A pilgrimage is a journey from point A to point A...only once taken you will never look at point A the same again.
Somewhere we found with a boat in Costa Rica
Mark and I made another trip to Costa Rica this year and I noticed more changes had taken place. Both Jaco and Tamarindo had gotten modern. The crime rate had more than tripled and hotels were popping up everywhere. Highway 1 had been paved so the driving was a little better, but we were getting pulled over more. My spanish was still sketchy and it didn't help us out much. Funny thing, the pictures of our kids in my wallet helped out more.
After our typical head-smashing surf session at Playa Hermosa we drove north and settled down in Tamarindo. We spent ten days searching for waves with boats and we found quite a few. A lot of them were fun, but my two favorite places were still Ollie's Point and Avellanes. Playa Negra was real good on this trip and would have been one of my top ten surf spots in CR, but the crowd had gotten aggressive and I kept coming close to the rocks trying to dodge people. By this time CR reminded me of Upper Baja. There were a lot of American's buying land and building houses, making the place an odd mix of Ticos, Hippies and surf parents with their agro surf rat kids. The locals were going western crazy and started begging for cloths, sunglasses, and watches. The village nights were full of disco fever and drinks ran the risk of drug enhancement. I decided next time I wanted to go to Nicaragua.
Avellanes
After the Hot Wax Challenge Mark and I went to Fiji again. This time the waves didn't get as big as it did last year but it was still fun. At some point Cloudbreak got so flat we snorkeled the reef and I was excited at what I saw. The ocean bottom was beautiful! I even found a Rip Curl watch. During the flat spell we spent a lot of time fishing for dinner. The locals liked it when the guests brought in fresh fish to cook.
During this time on Tavarua the huts were small and we had to shower outside. We also had to walk down a path to the lounge, board shack, and restroom. The island was fairly primitive so when the waves were small all there was to do was read, drink, chat, and play card games. My brother ran up a $600 bar tab waiting for surf.
Home for two weeks. The shower was out back.
Where boards go to die on Tavarua
The trip wasn't a total bust. At the end we got a good swell and the Rights went off. Cloudbreak was medium size and a guy who was on the island with us, who rode a longboard, paddled out. The tide was a little low and he ate it into the reef. He hit his head so hard he needed to be airlifted off of the island. When the end of the trip came I was happy to leave with no blood lost. However this would be the year of physical pain. It would come from the mountains.
Tavarua Rights
Over the Christmas holidays the kids and I went to Boone NC to do some snowboarding with a couple of ex-Sunday School kids. I had a bad cough and the first night I almost over-dosed on cough medicine. I didn't mean too, I just wasn't paying attention to how much I was swallowing. I spent the night in the bathtub. My head felt like it was going to spin off. The next morning I hit the slopes without complete wits and while launch jumping I fell on my neck. When I heard the hoots from the spectators riding the lifts my ego took over and I hopped up like nothing happened. On the drive home my head ached so bad my ears were ringing. I was still sick (I refused to take anymore medicine) and every time I'd cough my neck would feel like someone was stabbing it with a knife. That night I was very restless and couldn't sleep. When I woke up the next morning my jaw hurt along with my neck and head. My fingers were tingling too.
After a couple of days the pain subsided and I forgot all about it. Then I went surfing and felt the pain in my neck again. I went to the doctor and he said I had compressed my C7 into C6 which compressed into C5. This injury would be the one that would eventually start shutting my body down. Arthritis runs in my family and all it needed was a trigger. At 37 I gave it a good one.
This injury was the beginning of an endless supply of pain pills which Mark became enamored with. He had been doing drugs behind my back for awhile now. (Yeah, like I couldn't tell when he was hyper stimulated). Mark drank a lot of Kava in Fiji. The stuff tastes like if playground mud had a tea. There's only one reason anyone would drink a bunch of coconut shells full of it. Mark felt so sick one day he missed all boats to Coudbreak. When I suddenly had a connection to pain pills all hell broke loose. He started getting different kinds of them from the internet. Personally, I wasn't interested in becoming a drug user again, but the pain was escalating the more I surfed and played softball, so, the temptation to take more pills was persistent. However God gave me a good reason not to go crazy with the meds, it was called Accountability. Mark kept the pills coming however, and, even though he said they were for me, he liked them more than I did. Eventually I turned to yoga for pain management and allowed myself one pill a day if I needed it (still do both of those). I allowed myself two on the days I surfed because the position of the neck when paddling irritated the compression. However, when I took two pain pills I took the risk of a migraine followed by nausea in the morning. God works in mysterious ways.
I was doing a lot of hair color changes for my kids. I found it a good bonding experience. They were changing their hair every month or so and the colors went from green to bleached to blue to red to..whatever! It was like we were keeping up with the Sherwin Williams color of the month, only we were using Sally's Beauty Supply palettes. One day I began wondering what I'd look like as a red head.
I wasn't impressed with the look so I tried black with red streaks. I looked so much older which was a big no no! One day I had had enough of looking at myself with dark hair and I spent $250 and 7 hours at the hair dressers getting all my blond back. Even though my dark hair didn't last long, the time spent with it ended up being a good social experiment. Its very true that people treat blonds differently. I never went another color again.
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