Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Good things, even really, really good things, generally come to an end and so it is that the six of us piled into a van on the morning of Saturday, November 9th for our departure from Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, from Tamarindo and from Costa Rica. From a purely logistical perspective, we had a pretty miserable 4-hour drive to San Jose, followed by a mediocre 4-hour interval at the airport, followed by an uneventful 1-hour flight to Panama City, followed by a easy 20 minute drive to a lovely and shockingly inexpensive Westin Hotel on the Pacific coast. But who wants to think about logistics when there are such better things to contemplate. For example, I’d like to tell you about a typical day at WRSC: Lessons are offered in three, two-hour time blocks. Each instructor takes a maximum of three students who are comprable in ability and also height (having to do with wave depth) so Elise/Jon/Lily were assigned to Jose (can’t figure out the accent on this keyboard, sorry) in the first ...

We were all absolutely exhausted by noon. Lily's surf lesson ended in tears despite the fact that she had caught some great waves and even succeeded in making her first turn. Lunch conversation was a comparison of bruises, board burns and worse. We were all absolutely exhausted again by 6 when we sat down for dinner but in between is a completely different story. The morning surfing was hard because of changes in the tide that I don't understand. I do understand that the high tide has been getting later and that our "ideal" 6am lesson time was no longer ideal. But I don't understand why waves behave the way they do. I do know that I love jumping in them and getting demolished, just as I did when I was a kid. But surf lessons, like ski lessons, require going back and forth. The key difference is that the ski lift is basically effortless whereas paddling out against a pounding surf (by beginner beach standards) is exhausting and sometimes futile. In both cases, ...

Monday morning started off really well. A few minutes before 9 it looked like we were going to be on the road to Pennsylvania and happily settled in at our cousin's house well before dinner. At 9 it was apparent that the slide - the one that was stuck IN a few weeks ago - was stuck OUT. This is not only deeply annoying, it means that we wouldn't be driving anywhere anytime soon. I don't wish to belabor this point. Partly because I don't want you, dear reader, to endure this. Mostly, though, I don't want to think about it any more. In short, a mobile tech showed up and cranked it in manually; we spent much of the driving on the phone tracking down RV repair places and parts; we arrived at 10pm; we were at a repair place at 8:30 the next morning. To the good, our 48 hour visit with cousins was doubled. This means twice as many evening conversations on a comfy living room sofa. This means twice as much time for our four kids and their two cousins. To the bad, we...