Surfs Up! Sales too.
There is a fun swell in the water this week, I've spent the last two mornings enjoying the heck out of some small, but great waves in Avellanas. Down by the Avellanas rivermouth the waves have been much bigger (and HUGE in Negra) but for whatever reason I opted to take the almost-empty beach break waves and surf 30 or 40 instead of the crushing (and more exciting) larger waves of which I would probably only get five or ten. Getting out of bed with the roosters* and heading south to surf beautiful warm water on a tropical beach with lush green forest in the background..... is good.
Except yesterday. Yesterday it was good, until about 10am. See, I got up at 5:45, enjoyed coffee and some granola with soy milk to power up a little, before loading the board and some water into the cruiser. Headed down and was in the water by 7 (its only a 20 minute drive, where that other hour went... is beyond me). I enjoyed delicious Costa Rican coffee, piping hot, the whole drive down**. When I stopped and was putting on my rash guard, I was sad to see that my nalgene full of water had leaked all over the seat. Bummer. Surfed a solid two hours, catching literally dozens of chest-high, hollow waves in the brilliant morning sun until I was finally too tuckered out and called it a morning. Drove home, enjoying the dregs of my delicious coffee the whole way**.
Got home, had to attend to some questions from the gardener, who also pointed out that the pool pump wasn't working. Grrr. So under the house I went into the steamy and very hot pump room (think: concrete bunker, 5ft ceiling, 1/2 inch of water on the floor.... plenty of bugs to keep you company****) for half an hour while troubleshooting the pool pump***.
It was about then that I started realizing that I really should get something to drink besides coffee. You know... mild headache, parched throat, thirst...
Finished that, cleaned up quickly and headed to the office (where we have water) but remembered that I needed something at the hardware store (who also sells water) so detoured there first. Also needed to get a tire patched, which was convenient, since that is across the street from the hardware store. What is inconvenient, is that their soda fridge is out of order and thus they had nothing to drink. They did have plenty of sunshine in which for me to stand and sweat. I should have started to worry when I didn't notice that I wasn't sweating. Of course, not noticing the not sweating, I didn't worry. So at least I had that going for me, less worry is better, right?
Tire patched and off to the hardware store. By this point, I wasn't even thirsty anymore. In fact, it wasn't until after I had been rooting around in the back of the hardware store (approximately 115 F back there, I'd say, and plenty humid) looking for a specific electrical connector that the pump-timer would require in order to work, that I started to get the vague sensation that something was definitely not right. I was feeling a little cool. Almost chilly.
For those of you who haven't studied much in the ways of dehydration and hyperthermia... I was showing some pretty serious signs of being NOT WELL.
One of the cruel tricks of dehydration and hyperthermia is that one of the symptoms of a big problem is that you enter a state in which you are distinctly unable to notice that you are having big problems. Which really sucks.
So driving away from the hardware store, still feeling mildly chilled, some small, desperate part of my brain managed to penetrate the fog and I stopped off at the grocery for some powerade and a bottle of water.
One of the other cruel tricks of dehydration and hyperthermia is that you loose your sense of thirst and can actually experience nausea. Despite the fact that I really didn't want to drink the powerade, or maybe because I really didn't want to drink the powerade, I managed to choke down the powerade and some water.
An hour or two and three liters of water later, I was finally thirsty. Another hour after that I peed for the first time since getting out of the water at 9am.
Spent the rest of the day feeling like junk.... headache, lethargy, malaise, disgruntledness, and an overall feeling of not being very happy at all that I had been so freakin stupid as to actually do myself harm for lack of water despite being within five minutes of a drink of water throughout the whole morning. It was just plain stupid of me.
Fortunately, my lovely wife helped force down some delicious fresh salad and plenty of water and juice over dinner and by the time I went to bed I almost felt human again.
Human enough to get up at 5:30 this morning and repeat the surfing process. Only this time, decaf and two nalgene bottles of water, carefully closed. I feel much better this afternoon.... maybe I'll get back in the water for an evening session, the waves are certainly good enough to warrant it.
*Thankfully, there are no roosters within earshot of our house. Roosters crowing in the morning is a myth. Those little SOBs crow all day and night. If you lack proof that there is an evil force in the universe, spend time trying to sleep near a couple of roosters. Demon-seed, I tell ya.
