Tri-ed it!

It took me just under one hour thirteen minutes to complete the triathlon, which was good enough for 19th place in my age group/gender and 212 place overall. In other words, very middle of the pack. I'm fine with that, as it was a fun event in a beautiful place on a surprisingly lovely day. What made it really memorable for me was that the support team I had (but did not expect). Jenn decided to take the day off work, my brother Gabe came down all the way from Sacramento, and our neighbor Jerry braved the sun's rays to cheer me on. It was really fun knowing that they were there and probably the highlight of the entire event was seeing the look on Jenn's face when I crossed the finish line: she was proud of me. What a great day!

Today, a Biathlon

Six days from now I will be participating in a sprint triathlon taking place here in Pacific Grove. It consists of a 1/4 mile ocean swim (might better be called a "crawl", what with all the kelp), followed by a 12 mile bicycle ride, and finally a 2 mile run. It is not a monster event, and I am participating just for the fun of it rather than out of any desire to really challenge myself. In preparation for the race, I did the first two legs by myself today. As expected, the swim remains the more challenging component for me. However, it is a short enough distance that I was able to power through it, run back up to the house, grab my trusty bicycle/friend Flash, and take off for the 12 mile ride without too much trouble. I think it will be an enjoyable challenge to complete the entire triathlon this weekend and I am looking forward to participating in the event.

Gooooooaaals!

The 2012 London Olympics have just concluded and I'm most thrilled to report that the U.S. Womens National Soccer team has won gold. This is a team that I've followed since 1999, when Brandi Chastain celebrated her game and World Cup winning penalty kick over China by tearing her jersey off and swinging around her head in a show of pure passion for the game. Last year at the Womens World Cup, Jenn and I watched as our team played an incredible tournament only to lose to Japan in a hard-fought final. Since that defeat, we've been closely following the team as it prepared for this Olympics. What a thrill to be there when the team made it to the final in London against, who else, but Japan. As a side note, although I'm glad Carli frickin' Lloyd stepped up big and scored two goals, it sure was disappointing to hear her be the only player who, in post-tournament interviews, did nothing but praise her own effort. The rest of the team was just that, a team, and it showed in every comment they made about their progress towards taking home gold. Speaking of goals, I've been talking with Jenn lately about my lack of any. We've discussed setting financial goals (ie, earning and saving more, getting employment that provides benefits, etc.), but frankly I am bored by those kind of goals. I have a hard time being motivated simply by the desire to make more money, which would explain why I've hardly ever made any and yet have usually held down jobs that I find satisfying for other reasons. So here's some goals I'd like to work towards in the near-ish future, with hopes that accomplishing them will provide me more satisfaction once they're actually achieved: -Live Sans Vehicle. I've got a truck that I use a few times per month, but I really think I can get by just fine without it. I've got my beloved bicycle named Flash to get me to/from work and around town, as well as fun rides around the peninsula. Jenn has her never-fail car Gruish (because, she says, it is "greenish blueish" colored) that we can share. And, if I need a vehicle to get out of town, I'd rather rent one than take my own. I'm attracted to the simplicity of this plan, the decreased environmental impact, the ability to see the world at 10-15mph max rather than 75-80, and the ability to save money that can be spent on things that I value more such as travelling with Jenn and maybe someday investing in a more permanent lifestyle. -Learn Spanish by immersion in a latin country. Jenn and I talk about taking 6 months or more to lose ourselves in some south American country where we'll have no excuse for not exercising the parts of our brains that process language. It's always been a great disappointment of mine that I have not had the discipline to learn a second language in any great detail, though I've studied French, American Sign Language, and Spanish in small portions over the years. -Become a Better Person. This one has a lot of sub-points to it, as there are many things about me that I'm not proud of. I swear far to often, for example. I hear myself using language that, frankly, sounds vulgar and crude even as I'm uttering them. I have to knock that off. Also, I have an awful time keeping mental track of what is going on in the lives of friends and family. A large part of that is due to a TERRIBLE memory capacity on my part, but that just means I should be using creative techniques to keep tabs on what's important to others. Nothing says, "I care about you" more than showing an unprompted interest in the things that matter to friends and family. Also, I make it a priority to support and encourage Jenn. Although I feel I do a decent job of this overall, there is always room for improvement. Our relationship is, by far, the most rewarding experience of my life and is a culmination of all the experiences, choices, and guidance I've received over the years. The last thing I want to do is give her the impression that I take what we have for granted. That's enough goals for now. Hopefully, sometime in the not-so-distant future, I'll be able to move them over into the "Accomplished" category.

