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Snow Day
It was a particularly bad snow season this year in Arizona
and we left it pretty late, so I wasn't very optimistic about
our annual snow trip. We drove up to Payson and luckily there
were patches of snow left. Like slash and burn farmers, we
wandered around from patch to patch, used up the snow for
snowballs and moved on to the next patch. We also made a little
snowman.
Corky Carroll's Surf School
I turned 40 in December and it was time for my mid-life crisis.
I decided to have a foreign adventure by spending a week at
Corky Carroll's surf school in Costa Rica. My first night there
I stayed at the Hotel Buena Vista, which was located on
a hillside surrounded by coffee plantations. It was very peaceful
and scenic.
The scariest part of my trip was my flight from San Jose
to Nosara on the local airline, Sansa. This building is the
Sansa air terminal. It didn't look any better on the inside
than it did from the outside. They weighed every passenger
with his or her luggage to make sure the plane could take
off. The pilots looked like they were about 22 years old.
Despite my misgivings, I survived my flight to Nosara. This
picture shows the Nosara Aerodromo (airport), which consisted
of an airstrip, this sign, and a little shed that people
could sit under to get away from the sun. The airport staff
consisted of local boys who would carry your luggage from
the airplane to the shed for a fee.
After waiting just long enough to wonder if anyone was coming
to pick us up, Kiersten, the surf school coordinator, drove
up and picked up myself and two other students, Katy and Cory.
This picture shows the road leading to downtown Nosara. The
roads weren't paved, but it wasn't a bad little town. There
were no gas stations or banks but there were a number of
little markets and a nightclub.
This is Katy and Cory the two other students who were on my
Sansa flight. They were young lawyers from Virginia. I hung out
with Katy and Cory most of the week. They are standing in front
of the entrance to the surf school.
The Surf School compound consisted of six rather nice hotel
rooms, a pool, and a Mexican restaurant where we ate our
meals. The rooms were large and kept very clean, but they
didn't have any windows (only screens). It would get very windy
at night and it was pretty noisy inside the rooms.
Nosara Beach is actually a nature preserve and there is no
building allowed within 200 yards of the beach. To get to the
beach from the Surf School, we had to walk down this dirt
road and then wind through a jungle path. We were surfing
on 9 foot longboards, which got pretty heavy lugging them
back and forth from the beach.
Here is a picture of the beach. One of the things I was surprised
about concerning where I was in Costa Rica was that it was
rather dry and dusty. I was expected more of a lush, steamy
jungle environment. March was towards the end of the dry
season and the vegetation was rather brown.
This picture shows the beach from the other direction. It wasn't
always this empty of people. The time I was there was the
beginning of the Spring Break period and there might be
up to 30-40 surfers in the water at any given time.
This is Calle, the Surf School dog. There were quite a few
dogs wandering around Nosara. Most seemed relatively well-fed
and healthy. Calle would follow Rick,the Surf School owner,
out to the beach. She liked to dig for crabs. She also liked
having her front paws scratched, just like Bailey does.
There were four young surf instructors at the school. Every day
each student would get a private lesson with one of them.
Karen (aka the Surf Goddess) is on the left. Next to her is Pat
who came to the school after being convicted of "intent to
distribute marijuana". Behind me is Collin, the son of the owner.
At the far right is Brandon who sliced his foot on a surfboard
fin the week before and was out of action.
The day we were supposed to leave Nosara it was a little windy
and the Sansa pilot chickened out and wouldn't land his plane.
We wound up taking a six hour taxi bus ride from Nosara back
to San Jose. The taxi bus basically had no air conditioning
and it was hot. We stopped once at a rest stop where this picture
was taken. I look pretty grungy.
Jackson's Birthday
It's hard to believe, but Jackson turned 9 in March. One good thing
about having far-flung relatives is that the presents arrive
over the course of a week or so. Grandma Palmer sent him a dinosaur
excavation project. Two dinosaur carcasses were encased in
a sandstone block and it was up to Jackson and Zachary to
uncover them. They had a lot of fun with it.
Jackson had a sleepover birthday party with Ben, Bradley, and
Nischay. It was a whole lot easier than trying to reserve
Peter Piper Pizza or some such thing. In case you were wondering,
the kids were not naked. They had just gone swimming. Lisa and
I have learned after many sleepovers to not make the kids go to
bed at any set time. When it was 11:00, we just locked the doors
and told the kids to keep it down.
Springtime Sports
This was our last spring in Arizona, so I took the boys to
one last spring training game. As usual, they were much more
interested in ballpark food than they were in the ballgame.
I think I spent more on food than I did on the tickets
Jackson played soccer in the spring on a team called the Sharks.
Following our recent trend in sports, Jackson's team lost every
game they played. They did score a couple of goals, however, and
in one game Jackson took a shot at the opponent's goal. It was
a good shot too. It would have been cool if it would have gone in.
It was March, but it was also Arizona which meant it was 90
degrees outside. One afternoon the Shades put up a slip-slide
on their front lawn. The neighborhood kids were drawn to it
like moths to a flame. I was just happy to get Jackson and
Zachary out of the house for a few hours.
I think Jackson has a bright future ahead of him as a telecommuter.
He's got the slouch, the casual air, the t-shirt and shorts. The boys
have gotten pretty sophisticated when it comes to computers. They
download demo versions of games from the Internet and when the
demo period expires, they download another game. Lisa's PC has gotten
pretty cluttered.
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