Friend's Advice and Escape to Find Answers

I pride myself with having a vast variety of friend. I have friends from all 7 continets, from various races and backgrounds, and countless ethnicities. I pride myself even more with having a few select friends from whom I can draw strength, courage, and sometimes answers to the feelings and problems that plague my life from time to time. Over the past 3 years I've expereinced some life changing events. I've lost my father. I've lost my uncle. I lost one of my best friends. I lost a very important and influential friend for who I wouldn't be were I'm at today with my career. I recently found out that an aunt I haven't seen in years died months ago and no one told me. I've battled depression for 3 years now. Yet it's that core group of friends that are always there for me that help me keep going. For them, I thank God every day.

Tonight I spent a couple hours talking to a friend of mine from Boise. She did most of the talking and I thank her for that. She gave me insight on a lot of issues in my life (especially from a woman's perspective which I won't dare claim to understand) and help me understand my emotions more. I'm still trying to figure out how to process what she told me. I understood it all. I just don't know what to do with it. I don't think I've ever claimed to be fully over everything that has happened in my life since 20 April 2006. As a friend and mentor of mine told me, "You never get over it. My father died over 20 years ago and I still ache inside." He's right. But I do know how to think about it now. I can differentiate between the healthy outlets of griveing and stress and the unhealthy ones. I climb...I climb a lot. I'm obsessed and I love it. I ski, I surf, I kayak, I fish. I travel sometimes absurd distances to pursue these interests. I've only explained why to one person who asked me, "Why [I'm] so obsessed with nature?" It took me about 5 minutes to fish for (no pun intended) the answer. I told him I was a religious person. I told him, deep inside my soul, I thank God, for the mountains here for me to explore, the rivers to navigate, the waves to surf, the slopes to ski, and the animals to connect with. Most improtantly, I thank Him for the moments of solitude that these majestic places on this planet provide. I spend time during these sports relecting internally in ways I wouldn't be able within day-to-day society. Far from the indignities and expectations of said society, far from the self-righteousness and pettyness of those that try to shove their ideas and beliefs into your head, far from the bustling chaos of people to and fro within their concrete and asphault prisons lie places of wonder and awe, places spiritual and pure where one can think freely; where one can feel freely. It's these places where my emotions don't assault me. It's these places where they don't pop out and say surprise! They hover in check, allowing me to think undisturbed producing results from my thinking. It's in the natural places where I do my best healing. Sometime before I leave, I'm going to take my friend's information from tonight's conversation into the Shenandoah or Potomac Rivers. I'll take it to the Monongahela National Forest. I'll take it to the Chesapeake or Assateague Island. I'll take it to one of the places I've ranted about tonight and disseminate it. Hopefully, I'll be able to do something with it...like find answers to my life questions...

The Devil's Beating His Wife!

So when I was young, I remember one day the sun was brilliantly shinning while the sky was lazily raining rain drops so fat that you could almost see the mirrored, convex world behind it. My dad, standing next to me at the time, was looking at the sky and exclaimed, "The Devil's beating his wife!" Not ever hearing my dad say anything like that before I asked what he meant (not understanding what the hell he had just said). His short explanation was that it was something that my grandmother had always said when the sun shined while it was raining (or when it rained while the sun was shinning for you pessimists out there...). It will be 3 years on the 20th since he died and memories like that with him are more precious to me than before. Today, while I was out cleaning out my car, the sun made its appearance across the land laying down a blanket of warmth as the clouds sprinkled rain onto the ground. I looked around at the trees starting their spring blossoms; the pink and yellow flowers that took me back to memories of playing out in the yard. I took a deep breath to smell that sweet smell of spring rain. I watched the steam rise off the asphalt on my drive way. I stood away from the protection of my hatchback on my car and just soaked in the moment and the rain. I looked up at the sun and smiled...