14 Months, but who's counting?

It was just over a year ago that I was fired in spectacular fashion from a local dive boat on which I worked as both Captain and Crew. I have had a lot of jobs in my young life (and often more than one at a time), but up until that point I had never been dismissed from one. And certainly not like I was when, on that day, the co-owner of the boat (we'll call him "B") flew off the handle in the parking lot in front of customers and other crew. To make a long story short, the drama arose when I arrived to work only to find that I wasn't needed. I was frustrated because I had been scheduled for the day at least a week earlier, and this wasn't the first time that this kind of mistake had been made. Furthermore, in an attempt to avoid just this situation, I had contacted "M" (the co-owner of the business and B's wife) to confirm the appointment and had not received a response. When confronted by her husband, M claimed that she had not heard from me and so at that point what was a man to do but side with his wife? Sadly, his response was to start screaming at me that he had done nothing but "give me the shirt off my back" and that this was how I repaid him. Never, he said, would I work for them again. At the time (and for quite some time afterwards), I was depressed by the whole misunderstanding. I had enjoyed working on that boat and felt that I'd received nothing but praise from them and the customers (read about this incident). For things to end in such a dramatic and unprofessional fashion was, to say the least, very hurtful. Since that day, I have not worked on the boat at all (despite being asked to, believe it or not). It turns out that B is a sweep-it-under-the-rug kind of person whereas I believe in making sincere amends in order to keep my side of the street clean. I work with him every week in the Harbormasters office, where he is one of my supervisors and has been nothing but chummy since his blow-up. It's worth mentioning that I reached out to both B and M in the days following that incident in order to make amends and resolve the situation in a professional manner. Neither effort was acknowledged, much less responded to. Which brings us up to today. I went to the Harbormasters office this morning to attend an optional emergency fire drill put on for the staff. Before the meeting began, Brian asked me if I was working this sunday afternoon and said that he wanted to talk with me after the drill was over. Imagine my surprise when, more than a year later, B apologized to me by way of saying that he is "very protective of my wife". Somehow, this seems to justify his behavior that day. I might understand this if I had at any point gotten in her face about the scheduling mistakes that had come up over and over during my time with the company but the fact remains that I never once said anything critical, argumentative, or in any way unprofessional. I really do believe that. I did ask if she could create the crew schedule more than a couple of days in advance so that I could plan my weekend work accordingly, but that was it. Anyways, it occurred to me as I walked away that the only reason why B might be bringing up his behavior to me at this point in the game is because he wants something. And sure enough, they've got an afternoon trip this weekend. Shocking, I know. Working on the dive boats is supposed to be fun. The scant income that this opportunity provided is not worth the degrading treatment I received that day and presumably could receive again sometime down the line. Jenn has been steadfast in her assertion that I never work for them again lest I compromise my integrity and, once again, she is right. Lessons learned, the hard way.

Need Inspiration?

There are countless inspirational people in the world, but at the moment two in particular have caught (and held) my attention. Abby Wambach is the well-spoken, confident, powerful goal-scorer and emotional team leader for the U.S. Womens National Soccer team. Unwaveringly humble, she'd be the first to remind us that there's no "I" in team. Have a look, as she prepares for the 2012 Olympics with a huge chip on her shoulder following last year's devastating World Cup final loss to Japan. Diana Nyad is, quite simply, one of the most driven, charismatic people I have ever seen. Whether she's describing her latest effort to fulfill her 30 year old dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida, or providing insight into her mindset when it comes to preparing for the next attempt, Diana (at 62 years old) is living proof that no dream is too big. My, how people amaze...

What Do You Do?

