Little Fish, Big River, Bigger City

Flying Solo

Yet again, I find myself amidst the bachelor weekend as LoLo has jetted off to the Big Apple with some girlfriends for the weekend. I had the entire week to plan out my weekend of bachelorhood and yet again have failed miserably.

Instead of going out on a Friday with friends in an effort to destroy my liver, I opted for dinner with my buddy, Kip from the dog park. We chatted about relationships in general and eventually meandered on to corporate culture and everything in between. I was home by about 10:30...the primo hour for beginning a night of debauchery. Instead, I spent the next four hours working on important business documents.

I crashed hard around 2 a.m. and woke up slowly around 9:22 a.m. The height of my independent weekend was reached around 9:37 when I decided to skip working out, rebel that I am. I walked the antsy dogs for a bit and then launched into the paperwork again until it was finished crica 1:30 p.m. It's been a long, two week project/headache but all so important as it could mean a substantial amount of pride on top of income if it all proves out next spring. I can't give details about it other than it involves lawyers and a spring court date and five figure sums of cash due to me. It also involves integrity and standing up for myself rather than running and hiding as is my usual response in issues like this. I've come to like attorneys of late and have found that despite feeling as if I'd never need one, that using two of them in important matters this year has made all the difference. They're not sharks, at least not the ones I've hired. They're more like bodyguards for my wallet when push comes to shove.

I went nuts and had a mocha at my coffee shop which resulted in running into an old Amazon friend who I've not seen in years. Small world. I went double nuts and had another mocha since the first was finished before I could get out the door of the coffee shop. What good is walking along Fillmore without a coffee in one hand? It's no good, I tell you.

The dog park was non-exciting aside from Venus ripping the toenail off of one of her dew claws for the third time in as many weeks. It sucks to see one of my beloved little dogs ableeding. I take heart in noticing that there was not a noticeable slow-down in her enthusiasm for chasing the tennis ball.

We eventually ventured home and seeing as my "non-compete" regarding AxL Snaks is officially over today, I opened a bottle of "Three-Legged Red" from Dunham Cellars which arrived recently as an unexpected and highly appreciated gift from yet again...the great friend known as Tom. Wine glasses are funny things. I only had two of them but felt oddly beyond two glasses. It turns out that one particular glass in our cupboard neatly holds 50% of a bottle of wine which means that by the time one is nearing the end of glass #2, one is also nearing the end of bottle #1.

Not one to be plowed at home on a Saturday afternoon if the sun is shining, I set outside once again in defiance of hermit-hood. I ran into Kip and we chatted along the same lines as our previous night's dinner conversation despite hyperactive children insistent on interrupting to pet one or all of our four dogs. Seeing as it had been more than several hours since I set off three smoke alarms by burning chicken-apple sausages for breakfast, I was indeed semi-starved and resumed my goal-oriented task of getting a Route 66 from Johnny Rockets. Granted, I was not entirely crisp of mind so I over-ordered with a side of fries and a vanilla shake which took the edge off.

The dog walking ensued and eventually expired and I found myself at home in front of the TV with a luke warm burger and luke cold fries. Somehow, my favorite TV show was on Bravo: Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. There's just something about how the hosts really turn around the lives of lost men such as myself when it comes to style, fashion, etc. Not to mention that the commentary is utterly hilarious. Unless you're a complete homo-phobe anti-gay Nazi, I highly recommend the show for its cocoon-butterfly conversions of caveman slobs to stylish studs by giving lost straight men much needed make-overs. If I may use the word "make-over." (And now I wonder if make-over is hyphenated or not.)

I missed a housewarming party at 6 p.m. now that it's nigh-nine. Oh well. I'm beat. I'm headed back to a desk on Monday and it drains me to think of it, yet part of me knows that it's going to be good for me for awhile until I get the rest of my act together. I'll miss hanging out with the dogs all day and working on stuff that means a lot to me but has yet to generate an income and put food on the table. So go the seasons of the career adventurer/author that I wish to be. It will be...it will just take some side-efforts at a desk at times. That's life. Sometimes you gotta do stuff you hate to get to do what you love, you know?

