a leaf wave?

This week, I'm on my annual hiking trip. Because of my training for surfing and my continued cycling, I'm probably in better shape for my hikes than I've ever been. I took a little bit of an excursion this year. Instead of only hiking in the Smokies, this year, I visited some friends who are avid hikers and know everything about hiking in the East. My friend and guide, Charles, took me to hike a very, very small portion (six miles total -- three out and back) of the Appalachian Trail. We didn't have a lot of time, so I knew it would be a short hike. That was fine. We went to Roan Mountain trailhead, which is only about 45 minutes from Charles's office. The air temperature was probably about 65 degrees, but with the wind, it felt more like the 50s. The wind is strong in this particular area, similar to the strong winds we often have in Texas. Many parts of the trails are in open field-type/bald areas. Charles explained that it wasn't naturally this way; the Cherokee Indians cleared the area. Many of the fields are filled with Rhododendron and Flaming Azaleas. They were beautiful. We also stumbled upon a rare and endangered flower called Gray's Lily, which is only found in the Appalachians. Charles mentioned that he had never seen one in bloom up close, only pictures even though he had been hiking around there most of his life. It was beautiful; especially blowing in the wind. The entire area was beautiful, and when we stopped on the trail and looked behind us, the grass across the trail was blowing, and I couldn't help but think they looked like waves...tiny green waves. So, although I won't be surfing this week in the water, I'll still be playing in the waves.

'Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in the fields of gold'

Fields of Gold - Sting

p.s. My fields were green, but I still thought of this song. This one's for you, Rob.

global outage

I often volunteer to be the gift-getter for the office parties. I don't buy them every time, but many times I'm the one closest to the store with the registry, or the one that happens to be going to a particular store, or the only one with a spare few minutes to stop. So, since I knew we had a shower coming up and I was going by Target, I volunteered to pick up the gift. After all, I had a wedding gift to buy also. After going into Target, I make my way to the computers near customer service where gift registries can be accessed. But after entering the name of the mother-to-be from the office, nothing happened. At the time, I think I must have typed it wrong and enter it again. Still nothing. I go to the next computer and enter it again, with the same results as before. I turn around and speak to one of the two women being the counter. (There is nothing and no one between me and the counters. Yet, they preferred to watch me move from machine to machine without saying anything.) The young woman looks up and just says, "Global outage." I laugh. "What do you mean?" "Global outage." "Do you mean the Internet is down around the world?" I ask thinking that the word global definitely meant something more than the store. "No, at Target." "I'm going to need to talk to the manager," I say. "He's over there," she points toward the registers. I find Guy, the manager, and tell him I need to print a shower registry. "You can't. there's a global outage," he says. GLOBAL OUTAGE???? GLOBAL OUTAGE??? I'm laughing by this time 'cause I find their description hilarious. What they really mean is that the Target Web site is down. Why couldn't they just say that?

What does this have to do with surfing? Nothing really. But, it does make me realize that maybe surfers have the right focus. My surf instructor, Brian, says it's all about the next wave and that nothing else really matters. I doubt a "global outage" at Target has ever put a crimp in his plans. Maybe it shouldn't put a crimp in anyone's plans. While mildly annoyed, I did manage to get a good laugh out of it. When the manager offered to call the corporate office to see if they could print out the registries I needed and fax them to the store, I asked "if the outage was global, how would they be able to get to it?" He looked puzzled and then, with a very serious expression, answered, "That's true, you're probably right." I decided that this global problem really wasn't that global for me, and, well, I could just stop by Target another time.


"One of the greatest things about the sport of surfing is that you need only three things: your body, a surf-board, and a wave."

surfer NAIMA GREEN, "Surfing: Rules, Tips, Strategy, and Safety"

P.S. After the grocery shopping was done, the "global outage" had been corrected. I was able to get the gift.

Surfing with words

Today, my co-worker and friend, Summer, sent me a link to her blog. She and I are writers, as are a couple of others in the office. After all, I work in the Office of Communications so the fact that we are all writers make sense. Summer and I have discussed writing on several occasions. We do it all the time. We write at work, we write at home, we write in our minds as we go to sleep at night and we write while we do all of the other activities that we’ve chosen to make a part of our lives. We’re both aspiring novelists, but we end up writing poetry, short stories, work stuff, post-it notes, etc....everything but the novel we’ve aspired to write. I can’t speak for Summer, but I also write e-mails to people just like I wrote letters as a kid to various pen pals and family members. We were both talking about blogs a while back and she shared her blog with me: www.summercampfire.blogspot.com. Although her blog is about yoga and mine is about a surfing, they are surprisingly similar in ideas. We have completely different writing styles, but the message in her latest piece was similar to past messages in my own blog. Her blog was about persevering. I don’t want to ruin the surprise if you should decide to read it (which you should), but basically, Summer talked about concentration, commitment and suffering. All three of these abstractions definitely relate to many things in life, including surfing. Just as Summer had to decide about her yoga pose, as a surfer I have to concentrate on my actions in the water, commit to a wave and, sometimes, endure suffering (okay, this last part, more times than I care to admit).

“There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permits. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.”
Art Turock* (motivational speaker)

* Not really sure about Art Turock, but I read this quote a while ago and really liked it.