The Lives People Live

Getting some new neighbors today after my friends for the first couple weeks have moved on and out. I have had some good run-ins with random people down here and in general everyone seems happy and chatty. I guess it's hard not to be when it's 75-90 and sunny every day which it's been for me. I met some guy out for lunch the other day (forgot to take a picture of the tacos cause I slammed them, delicious) from New Brunswick, Canada. Never even got his name come to think of it, we'll call him Rick.

He had been in Costa Rica with his wife and 2 young sons from October until now. He was talking about traveling with them and how they spoke french but he had them in classes that were in english and spanish. They had been in 3 different schools just in Costa Rica. They will grow up with a very interesting cultural background that is for sure. I asked him what he did for work and he said that he runs a lobster fishing company. It’s a heavily regulated business in Canada and you have to buy an expensive license that's hard to acquire in the first place and you can only fish 60 days out of the year.

He got the license after moving up the waitlist quick which unnerved him a bit. He financed it, acquired the license and got his small crew of 3 men and himself together and went after it year 1. He said it’s a lot of uncertainty because you don’t know how much you’re going to catch with the weather and other ocean conditions. You also don’t know how much the distributors are going to be willing to pay as it varies every year. It’s also heavily influenced by changes in regulation like the tariffs. Either way with all that uncertainty he’s had it down for 8 years where he works 60 days straight fishing 12 hours a day and then is off the rest of the year. Pretty nice gig if you can get it. Interesting guy to talk to that is for sure and he was really nice. He’s been escaping the New Brunswick winter ever since he started this business.

Back to your regularly scheduled surf programming. I had my best surf session yet 2 days back but of course I’m still left wanting more. I went out later than usual but the waves were perfect. I was surprised because it was the windiest day yet and overnight it had been blowing a gale knocking stuff over everywhere. I guess the wind direction mattered more than the force and it was blowing out in the direction of the ocean which makes the waves form better from what I now understand. It was easy to paddle out because of the lack of inward current, and waves were either perfect or brief lulls in the action for the full 2 hours i was out there.

My first real sunburn because I couldn’t get myself out of the water with the waves that tasty. I rode 15-20 but still struggling with the sideways launch. I keep getting better at reading the ocean and which waves will be better to take. I’ve been eyeing up where the wave starts to split and trying to launch angled to get some clean, green wave. My next battle is still that and it is what kept me out there so long yesterday. I was a hair off catching one where I would’ve ridden the wall but i lost my footing and went down hard. A lot of angled wipeouts but I will get a real launch and ride a clean, green wave wall by the end of this trip. I had to take off yesterday though, the knees and shoulders are sore on top of the sunburn after 5 straight taxing sessions. Maybe even taking a second day off as my aching body is telling me I need to unfortunately. I'll check back in when I feel like it....