Tomorrow is Sunday and my last day of bachelorness. I caught a hail-mary pass from a friend who called and is taking me to the Giants game at 1. Not only that, we'll be in the NBC skybox. Yea, cool huh? The home of Must See TV. I'm hoping they'll have some Must Eat Finger Food and some Must Drink Beer on hand. Then I hope I can recover enough because I Must Get Girlfriend from the airport at 10:40 p.m.

I'm wondering if I'm finally outgrowing my post-college mentality now that I'm 38. I've found that I'm not as good at this bachelor stuff as I used to be. In fact, I don't even really enjoy it. It's more of a pain than a pleasure. It's more moping than manhood. I think I'm finally mellowing which is not necessarily a bad thing for me. It's just a different thing. I relate a lot more to AxL the dog who's happy not doing much at all other than just coasting along and taking it all in.

It's three minutes to nine and I'm ready to call it a day. So much for flying solo...perhaps I just spelled it all wrong in a moment of senility. I think what I'm really doing is flying so low.

The Butterfly

Once upon a time, not too long ago, even yesterday perhaps, a man was walking his two dogs along a busy street in the city. It was early on a cold morning and the sky was gray. The sidewalk was gray and even the man's mood was a tad gray.

By and by, the three of them happened along the only color of the morning - a bright yellow and black butterfly, cold and struggling against the hard cement. She was moving in a direction that spelled her demise, namely toward the rushing traffic just minutes away in spite of her slow crawling motion.

The man had always had a soft spot in his heart for nature and as such, he bent down and waited patiently while the butterfly boarded his finger, one frail, tiny black leg at a time. It seemed that the warmth of his hand gave her hope and she gently and deliberately flapped her broad wings once in what he took to be a delicate show of appreciation. The dogs were hungry after spending time at their local park so the man eased the butterfly onto his dark blue vest so they could all continue on home. He cupped his hand over her shivering body to protect her from the whipping wind as they walked along. He watched her carefully and marveled at the intricate colors of her wings. The day seemed less gray now, at least in the man's mind.

When they arrived home, the dogs raced to the food bowls while the man decided to name the butterfly, "Roberta." As the dogs snarfed and gobbled, the man placed Roberta onto a large bouquet of sunflowers where Roberta could warm herself. Then he sprayed a dash of water nearby so she could drink if she was thirsty. Roberta stayed on the sunflower for the entire day, only moving about bit by bit to explore the yellow petals and the rich, brown face of the flower. The man went about his day per usual but took time to visit Roberta and whisper quiet hello's to her. During one visit, the man took delight in watching Roberta gently drink an entire droplet of water with her needle-like spiraled mouth that curled up like a French horn when she had her fill.

The day passed on and so did the night as Roberta slept on the very top of one of the sunflowers. She had the best view of the room and out the windows from there. The man hoped that the sky would warm up and the wind would die down the next day so that he could take Roberta back outside and place her on a large wall of jasmine in the neighborhood. However, early the next morning, the man discovered that Roberta had likely had enough of life this time around and she had passed away. Her beautiful and naturally perfect form rested silently on the floor next to the vase holding the sunflowers. The man was sad at first and felt like he had failed in some way. He once again bent down and picked up the quiet, almost weightless form and held her in his hand. Perhaps it was just her time and he had given her a warm, safe place to spend her last moments.

As he held her, realizing she had two eyes just like he did, just like the dogs did, he thought about how closely all living things are connected. Then, as if to say "thank you" Roberta's wings which were folded up over her body slowly relaxed and opened up flat, as if she were posing for a fashion photographer.

She didn't move after that yet her intense yellow glowed soft and warm in the man's heart despite the day remaining gray and cold. As the man went to bed that night with the dogs lying on the floor next to him, he thought about Roberta. He thought about how desperately short, yet defyingly beautiful, life can be.

"It's funny how the smallest creatures can sometimes teach the greatest lessons," he said to the furry ones nearby. Both dogs wagged their tails once in agreement. Then they all fell asleep and dreamed of running through a honey-colored field under an azure sky tattooed with a yellow sun as Roberta flew in dizzy circles about them before flitting off and away to her next place...in her own, defyingly beautiful, way.