The Weekend

The weekend has treated me good. I spent most of Saturday doing homework. It was pretty shitty outside (as if that usually stops me from venturing out into the wilds) so I figured I wouldn't be missing much by spending hours at my desk with my nose in a book or two. Despite how much I actually got done, my mind was wondering...a lot. With me leaving on the 12th which is right around the corner, my mind has sorta been spinning with things I need to do before I head west. Procrastination soon put those thoughts to rest temporarily and I managed to fight my way through said thoughts so I could study and actually finish my work early for once. The evening brought some fun had with some old friends. I first visited a friend of mine I met while taking my basic wildland firefighting class (S-130/190) a few years back. Her, her husband, and myself had a couple drinks for a few hours bring ourselves up to speed with our lives and reminiscing on times spent training together. I left them in Springfield where we had met up for Adams Morgan in DC to meet up with a good friend of mine I hadn't seen since I graduated in 2003. When I got to our friend's house, I was surprised as to how many people were actually at this place...to be honest, I didn't even know it was a full blown party as I found out when I walked up to the place. To my surprise, there were about 8 people I hadn't seen since high school that I actually missed! It was heartwarming hanging out as an adult with several friends that you grew up with. It's also amazing hearing the stories of what these guys were doing with their lives. My friend Haig is a biologist working in New York City. My friend Patrick finished his Masters a year ago and is now a film producer in the metro Washington DC area. My friend Jason just started taking his board exams to become a doctor. We all spent the night reliving memories from middle school and high school after which I reminded myself to make a conscious effort to try to keep these guys in my life rather than move so far from my childhood as to forget how good of friends these guys were. I left the party around 0500 to head home hoping to salvage some of Sunday rather than sleeping all day.

I spent today cleaning my car and some of my room. I also, for some reason, spent a lot of the day trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life when I get back from Utah. My schedule is looking anything but orderly...or fun. I'm doing 17 credits worth of classes all on Mondays and Wednesdays...from 0900 to 2140 with a few breaks in between. Since I'll be living in the DC area for more than a month for once, I'm planning on joining Shenandoah Mountain Rescue Group (SMRG), a non-for-profit Search and Rescue organization based out of Vienna, VA. New Member training for them runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My normal duty crews with the Ashburn Volunteer Fire & Rescue Dept. are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1800-0600 the following respective days. Throw in plans to be a little bit more active with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) as well as the mountaineering chapter of the club and my weeks are looking absolutely crazy. Saturdays should be fun as to they're never going to be same be it fire & rescue classes, SAR classes, PATC outings, hanging out with friends, or climbing, backpacking, skiing, etc. But all of that is 5 months away and I've barely thought about life in Utah yet...

New York and Boston Trip

In my recently normal impromptu fashion I decided sometime between Wednesday and Thursday to take a trip up to NYC and Boston to visit friends and family. Friday evening after building a PC from parts I ordered, I set off north on I-95 for New York City, my first stop. I left somewhat late (1800) because of getting hung up with trying to get my PC up and somewhat running before I left. Normally, short drives like DC to NYC I try to save for the morning or early afternoon so I have a full evening to enjoy once arriving. Friday, for some reason, I was becoming extremely tired in the evening to the point where I was falling asleep just after Baltimore! I was hoping to push it to the NJ border but could feel I had to pull over. I pulled over somewhere near Aberdeen, MD. What I thought was going to be a 1/2 hour cat nap turned out to be a 2 almost 2 1/2 hour full on sleep in my reclined driver seat. It was a sad realitization on my part that it was now 2100 and I haven't even left the state of Maryland. I quickly got back on the road and made it through Delaware and onto the New Jersey Turnpike relatively quickly. While in New Jersey, I found out the hard way that, much like Oregon, it is illegal for me to pump my own gas. I found myself into a chest-swelling shouting match with a central-Asian gas station attendant with a really thick accent when I started pumping my own gas. It took the police getting called to understand that I had broken such a ridiculous law. Luckily, the police were more friendly than the guy I had almost got in a fight with. It goes to show that you explain your reasons in the first place (the attendant that is) you wouldn't end up in these altercations.