As always seems to be the case, I have several different jobs at the moment. Among them (and perhaps the least predictable, seeing as how I never knew the position existed until it was offered to me) is working for the Monterey Harbormasters office. Technically, my official job title is "Harbor Security" (even though it says otherwise here) but I'd argue that security is just one of the many roles I've come to serve in the harbor. Case in point: I received a call from one of my supervisors at 6pm on a recent wednesday evening asking if I could get down to the harbor and assist the on-duty security staff member (let's call him "A") with a sinking boat in the marina. I don't know about most folks, but when I hear the terms "sinking" and "boat" in the same sentence, three thoughts immediately come to mind: medical emergency, environmental disaster, and boat load (literally) of money going down the drain. Fortunately, I live very close to the harbor and so I found myself 19 minutes later jumping aboard the harbor workboat with "A" carrying armfuls of whatever emergency supplies (first aid, lifejackets, booming material to contain fuel/oil spills) I could could scrounge up, still with no idea of exactly what the situation was. Turns out that a commercial squid light boat (just what it sounds like: a 30' boat with big lights on it) was mostly submerged while still attached to its mooring ball. After ensuring that there were no passengers aboard, the first step was to surround the vessel with "soft" booming material to contain any leaking fuel or oil. The marina is part of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) and is home to a surprisingly abundant and diverse array of wildlife. For this reason and many others it is always a high priority to minimize the amount of pollutants that enter the water. In order to bring a boat back to the surface, scuba divers must use lift bags (think: industrial inflatable pillows) which are strategically attached to the vessel at various points. Having been the diver in previous cases like this, I am still struck by how much simpler the process always seems than it turns out to be. If you know exactly where the hull has been compromised (in this case, a raw water intake for cooling the engines failed), then underwater epoxy and whatever else you can find is used to plug the hole or holes. The lift bags are then strategically and slowly filled with air from the surface in order to level and then raise the vessel. This is where it gets tricky. Water is very dense, which is irrelevant when it is surrounded by other water. When you are trying to raise a sunken vessel, however, there comes a pivotal moment when the water level inside the boat is higher than the water outside the hull. An object which was level and stable below the water suddenly develops a very high center of gravity. Add to that the already top-heavy nature of a light-boat, the gear and water moving around on the deck, and the constant movement of the sea around the vessel, and you can see why this is the most dangerous part of the whole operation. This night was no different. Four separate times the divers were able to raise the boat to the surface only to have it lurch sickeningly and come crashing down on its side at the very spot where either myself and A were positioned with the smaller workboat, or three others were on the opposite side in the vessel containing all of the scuba equipment which was still attached to various lift bags. It was now around 1 o'clock in the morning and, although the operation had gone fairly smoothly, it became clear that we weren't going to get the boat to the surface and de-watered before towing it to the boatyard. The two divers were cold, exhausted, and likely already looking forward to a day or two of feeling quite under the weather as a result of working in a diesel-soaked environment for several hours without pause. The decision was then made to partially re-submerge the vessel to a point where we could be assured of its stability and then tow it (side-tied, which is just what it sounds like) through the marina's mooring field to the boatyard, where staff there would meet us with the equipment to haul the boat out of the water and put onto blocks. I literally thought that this was going to be the day that I was involved in sinking a boat (in addition to the one we were towing), as the ungainly shape of the sunken vessel combined with the fact that it was positioned backwards to the direction of travel, and still had all of the lift bags and booming material attached meant the whole mess was about as lacking in maneuverability as you could imagine! My role at this point? Because the sunken vessel plus salvage equipment created a huge amount of drag, our workboat was constantly being pulled to port (left) and was unable to make any turns to starboard (right). This is a nightmare waiting to happen when trying to move the whole mess through the mooring field. No maneuverability = no control. The solution then was for A and I to attach a line to the workboat's starboard bow and pull at 90 degrees to the direction of travel, thereby keeping it in a straight-ish line. The workboat was towing the sunken vessel but, in a sense, we were towing both of them and the little skiff we were in really wasn't the vessel for the job. It was all we had though, and we'd reached a point of no return because there was absolutely no way to turn back without wiping out a handful of perfectly good boats. Imagine for a moment attaching a line to the center of the aft (rear) end of a boat and pulling an object this way. It seems rather straightforward, and it is. You pull straight ahead, and the towed vessel moves straight ahead. If you pull to the right, the vessel will follow the same path as you, thus turning right. When you tie that line somewhere off of center, however, it becomes an entirely different animal. The towing vessel (particularly an under-powered, one engined affair like ours) has a tendency to yaw (move back and forth) uncontrollably, making it nearly impossible to pull even the most hydrodynamic objects in a straight line. As you can imagine, the monstrosity that we'd become was about as far from ideally-shaped as you could hope for. Sure enough, as soon as I slammed it into gear, the skiff took off about 45 degrees to the right of where I wanted to pull. If I kept going that way, we'd eventually wind up alongside the harbor boat pulling straight backwards to the overall direction we wanted to go. There was no time for the harbor boat to slow down and wait for us to reposition though, because the only way it could maintain any semblance of maneuverability was to keep going forward. I barked a hastily improvised plan at A which involved shifting gears rapidly and aggressively, while reversing directions back and forth in what became a carefully/chaotically choreographed effort to continue pulling the whole operation to starboard while not running over the line we had tied to it. This would have fouled our propeller and put us in a world of trouble the thought of which made my stomach hurt. It took a very nerve-wracking 45 minutes to cross the small marina this way. In that time, A and I narrowly avoided being pulled sideways into four stationary mooring balls (with boats attached). Furthermore, at 3:30am, when we finally managed to put the sunken vessel into the sling for the Travel Lift to pick it up, we realized that we were standing in six inches of sea water. The skiff is designed in such a way that when you pull as hard as we did, the transom (rear) is pulled downward, allowing water to come in over the top. That, combined with the faulty bilge pump (which chose a HELL of a time to break down) meant that we were in the slow process of sinking ourselves throughout the operation. So when people ask me what it is I do for the Harbormasters office, I struggle to find an adequate response. I have operated a dredge, towed sunken vessels, assisted in the (ultimately failed) effort to resuscitate a drowning victim, disassembled derelict vessels, inspected mooring systems while on scuba, filled in for my boss running the office, and checked in dozens of transient (visiting) boaters in the span of a few hours, and much much more. In the end, I suppose "Harbor Security" is as good a job title as any.