The Blather Report

Really, there's no need to read this so just stop now and go about your day. Why? Because this is one of those journal entries where I'm doing it just for me so that in a month or a year or ten, I can look back and know where I was and just what the heck I was doing here.

Yea, call it a crossroads. Call it whatever. Basically the only constant is change and I'm right in the middle of knowing where I want to go but am undecided on the best road there. A few months back, I made a comment or three about taking a Segway across the country. As it turns out, it might not happen. Then again it might. The bottom line is, I'm still trying to make it happen just for the fun of trying but I've got about nil corporate support.

After months of agonizing waiting, procrastination and corporate red-tape hold ups, I decided that IF I was going to be the first person in history who's a big enough idiot to ride a Segway across the United States, that I was going to have to figure out how to do it on my own. Period.

Now, the big thing here is that I see this tiny little window of opportunity for me. I decided in January 2002 that I wanted, more than anything, to somehow be an adventurer/author and that, somehow, I would figure it out. I know that it will take some "desk time" inside of a company to keep spaghetti on my plate, but if I stick with it long enough, doors will open and enough effort will lead me to being what I really want to be.

Yea, I hear you. I'm still sitting on a book that's about 75% to 95% done but it's not finished. If there's one thing that I need to get off of my procrastination horse for, it's this. It's literally half of what I wish to be...it's the "author" half. What good is it being an "adventurer slash author" if I'm only doing the "adventure slash" part?

What has held me up? Oh, really it's just one thing. Me. Why? Fear. Of what? Rejection. And so? Rejecting myself is easier than hearing it from someone I don't know. So are you going to let that stop you? No. What will it take from here? Dropping anything else in life that is a current distraction and just finishing, regardless. Monday Night Football can wait. Fixing a broken radio controlled sailboat can wait. Finding frames for pictures that have been in boxes for the last four years can wait. Guitar practice can wait. Oh, and definitely....surfing can wait.

So what else is going on? Hhm...so, I'm literally just weeks away from having AxL Snaks back on track. It's a tiny sidenote with too many gory details which I must save for a later date.

I'm also going back to a desk job for the short term until I can figure out if it's even possible to do a Transcon Segway Adventure or not. This coming Monday will kill a part of my soul when I sit back down and start making cold calls from a cubicle, but hey...I'm the one who procrastinated on everything else so this is my penance.

Okay, now how do you plan on even trying to make this Segway silliness happen? Can't say...but I've got a plan that's still kind of non-public for the moment.

Anything else new? Yea...read a couple of really, really, really great books that my great friend, Tom sent to me recently: "Longitude" and "Road Trip Nation." I also started learning to use DreamWeaver so that I can create my own websites rather than use this free blog template for everything. I think life would be much better if pictures were included with a lot of this stuff.

So, all in all...that's about it. I need to finish up my book, I'm heading back to a desk job, I'm trying to still take a Segway across the continent and AxL's business is lining up nicely.

The end goals? A book in the works within 30 days or less. A steady desk job income, a decision in 30 days or less on whether a Segway Tour can be done indpendently or not and last, but not least, AxL's Beer Biskits on store shelves in about 30 days, too.

No, no, no...put the guitar down, don't even look at the model sailboat, buddy.

Surf's Up, I'm Down!

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times, "WHAT? You're not a surfer boy from Southern California?!!" No, I'm not, not in the least. However, I've had acquaintances who simply assumed I was, sometimes for years on end only to discover to their utter dismay that I'm nothing more than a land-lubbing Seattleite who has yet to catch an overhead wave.

I attempted to change all of this over the past weekend. Like most obsessions, these things come out of the blue and consume for no apparent reason other than to divert my attention span and energy away from just causes such as earning a decent living. It all started at the dog park last week when surfing casually rose against the tide of typical dog park conversation such as, "So, I after I spent $40 on dog toys I spent the rest of the afternoon picking up carrot-colored slime-poop because Bowser ate a pumpkin outside the grocery store while I was shopping..."

