there scratching our heads.  “Which one looks more traveled??”  Finally we made it out and into a clearing overlooking an absolutely beautiful point break in the middle of unspoiled wilderness.   I mean, it is one of the experiences I will remember my entire life.

Anyway, that’s my plan so far.  Nothing’s set in stone.  I want to get to CA first and then see where I want to go from there.  Gotta get back into surfing shape anyway since I have barely been surfing more than a handfull of times in the past month.