Luckily, my cousin lives right off the George Washington Bridge for I really didn't want to be driving around in the middle of Upper Manhattan at the 0130 in the morning I had showed up. One thing I really didn't take into account for both NYC and Boston was the parking situation. I ended up parking in a garage a few blocks away from my cousin's apartment: further than I really wanted to be from my car, but secure enough to put my mind at ease. The 18 hours I spent with my cousin were probably some of the best I've had in a while. My cousin and I are pretty close so it was good to spend some time with her and talk about the family and our lives. I left her place and headed down the FDR to my friend Betty's (Yes! Antarctica Betty!) apartment in Lower Manhattan. Hoping to spend a good deal of time with her, my wish was granted only because it took us nearly an hour and a half to find a parking spot. Granted, it was my fault thinking I'd find a parking spot in Lower Manhattan at 2100 on a Saturday. We walked around, ate dinner (Pizza of course), and talked. After a few hours with her, I went to my friend's birthday party a few blocks away only to hang out there with her for a few hours and crash at one of her friends' apartment so I could get up decently early and drive to Boston.

Driving to Boston the following morning was great...driving in Boston trying to find my friend's dorm was not. I've been lost before in big cities but not so much to the point where it took me almost two hours to back track and find a street remotely close to Boston University. It was this defining moment, however, where I broke down and made the decision to sometime buy a GPS unit to be used only in dire emergencies such as being stuck across a river with no way to get back on the bridge to get to where you need to go. With my friend, I got a long tour of Boston University (the campus is pretty damn big), a sushi dinner in the cafeteria, and a night of watching movies and reading emails. Since she wakes up to go running at 0530 (crazy, I know...) I took advantage of that early wake up and decided to hit the road at the same time which put me at home shortly before 1400 Monday afternoon.

I've noticed that no matter how many times I fly somewhere or drive somewhere, I always learn something new. This trip was fun yet was sort of a bummer at the same time. It was fun being able to visit 4 different people none of whom are connected in any way, shape, or form all over the course of a weekend. At the same time, it sort of sucked trying to cram the 4 said people into a single weekend. In the long end, though, it was good seeing them. I try to value the friendships I've forged over the years so anytime I can spend with people regardless of how short is well spent. Anyways, more short trips to be had before I head out west...

Being Back with Something Missing

It's been a little over 10 days since I've been back and I haven't once gotten use to sleeping in Eastern time yet. My body still thinks it's in New Zealand. I've spent the past week and a half taking care of errands I've put aside while I've been out of the area. I've also spent a lot of time visiting old and recently new friends. It's been relaxing being back but I still feel a little off. Like I described to a friend, I'm glad to be home but I wish my home were somewhere else. I dunno. I think it was the wanderlust talking when I said that. I didn't realize how disappointed I was over not going to Africa this year until I got home and picked up the books and climbing guides about Morocco and Algeria. It wasn't until I started thinking about traveling again that I got outside and started climbing again. At first, my stuff was still in transit from New Zealand to here so I had to use only what I had shipped back in January which was primarily all of my aid climbing gear, my iron rack, and my hauling gear. This actually turned out to be nice because I didn't have my climbing shoes or harness but I did have a spare harness, belay device, and more carabiners to shake a stick at. So up until Saturday I spent a lot of my time practicing aiding, hammering, and hauling. Tomorrow morning, I head to Maryland Heights with a climber I met on Rockclimbing.com. Thursday probably with a firefighter from the station.

And what can I say about the Ashburn Volunteer Fire & Rescue Department? I've been a member there since December of 2002. Everything I do in life right now I owe to that place. I wouldn't be a firefighter or EMT if it weren't for that place. I wouldn't have met the people I know now if it wasn't for that place. It felt incredible to be back with my family there. My first night back landed me an oven fire in the souther part of Ashburn. The next night brought on a two-alarm townhouse fire. Subsequent nights after that brought us various types of calls ranging from several inside gas leaks to multi-patient auto accidents to brush fires. Usually I was a black cloud for my crews where I could show up to the station and not run a single call in a 12 hour shift. Saturday night alone Truck 6 (on which I was the officer) ran 6 calls asides from the 3 or 4 more the medic and ambulance ran that night. Since I'm planning to come back for a while in August, I decided now to start working for the Virginia Department of Forestry again as an on-call wildland firefighter. I'm hoping with the certifications I have now and whatever other certifications I'm planning on getting this season (PLDO, FFT1, ICT5 [hopefully], FALB) I'll have a better chance of getting called out than I would have just being a lowly Firefighter Type 2 (FFT2). The complexities of my jobs sometimes make them more fun than the jobs themselves...