Once surfing came up, I held onto it like a Jack Russell who refuses to let go of a tennis ball despite holding the ball and the dog three feet in the air. Our park has several such Jack Russell's and one such obsessed surfer we'll call "Dingo" for privacy purposes. Plus, Dingo is a much better surfer name than his real name. In any event, Dingo made the mistake of talking about an "epic day" at Bolinas last Saturday where he and his "surf brah's" spent the entire paradisical day catching perfect waves and pulling food and beers from a cooler during breaks.

Being the cool dude that he is, Dingo caught onto the fact that I've been drooling to learn how to surf my entire life and offered to take me out and teach me. Whoa. It's like my whole life suddenly changed. It's like I was about to actually be the type of guy I'd always wished I was...one of those all-too-cool-for-school surfer boys. I spent the rest of the week literally consumed by surfing. I shopped for a new car online that would look cool at the beach. I shopped for used surfboards. I shopped for wetsuits. I read about learning to surf, the rules of the road, how to buy a board and anything I could find online about this amazing sub-culture that I hoped to dive into.

Then my waves went flat. Dingo couldn't take me out on Friday as planned so it became Saturday morning "Dawn Patrol." No wait, that wouldn't work for Dingo, either so it became Saturday morning at 8 a.m. I scrapped plans to go camping for the weekend with LoLo and the dogs so I could learn to catch waves. 8 a.m. arrived and went. No call from Dingo. I called him at 8:30.

"YO, BRAH! ARE YOU READY TO GO???" I was a bit too enthusiastic for Dingo's hangover and a bit too late considering he had a birthday party to attend at 1 p.m. I was now delayed to the next afternoon around 6 p.m. after most NFL broadcast football games. Okay...I can deal. LoLo and dogs (and I) decided to just do a beach day down south at Half Moon Bay. I figured I could possibly learn just by watching in the worst case and possibly rent a board and give it a shot on my own in the best case. I stuck to the worst case while playing fetch with Venus who shares my obsessive nature to a large degree. As she incessantly brought the ball back to me and barked for more, I incessantly watched surfers catching waves for a bit before returning to their proud girlfriends who were tanning themselves. I wanted that to be me...the stud with the board with the proud and gorgeous (not in that order) girlfriend tanning herself while I ripped it up.

With a bit of pouting and a concession which including shoe-shopping for her, I was able to fanagle a stop at the Big Yank surf shop on the way home. The Big Yank is going out of business so I thought they might have some old boards or wetsuits to sell from their rental department. Not so, but all was not lost since with five minutes to go before closing some rental boards came back in. $30 later and me and said gorgeous girlfriend were strapping my board onto the roll bar of her Cabriolet with dog leashes. Okay, so the board I rented was a monstrous "floatie" which is a big board coated with a good half inch of spongy styrofoam. It reminded me of the ice skates made out of stupid blue plastic that you can rent at any rink across America. I believe that in the surfing world, having one of these boards is a joke so bad that other surfers only looked at me and shook their heads since I was such a pitiful sight that I wasn't even deserving of mockery or laughter. I picture the real world equivalent of this as driving down the highway and seeing a thick-rimmed glasses geek wearing a bicycle helmet and riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle complete with training wheels.

But I didn't care. We arrived at home and I wrestled the board off the top of the car. It was so big that I couldn't carry it under one arm and I had to use two hands to grunt it into our storage area. Later that night, a gracious neighbor who had been sucked into the entire dog park conversation swung by with a loaner wetsuit. Later that night, I called Dingo to tell him that I was able to rent a board. One of Dingo's causes for delay in my Surfing 101 course was that he originally promised me a perfect beginner board which actually belonged to Dingo's very recent ex-girlfriend which actually meant that Dingo got shut down when it came to borrowing it for me. My rental solved the problem. However, Dingo now gave me the reality that he was likely going to be overly wasted from a day of drinking and football scheduled to begin at 9 a.m.

"It's all good, brah! Maybe I'll just give it a whirl on my own!" I laid out with a full-on surfer accent. To be a real surfer, I'm going to need to lose the full-on accent as well as using the term "brah" but at this point, I'm so green that I can still get away with it a couple of times.