Fun that Hurts

I hate exercising. The idea of going for a run for its own sake or doing a million sit-ups before breakfast strikes me as (at best) rather silly things to do. That's because "exercising" in it's purest sense is rarely any fun. We had a neighbor - who happens to be a Marine - who seemed to think that anything physical was only worth doing if it hurt. A lot. She invited Jenn over several times to go running or exercising to a work-out video, and each time Jenn came limping home wondering just why our neighbor seems so hell-bent on absolutely punishing herself. I may be a fool who invariably puts himself in positions where injury is likely/inevitable, but that is never the goal. I don't seek out pain (it hurts!), but I do enjoy using my body to have experiences which are otherwise unattainable. Example: mud runs. As I've mentioned previously, these are events where participants have the opportunity to basically play outside in dirt and mud while running around and jumping over stuff. I don't know about most folks, but that reminds me a lot of the better moments of my childhood. The thought that there's pain involved takes a backseat to the fact that this type of activity is actually fun. I remember as a kid jumping on my buddy Craig's trampoline for hours and having to crawl back into the house afterwards because our legs were so painfully exhausted. In junior high school, we played basketball up to 7 times each day and never thought twice about the agony our feet were going through. It was fun, we felt great, and we couldn't wait to do it again the next day. Somewhere along the line though, people seem to forget that playing and exercising can be the same thing. As we outgrow our youth, we start doing things like "Going to the Gym" and "Running for 30 Minutes Three Times Per Week", as if breathing hard and sweating is the actual objective. Lots of folks pay good money for memberships to gyms where they literally exercise themselves into exhaustion, but never once (and I've asked) has anyone told me the experience brings them any joy. Call me crazy, but...wait...no, THAT is crazy! At what point do we decide that we have to earn our health and sense of well-being, rather than enjoy it? Is there some societal norm that says enjoyment of life must not be enjoyable at all? I realize that the vast majority of the world is full of people who don't have the luxury to choose a life that pleases them. For some, being healthy takes a backseat to simply staying alive another day. There is no time for having fun. It is my extreme good fortune to have the privilege of living in a beautiful place that I can explore and play in every day. Kayaking, diving, biking, hiking, swimming, and mud running are activites that I enjoy doing. The fact that these things may hurt a little is irrelevant. They're fun, and I can't wait to do it again tomorrow.

Writer's Write, right?

When I started this blog (and, for the record, I REALLY don't care for the term blog, it's the sound a cat makes when vomiting fur and grass on the kitchen floor!), I had no real plan for when I would contribute my thoughts. It just seemed like a fun way to chronicle the process I was going through at the time. I was at the start of a very long personal journey that took me around the world and back, all in search of a good place to call home. I've already written about how ironic it was to find that what I was looking for turned out no to be a place at all, but rather a person. Building a life with Jenn has been, by far, the most rewarding experience of my life and although I am routinely overwhelmed by how grateful I am to have the life with her that I do, I rarely feel compelled to write about it.
So that should be it, right? Case closed, blog completed. My "odyssey" as I called it, took me literally around the globe and landed me right back where I started, albeit with a new perspective. Since that time, I've been largely unmotivated to write anymore, yet I still hear from friends and family asking when I'll start again. And, honestly, I have no idea when the motivation will return. I write best when I'm in completely new surroundings, being challenged to think and act outside of my normal comfort zone. Since things here in Pacific Grove have been nothing but absolutely comfortable for the last couple of years, I suppose that should explain my hiatus.
But, for anyone who hopes to read more, there is hope! It is my goal that, on April 8th of 2012, Jenn and I are going to sit down and plan a trip. I've had a SERIOUS case of the travel bug of late, and I'm really excited to think of travelling internationally with her. Here's a (short) list of some of the trips we're considering:
-Machu Picchu and Peru via the Inca Trail
-Eastern Canada
-Europe (including stays in Germany and Slovenia)
-Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam

With any hope, one of the side benefits of going on these adventures will be the return of my regular contributions to this site. We'll see...