It's great to be back with my friends, family, and career but something else is missing. I don't know what but then again, most of the fun in my life comes from trying to answer those types of questions. When I do find them...I don't know what I'm going to do.

Back at Home

Sadly, my first night after a full day being back home was spent at the firehouse. To be honest, the night after as well was spent at the firehouse. The second night landed us a fire in Sterling, VA. What was dispatched as a townhouse fire soon turned out to be one with fire through the roof as reported by the first-in engine company. In the haze of trying to get dressed in the back as we sped down the road, I failed to hear what lead to a second alarm being sound. Sometime throughout our response, the fire was knocked down, the second alarm canceled, and our job being left to one of sitting and waiting. To explain further, in the Northern Virginia area, all of the fire departments follow the same response procedures throughout the different jurisdictions for certain types of fires. For the 4 engines responding to a townhouse fire, the first one begins their attack on the seat of the fire, the second backs up as necessary, the third heads to the backside of the house, gives a report, and fights fire as necessary or dictated by incident command, and the fourth acts as the Rapid Intervention Team or RIT. With us as the 4th in engine, we stood by in case a firefighter went down inside and needed assistance. We were soon released on account of the quick knockdown from Sterling. Considering the night before brought us an oven fire in our own first due, I felt confident in saying I'm no longer a black cloud (as in not getting any calls) for the time being while I'm back.

Tonight was spent with two of my best friends from as far back as elementary school. We spent a few hours at a bar in Reston Town Center reminiscing the days of high school and middle school. We talked about our current jobs, love affairs, and life in general. It felt real good to be talking to them again. I'm constantly meeting new people and bonding new friendships but it's the old friendships from days of innocence and youth that make you feel at home and, sometimes, at ease. Tomorrow I begin tackling the errands I need to take care of in order to get ready for the fire season (pre-employment tasks, unemployment for the time being, school issues, etc). I'm deciding to work for Virginia Department of Forestry again as a firefighter. It'd only be for a month now but when I get back in the fall, I'll at least be able to deploy somewhere throughout the semester(s) I'm back. Now that I'm done vacationing, it's time to get busy again...

Home

I was pretty disappointed when the US Customs agent didn't tell me "Welcome Back" after he finished with my passport. I dunno. Maybe it was due to the fact it made such an impression on me last year when I went through. Something about those 2 words reassures me that our country still cares and values its citizens. It made me proud when I walked through customs after hearing that last year. Anyways, after a 4 1/2 hour layover in LA, saying good-bye to Kelly, and a 4-5 hour flight, I made it to Dulles around 2345 Thursday night. The one thing I love about Dulles Airport is the fact that the place runs so much smoother at night. I managed to board the transport to the main terminal, pick up my bags, find a taxi, drive to an ATM on account of the taxi driver not accepting cards, and arrive at my house all before 0020. I walked in, hugged my mother, and began unpacking boxes of stuff I had sent home from Antarctica and New Zealand. After a while I just sat down and stared out the window at the oak trees in my back yard. I was home, I thought, and I had to breath that in for a little bit.

Auckland....Again

I landed back in Auckland around 0530 in the morning only to realize a major problem with my itinerary: the travel agent I bought my tickets through sorta neglected the time zone difference between Rarotonga and Auckland (-10 GMT and +12 GMT...a big difference). What does that mean, you ask? To make a long story short, my flight to L.A. from Auckland left Auckland International 5 hours before I left Rarotonga. Dealing with rescheduling the flight was as simple as calling Raytheon, explaining what happened, and waiting for them to find another flight for me (a process that took 30 minute). Unfortunately, because of a winter storm on the Atlantic Coast, I wouldn't be able to get a flight until the following day which meant I had to find a hotel and something to do for 30 hours. So I gathered my bags, found a hotel near the airport and decided to catch up on all of the sleep I had missed out on over the past week or so. I'm not going to lie when I say I say the night was very uneventful. I ordered a pizza, listened to music, and took care of some things job wise for the summer. I went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 1000. I decided to go to the airport considerably early...4 hours before my flight early. With a new book (A House In Fez by Suzanna Clarke - A story about an Australian Ex-Pat couple who by a house in the ancient Medina of the city of Fez, Morocco and go through the arduous task(s) of repairing it to it's original state), plenty of magazines, and my normal monk-like patience, I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait at my boarding gate for a few hours. For once, out of most of the things I've done over the past couple weeks, checking in and getting through customs went incredibly smooth. I spent less than 10 minutes checking my bags and getting my tickets. It took me about 15 minutes to make it through the departure side of customs. I found my gate, and decided to walk around for a bight to eat.