"Yea, just go for it and you should be fine!" Dingo replied. With that, LoLo and I discussed our Sunday plans over a romantic candle light dinner. It was decided that we would wake up, walk the dogs, maybe ride our bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge if the weather was nice, come home, pack up and hit Ocean Beach where she could tan and I could surf the waves like I was born and bred off the North Shore of Hawaii.

"You know, that guy who brought those rental boards back in didn't look like much and he probably surfed Ocean Beach...how tough could it be?" my green-eyed girlfriend asked.

"Yea...how tough could it be? It can't be that bad, I mean, c'mon. I'll be fine out there." I replied, thinking that I would be fine out there and this would be a cakewalk. It didn't really matter that everyone who I had ever talked to about surfing in this area had said that Ocean Beach was brutal, that it was tough, that it was no place to learn, that it really wasn't even a good place to surf at all, that even the people who knew how to surf got really beat up out there. So what? Um, yea...so what?

The next day I woke up at 7:30 unable to contain that Christmas Day feeling of surfing for my first time. I bounced around enough to wake up LoLo and keep her awake and off we went for coffee and dog walking. We were back early and took off at 9:30 for a bike ride across the bridge and back. Yea, it was spectacular, but so what? I was going to SURF!!!

We got home, put the bikes away, revamped our wardrobe for the beach and loaded up the board onto the convertible. I was happier than I can remember in recent times when LoLo remarked that finally her car finally looked like it was being used for something it was meant to be used for: the beach! I felt the same way with my messy blonde hair, sunblock and wetsuit. I was finally going to do something I looked like I was born to do. We drove off into the smothering heat of another perfect California day and stopped at a local grocery store for sandwiches. We scored about 150 plastic recycled bags from a bin to use for dog poop. To a dog owners without a yard, this is like finding the door unlocked to Fort Knox with all the security guards out to lunch. But I digress...

As we crested the hill by the Cliff House and descended toward Ocean Beach, the lines of waves were filled with surfers and the beach itself was crawling with ant-sized people. As we reached the first full parking area, the people became life-sized and the waves became larger than life-sized in my eyes. I swallowed hard while trying to maintain a look of cool in front of LoLo. Of course she could see past it all as I delayed getting my wetsuit out of the trunk and getting the board off the car. I killed a pile of time trying to set up an umbrella and blanket to shade AxL the dog who hates to be hot. I took some ribbing from LoLo that I should stop stalling and get surfing. I volleyed back that I would need to eat my sandwich since surfing would be a lot of work and take a lot of energy.

As I slowly nibbled away, I watched surfer after surfer get pummeled by what seemed like Godzilla waves of water pounding down so hard I swore I could feel the rumble in the sand under my scared little butt.

"You can quit stalling now..." she said for about the tenth time.

"Huh? Oh, yea...um, I'm watching to get a read on the sets and how the waves are breaking..." I replied figuring that it sounded good. Really, I was looking for some way to possibly get past the huge walls of water crashing down and burying body after body trying to surf them. Maybe it would be better once I got out there, I thought to myself. I pulled on my wetsuit, said my goodbyes and ventured off. I stupidly waited until I was in the water to try and put on the leash to my ankle. The big blue floatie kept getting washed around and hitting me while I tried standing on one foot to put the velcro strap on. Once I got that, I waded out to waist deep and attempted to get on and paddle past the first crashing wave. I got slammed backwards and my nostrils were pushed back over my skull and filled with sand as if someone took a garden nozzle to my nose at full pressure.

Somehow, wave after pummeling wave, I made it out past the breakers about thirty minutes later. I arrived smack dab in the middle of about thirty real surfers of which several just gave me dirty looks. I felt like a new puppy at the dog park, all happy and bouncy and full of joy with the old dogs just glaring at me, idiot that I was out there. I said hi to one guy who simply sneered at me as if he were the guard in a Nazi prison camp movie slapping me back into line with a scowl. Okay...so I guess I don't talk to anyone out here...that's cool...(brah!) I decided to get out of the middle of everyone who knew how to surf so that I wouldn't ruin their rides. I also figured I could watch a bit and (pray to God, dude) learn how not to die today. I capped off my arrival by sitting up on my board to watch for waves like everyone else only to just tip over and fall off as the dudes next to looked over with blank faces as if to say, "did you really just fall off sitting there???" Oh boy...I really, really, really, reeaaaallly suck...

