Work in Progress

What gives you a headache for 2 days
is compelling enough to make you sleep for most of those days
and keeps you off the water?
2 straight days of the wrong technique of forward looping
Good incentive to nail my landing soon if I'm going to enjoy
the rest of my stay here.
Water never felt so solid

keeping it simple

I've taken to drying my hair in the wind at night,
which involves standing in the junction of an almost pitch dark street
and letting the tradewinds blow past me, while looking up and watching out for shooting stars
It is so quiet here that I could hear the sneeze of a neighbor 2 houses down,
rustling coconut tree fronds in the wind as the only background noise

I know that purchasing a hair drier would probably be an easier alternative,
but how poetic would standing in front of a power socket be
while an umbrella of a universe awaited outside as a stage for my makeshift salon

For all the resources spent on building and acquiring homes,
it's refreshing to know that what's outside can be a liberating balance to these consuming shells that keep us warm and dry.

Today the folks at neil pryde kindly let me off with a free day's rental for a mast.
"I feel bad for you using gear that old", the star staff member said, sympathetic of my ill fitting mast base that was wrecking one of my smaller sails.
Whatever the logic there, I was grateful for the favor shown
"Come by again and try the mast again, I'm tearing up the paper work for today's rental."

Grace and kindness in unexpected places is such a pleasant surprise :)

don't forget to smile

"Isn't this place wonderful?" Jacek said,
nodding towards the sunset unfolding before us on another day in Kanaha
I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't noticed
my mind had been preoccupied with technical aspects of how to nail a
trick I'd been working on for years,
"I kinda prefer Barbados..."
My mind still reeling of how the conditions weren't quite right,
or how I'd set up my sail wrong and how I should fix it tomorrow

Somewhere along the drive home,
with the sun lazily coloring the sky a cast of muted pinks to my left,
A neighbor stopping to say hi to me in the grocery store,
and a myriad of stars above me my head as I took my shower to candle light,
I knew I had to eat my words back.

For all the roaches I had to kill every other night,
And the moments when I was gripped by anxiety over how expensive living here was...
If Jacek who bore a fitting profile for the locally despised Haole windsurfer could recognize its imperfections and still embrace it as wonderful and as home
Then I could embrace it too
because nothing is perfect
nor is it ever meant to be

This isn't Barbados
and this isn't San Francisco
but it is simply and wonderfully,
Maui

Hello Ho'okipa

I don't think I'd ever taken that long to get into the water... ever...
A record 1.5 hours of staring at the menacing beach break.
It didn't really matter that the swell was relatively light that day,
My mind had created a monster of a challenge before me -
Board munching rocks, razor sharp reef under the swell, light onshore winds at the launch

Knowing that I'd kick myself if I didn't get to sail Ho'okipa on a manageable day,
I tossed board, sail, inhibitions and all into the foaming mass of white water and inched my way out as best as I could between sets of swell.

It wasn't all glamorous;
there was a close call with drifting towards the rocks in the light wind
and I chickened out of hanging with the pros in the wave zone,
but I had to smile along with the flying fish and sea turtles that greeted me on open ocean,
because clumsy as its execution might have been,
I was sailing at a spot I'd dreamed of for months,
and one i would never have dreamed of sailing just a year ago

As most fears that go unrealized,
my first session at the mecca of windsurfing in Maui passed without event,
with me and gear returning to shore in one piece.
On my return to shore, I tucked the delirium of facing challenges and surviving their outcomes safely in my grin
And gave thanks for this moment that had seemed a galaxy away in the midst of my shoulder therapy

Hello Ho'okipa,
it's nice to finally meet you.