While walking around, I ran into a really good friend of mine, Kelly Jacques, with whom I started to converse about the past week or so. Considering we hadn't seen each other since probably the first Saturday after we got off the ice, we spent a lot of time filling each other in on our adventures. Apparently, she had a worse bout of bad luck than I had. Her rental car had been broken in and she had a lot of stuff stolen from her. It was great to see her smile through it but I still felt bad for her. I can't imagine having all of my stuff stolen out of my car...especially my climbing equipment...I'd probably cry! While talking to her, it did dawn on my how lucky I was to have missed my original flight otherwise I wouldn't be flying with her. At the gate, we noticed about 16 other people from Antarctica scattered about the crowds. We talked with one woman from the fuels department and reminisced of an interesting season. After a couple hours at the gate and one last look across the land past the airport, we boarded our plane, we grabbed our seats, and we said good-bye to New Zealand.

Rarotonga Day 2

The next day after I arrived brought a little bit more excitement to my stay in the Cook Islands. The morning was spent eating breakfast and talking with my new found friends. While talks of 4 hour games of Gin Rummy floated around the table, I decided to take that time to work my way towards the airport to check out the fire department. My friend Helen and I took a bus into "town" to do some shopping for the night to come. While she was taking the last bus of the day back to Vara's, I started walking further down the road, thumbs outstretched with the hopes that I could hitch a ride to the airport. Disappointingly, it was a good while before I was able to get a ride. The road around the island, however, is pretty close to the beach. The walk was beautiful. It took me by the pier, by a lot of pretty good reef breaks, and by some breathtaking views of the mountains within the interior of the island. About 2 km into my walk, A guy who I happend to have been sitting next to on the flight over to Rarotonga pulled over with his sister and her son and offered me a ride. Small world, I know! The funny (and sorta sad) thing about the ride was that I only had another 1/2 kilometer to go.

The fire station was right next to the Air Traffic Control tower. The station at the airport is actually the sole station for the entire island. Amazingly, they had some pretty new and nice apparatus.

From Rarotonga 2009

The station held, one engine, one heavy aircraft crash-truck, one medium aircraft crash-truck, a 26-foot boat, and a few different trailers. The guys there were absolutely great! I introduced myself and we all hit off right away. One of their driver/operators, a Cook Island Maori by the name of Ray, put me to work right away helping him inspect one of the vehicles. We then hopped in and drove across and to the end of the runway.

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

I got some hero shots in front of their front-line engine at the end of the runway by the sea, a small tour of their small station, and an agreement that I would come back with an Antarctic Fire Department T-Shirt for a Cook Islands Fire Department T-Shirt. Easy peasy. As I started to walk back towards town, Ray and the guys took pity upon me, picked me up in their utility vehicle, and gave me a ride back to Vara's some 20 km away. That's brotherhood right there!

When I came back, I met up with the group again only to hang out and get dinner one last time before I flew to Auckland later on that night. We each bought a couple 6-packs and ushered in the night out by the beach on our porch. I only knew them for 48 hours but I had already began to miss them as time came to pack and eventually depart for the airport at 2330 hrs. I checked in (only to have to be escorted back into the check-in office so I could print my itinerary out that proved that I had a flight leaving New Zealand), swapped my T-Shirt at the firehouse and said goodbye to those guys, then waited for 2 hours in the courtyard for our plane to land. While waiting, I got a little present dropped on my head form a roosting bird well above my head. Little did I know that the bird crap on my head would bring anything but luck over the next couple of days....

Rarotonga!