Here and there, someone caught a wave, but for the most part, no one was catching anything. The current was slowly taking me toward San Diego while I half-heartedly tried catching a couple of waves. Wow...I almost got THAT one...I had paddled onto the shoulder of a wave, got one foot up on the board and had started to ride down and stand up a tad before the wave gently passed under me. Time to turn around, head back out and I'll definitely catch the next one! I laid back onto my board and began turning around to paddle out the next wave in the set had other plans for me. I felt myself lifted up the curling face slightly before I felt myself go airborn and head the opposite direction, namely down. I should also mention that I was headed down sideways, parallel to the wave, gripping the big blue floatie like a smoked salmon hors d'ouevre futilely hangs onto a slice of baguette as iit plummets from a black-tie event serving tray toward the floor.

I knew my own floor had arrived when my head smacked the bottom of the wave with a crack reminiscent of the sound of a skull kissing hard cement floor. That was the warm-up. Before I could even discern if the white in my eyes was due to a concuscion I was hit by what felt like a very large, very angry freight train of H2O. My ears were filled a brutal explosion and I swear that underneath it all, Neptune was growling, "DIE, MOTHER F____R!!! DIE!!!!" followed with a maniacal chuckle usually reserved for voiceovers involving The Devil in major motion pictures. An hour later, I surfaced. A half-second later, I was re-pummeled.

"Okay then. THIS is what everyone meant when they said Ocean Beach was brutal.Aaah, now I get it." And with that, I got it one more time. Luckily, three's a charm and the last wave deposited me and my board neatly in between a pile of overweight dads and pre-teen kids playing with boogie boards in about twelve inches of water. Maintaining one small neuron of pride left in my system, I coughed up a gallon or two of saltwater and began walking a couple of hundred yards North where the other half of my sandwich was waiting for me, not to mention my girlfriend who was no doubt bursting with pride out of her bikini for having such a macho man in her life. Luckily, the half-sandwich, dogs and girlfriend were all dozing away unaware of the debacle circus that just occurred.

"How was it?" she asked sweetly?

"Oh, not too bad, I caught one half way..." I downplayed near-death. "I got a little hungry, is my sandwich still around?"

"Yea, it's over there. I lost you right after you went out because everyone looks the same. I saw this one guy with a blue board catch a few good waves but I knew that wasn't you."

"Um, yea...not me."

"You sound waterlogged!" she giggled.

"Um, yea...is thismy sandwich?" I'm much better at changing the subject than I am at surfing.

"So, how do you like it?"

"Well, actually...I love it. It's incredible!" It really was incredible. Sure, I was in way over my head and I should've taken some lessons and learned how to surf before trying to paddle out into the cuisinart-crashing-cauldron, but there was something about it. There was something about finally, finally, FINALLY doing something I'd always dreamed of doing. Granted, there was something about still being alive, too but that's beside the point. I loved every salt-soaked-nasal-enema minute of it. I eventually went back out only to experience more of the same skull slapping, near drowning, body bashing freight train wrecking feeling just to make sure the first time wasn't beginner's luck. Nope. Ocean Beach is brutal.

As the day wore on, I decided to return the board one day early rather than come out on Monday and give it another go. I'd rented the board for two days since Dingo and I were due to surf after the shop closed up that day. I'd had enough. In fact, my dreams of buying a used board asap changed slightly to buying a used board once I reached several other milestones in life to where I could really focus on my surfing. The morning brought a new day and sore muscles. I rubbed my itchy my nose at one point only to find that it was still emitting sand twenty-four hours later. Two days later and I still have trouble breathing due to a kink in my back and ribs. But I got out there and tried it, you know? Yea...right on. But can you pass the aspirin, brah?!