I think Surfing has called my name...it's so much fun, yet so much work! I headed to San Diego on Friday morning, along with 5 other girls from Northern Arizona. We met up with 4 others for a total of 9 lovely ladies on surf boards. Only one of us had ever done it before, so we all got big ole' rashes from the boards and screamed like babies in the surf.
When you tell people you are going surfing - they often say, "Beware of the sharks!" Yeah - whatever. The odds against surfing with sharks are fairly low - I'll take my chances. Well, low and behold, there are sharks in the bays where the surfing is good. I saw at least 4 good sized leopard sharks beneath me as I was WALKING out to find some good breakers. (We were still on the inside, which was fine by me) Once I stepped on something somewhat soft and I SCREAMED and hopped right on my board. I think it was a shark - but I can't prove it.
The first day of surfing was excellent. Sunny weather, no clouds or wind. Great. Perfect size waves. All the girls were more than enthusiastic about catching some waves. By the second day, the wind had picked up and the clouds had moved in and that made a HUGE difference in the wave size and power. Um, yeah. We surfed for an hour on Sunday and I was whooped. But it was a good whooping - like, I'm tired, tanned and I think I'll have a Blue Moon thank you very much.
Outside of surfing we ladies had a wonderful time of going out to eat, doing a little shopping and generally enjoying ourselves. We took Vinny the Venture Van to SD, which worked out great. On Sunday we started for home and it turned into a 10 hour drive - without stopping for food. There was definitely a storm coming in and by the time we were outside of Yuma, it was hitting us full force. Have you ever seen one of the dust storms in the movies where it's like a wall of sand and rain that one minute is not effecting you and the next - BAM - your car is moving sideways. Well that's what hit us. Rain, Wind, Sand - nasty all the way around. There was a slow down in traffic on the 8 and as we drove by the emergency vehicles, we saw why: 8-10 telephone poles had snapped in half - both wood poles and metal poles. (see picture below) Crazy. Then we heard there was a roll over accident on the 8 going East and we decided to take back roads to avoid the mess. Well, that created a mess all our own. The navigation on my phone showed some roads that would go through, but little did I know, they were dirt roads. Dirt is fine in fair weather - but couple dirt with multiple inches of rain and you've got a big ole' mess. Of course as we are driving it gets really dark, there are no street lights and we end up on a "canal" road, which literally means next to a canal. The good part about it was the road wasn't flooding. The bad part is that to the left was a canal and to the right was a steep drop off down to the fields. (Gravity irrigation I guess) Did I mention it was raining, dark and slippery? So we got off as quick as we could to some normal roads and ended up going through an area that said, "DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED". Great. It's raining cats and dogs - my prayer: "please don't let it be flooded, please, please, please." So we get to this one section that doesn't seem flooded, just wet and as my car is grinding to a standstill I realize that the danger is not necessarily water on the road and washing your car away, which was a possibility that I didn't not want to experience, but rather the sand that built up on the road made for quicksand conditions for driving. My car was sliding all over the place and couldn't get traction. So I kept thinking great, even if it's not flooded, we're going to be stranded and see what happens when it does flood.
Meanwhile, a car approaches from the rear with a single flashing yellow light - whew - back up just in case I think. One of the other passengers starts getting a little excited that it was a police car and that we needed to pull over. She very strongly urged me to pull over and talk to the person....on a dark night, with no one around and a car full of 6 women - are you kidding me? "Plus, police cars have blue and red lights and unless I see those lights flashing, I'm not pulling over. So shhhhh, you're stressing me out!" Thankfully we saw the welcome blur on speeding cars on I-8 and we happily cruised along at 80mph.
We got home by midnight and fell in to bed knowing that an adventure was had by all and after a bit of sleep we would be ready to depart on another in the morning.
Comments