I touched down in Rarotonga shortly after midnight this morning (-10 GMT [Hawaii] on Sunday mind you). Considering that I didn't do much research on the Cook Islands and this was a very impromptu trip, I figured whatever I was in for was going to be a surprise…pleasant or not. I sometimes feel embarrassed by the fact that I had never seen a palm tree up until August of 2007 when I drove to Fresno, CA at a failed attempt to buy an Airstream trailer. There were definitely no shortages of palm trees in this place however. One of the first things I noticed as we stepped out into the dead of a South Pacific night was the humidity and the trees. Having only been off the ice for going on 10 days, I'm still easily amused and excited by the simple things a lot of people take for granted. I thought New Zealand was green when stepping off our northbound flight from McMurdo. Well, I hadn't been to the Cook Islands then. Even amidst the low amber-hued light I could make out the colors that the trees and flowers blessed this little island with. Anyways, we stepped out into the night onto the tarmac and walked towards the terminal. Now Rarotonga International Airport isn't exactly Dulles. Our terminal was simply a large room probably 15 by 18 meters. As we walked through the doors, some old guy hidden behind a bunch of fake palm trees played us welcoming island songs as we gathered around the baggage carousel. He sounded and looked like an expat of some sort. By the look of his sun aged skin, it seems like he's been leading a healthy relaxing life here in Raro. My Osprey travel backpack was one of the first bags out on the carousel which was a first. My surfboard, however, took almost 30 agonizing minutes to come out to us. Travelling with that thing has been a pain in the ass. I constantly pray that it actually makes its destination…let alone in one piece. I grab my baggage and make my way to the "lobby" which is another large room that is open to the sidewalk outside. As I was told the night before when I made my reservations for Vara's, I searched around for a lady by the name of Lilly who would take me to my room. Lilly was an older Cook Island Maori (note: there are New Zealand Maoris and Cook Island Maoris…the Cook Island variety will make sure you know that if you were to make the mistake to call them Cook Islanders or Rarotongan) who happened to be the only person standing around waiting for someone not knowing exactly who she was waiting for. I asked her if she was Lilly and reply was simply, "Where are you staying?" I knew I was in good hands.

Two other people, a couple, were waiting in the van-looking mini-van used to ferry guests back and forth from Vara's to the airport. As I've found out several times so far, most shuttles are setup for the immediate loading of an 8 foot surfboard. So with a little ingenuity, some enlisted help from the couple I was riding with, and a few apologies here and there, I managed to fanangle the board on the ground next to the seats. After ramming the board into the bench seat in the back like some 17^th century cannoneer, Lilly introduced us to her granddaughter that was sleeping on the bench. Great, now I feel like an ass, I though. Her granddaughter raised her head to smile then rolled over and quickly went back to sleep. We took off for the lodge which was said to be on the other side of the island. For a small, south pacific island, there were a hell of a lot of vehicles on the road at nearly 0100 Sunday morning. Most of them being scooters, every vehicle was almost certainly full. 2 or 3 on a scooter, 3 or 5 in a car, 5 in the beds of pick-ups a lone, it seemed like everyone had a place to go; where to on such a small island, I had no idea. About 10 or 15 minutes in our drive, Lilly pulled over at a 24 hour convenience store. "Does anyone want anything?" she asked. I was dying for a proper meal as I'm sure the couple was too. Out of courtesy the three of us declined. She shut the van down and disappeared into the store for about 20 minutes. Throughout that time, her granddaughter woke up, stretched, stumbled over my surfboard, and climbed up in the front seat of the van to play on her cell phone and send a text message or two. This informality sorta stuck with me. I had only been on the ground for a little over an hour and I'm already deep into the "Island Way of Life" as was described to me by a few veteran Pacific Island travelers I met in the airport the night before. Lilly came back to van with a few groceries and continued driving us to Vara's. Vara's was a series of dorms, rooms, and bungalows situated on the beach as well as on the hillside on the opposite side of the road around the island. Excited to set my feet in warm sand and water for the first time in months, I quickly dropped my bags in my room, changed into board shorts and flip-flops (or "thongs" as the kiwis like to call them) and head to the beach somewhere beyond the rows of palm trees on the backside of the lodge. I walked around the outside of the lodge taking in the smell of the flowers around and the palm trees above. I walked onto the porch which separated me from the sound of waves washing ashore somewhere close when I heard a woman's voice from the shadows say "Hi!" A few people my age sat on a picnic table a few meters away in the dark talking about the day's events. Helen, a British girl introduced me to Edwin from Holland, and Ragan, an "Australian" with a peculiar European accent which I've yet to identify. I sat down told them my ridiculous story about how I was only there for a couple days, as well as why I was travelling and where I had been. Sure enough, on several occasions throughout the night, they continued to tell me I should have been there the night before. Well, fuck…

The next day, the morning wasn't exactly the sunniest but it was still beautiful enough.

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

From Rarotonga 2009

Vara's was situated on a lagoon about ½ or ¾ a kilometer across. An uninhabited island sat off the coast about a kilometer or so away. Beyond both sat the reef circumventing the island that created the waves certain parts of the island was known for. I thought the place would be packed. Surprisingly, even on the couple of resorts I could see further down the beach, there weren't that many people on the beaches. There were people, yes, but it wasn't crowed like, say, Tahiti or Fiji would be. Shortly after I got up, Helen and Edwin came out. We sat around and talked and they took me over to see Matt. Matt, was an Australian expat who had been living and working on the island for the past couple of years. His entire job was to staff the "shack" from which you could book trips around the island as well as rent or hire snorkels, fins, etc.

The "shack" that he worked out of was a 6 meter cargo container someone (maybe even him) built a tin roof hanging over a deck around the entire thing. He/they then cut holes out of the side of the container to fit a window in, nailed some shelves on the inside and, voila! You have a beach side tourism agent. His job was pretty easy: play music and hang out 5 meters from the sea's edge until someone came up to book a snorkeling trip or something. I hung with Matt a lot throughout my trip. For one we had a lot to talk about between the two of us: island life, travelling, Australia, the States, etc. Another reason was we had nearly the exact same taste in music. I mean the man knew regional bands (like Dispatch for example) or sometimes even underground bands from the states that I've grown up on. Anyways, our morning was spent playing cards and enjoying each other's company and the sound of the sea. For some reason, card games in the tropics almost always involve throwing something small at something bigger. We played over 5 different card games that involved the loser trying to toss a small rock at a coconut some 10 meters away. Hours later we went for lunch and came back to figure out what to do with the rest of the afternoon.

As I learned in Christchurch, I have some time to spend on my board to figure out its performance.

From Rarotonga 2009

When I first took it out, I looked like a drunkard trying to ride a unicycle for the first time. It was this reason that I decided to wait for a future return to Rarotonga before hitting the waves over razor sharp reefs. However, I felt now was a perfect time to get in a small cardio workout by paddling across the lagoon to see the waves up close and personal. I grabbed my rash guard, put a little more wax on my board and hit the water. The water was warm; very warm as a matter of fact and it felt pretty good. On top of that, the water was a light opaque green and very clear. The lagoon itself, at least the part I paddled around in, wasn't any deeper than 4 or 5 feet at it's deepest point. As a matter of fact, halfway across I noticed a few people walking back and forth across to where I was headed. I stopped to take a break a few hundred meters across and to also let a few friendly windsurfers cross my path. I continued on only to get out and walk when my strokes would bottom out into the sand. It felt like I was in some Robinson Crusoe story when I made it across as I was the only person on this part of the island at the time. I walked through the bushes and the stands of palm trees to come out to another white sandy beach littered with pieces of coral spit up from the ocean. I ditched my board into the bushes behind me, sat down on the beach, and just absorbed the sound of the waves crashing and the sight of the Pacific Ocean. I've had many tranquil moments over the past couple months but nothing like this moment. It was refreshing. It was peaceful and just what I needed. As I sat there, I started to notice the wildlife around me. The snails clinging to the rocks as the tide went out. The hermit crabs dragging their homes through the sand. The fish in the shallows safely out of the reach of larger predators they share the waters with. Hopefully, the next time I come back, I'll have the forsight to bring a dry bag or a waterproof camera so I can share photos of that part of the island. After an hour of just sitting and thinking I walked and paddled back to a point further up the beach from Vara's so I could walk back and see what the other hotels and resorts are like. A lot of them were pretty luxurious: a complete turn-off to me. I hurried back to my low-end singles friendly lodge.

The rest of the evening was relaxing. More cards, more hanging out, more getting to know each other. We had dinner together, we drank beers, and we enjoyed ourselves well into the morning. Life is good in Rarotonga…