**You can't actually drink coffee on the entirety of that drive, too bumpy, but you get the picture.
***Pump is fine. Timer is pooched. We have on, or off, but no timer. Which ensures I'll be spending more time in the pump room until fixed. :(
****Mozzies are further strong evidence of aforementioned evil force in the universe.
Except yesterday. Yesterday it was good, until about 10am. See, I got up at 5:45, enjoyed coffee and some granola with soy milk to power up a little, before loading the board and some water into the cruiser. Headed down and was in the water by 7 (its only a 20 minute drive, where that other hour went... is beyond me). I enjoyed delicious Costa Rican coffee, piping hot, the whole drive down**. When I stopped and was putting on my rash guard, I was sad to see that my nalgene full of water had leaked all over the seat. Bummer. Surfed a solid two hours, catching literally dozens of chest-high, hollow waves in the brilliant morning sun until I was finally too tuckered out and called it a morning. Drove home, enjoying the dregs of my delicious coffee the whole way**.
Got home, had to attend to some questions from the gardener, who also pointed out that the pool pump wasn't working. Grrr. So under the house I went into the steamy and very hot pump room (think: concrete bunker, 5ft ceiling, 1/2 inch of water on the floor.... plenty of bugs to keep you company****) for half an hour while troubleshooting the pool pump***.
It was about then that I started realizing that I really should get something to drink besides coffee. You know... mild headache, parched throat, thirst...
Finished that, cleaned up quickly and headed to the office (where we have water) but remembered that I needed something at the hardware store (who also sells water) so detoured there first. Also needed to get a tire patched, which was convenient, since that is across the street from the hardware store. What is inconvenient, is that their soda fridge is out of order and thus they had nothing to drink. They did have plenty of sunshine in which for me to stand and sweat. I should have started to worry when I didn't notice that I wasn't sweating. Of course, not noticing the not sweating, I didn't worry. So at least I had that going for me, less worry is better, right?
Tire patched and off to the hardware store. By this point, I wasn't even thirsty anymore. In fact, it wasn't until after I had been rooting around in the back of the hardware store (approximately 115 F back there, I'd say, and plenty humid) looking for a specific electrical connector that the pump-timer would require in order to work, that I started to get the vague sensation that something was definitely not right. I was feeling a little cool. Almost chilly.
For those of you who haven't studied much in the ways of dehydration and hyperthermia... I was showing some pretty serious signs of being NOT WELL.
One of the cruel tricks of dehydration and hyperthermia is that one of the symptoms of a big problem is that you enter a state in which you are distinctly unable to notice that you are having big problems. Which really sucks.
So driving away from the hardware store, still feeling mildly chilled, some small, desperate part of my brain managed to penetrate the fog and I stopped off at the grocery for some powerade and a bottle of water.
One of the other cruel tricks of dehydration and hyperthermia is that you loose your sense of thirst and can actually experience nausea. Despite the fact that I really didn't want to drink the powerade, or maybe because I really didn't want to drink the powerade, I managed to choke down the powerade and some water.
An hour or two and three liters of water later, I was finally thirsty. Another hour after that I peed for the first time since getting out of the water at 9am.
Spent the rest of the day feeling like junk.... headache, lethargy, malaise, disgruntledness, and an overall feeling of not being very happy at all that I had been so freakin stupid as to actually do myself harm for lack of water despite being within five minutes of a drink of water throughout the whole morning. It was just plain stupid of me.
Fortunately, my lovely wife helped force down some delicious fresh salad and plenty of water and juice over dinner and by the time I went to bed I almost felt human again.
Human enough to get up at 5:30 this morning and repeat the surfing process. Only this time, decaf and two nalgene bottles of water, carefully closed. I feel much better this afternoon.... maybe I'll get back in the water for an evening session, the waves are certainly good enough to warrant it.
*Thankfully, there are no roosters within earshot of our house. Roosters crowing in the morning is a myth. Those little SOBs crow all day and night. If you lack proof that there is an evil force in the universe, spend time trying to sleep near a couple of roosters. Demon-seed, I tell ya.
**You can't actually drink coffee on the entirety of that drive, too bumpy, but you get the picture.
***Pump is fine. Timer is pooched. We have on, or off, but no timer. Which ensures I'll be spending more time in the pump room until fixed. :(
****Mozzies are further strong evidence of aforementioned evil force in the universe.
Labels: landcruiser, real estate, surf
Caly and Sonoma
In an interesting twist (if you consider our dogs interesting) Caly has suddendly decided that chew toys are pretty good after all (she took an 18 month break from them). The problem is that Sonoma (Brian and Carrie's very labbish lab) knows that Caly won't bite her. The end result is that Caly tries to chew a rawhide while growling like an outboard motor at idle while Sonoma risks her own life (or at least facial reconstructive surgery) by licking the rawhide that is in Caly's mouth.Fun times.
Labels: dog
Rain and Cruiser
The rainy season is finally here. We are enjoying vivid lightning shows many nights (that are unfortunately difficult to sleep through), and get buckets of rain in the evenings or mornings about three or four days out of the week. So far the roads aren't too bad in most of Tamarindo and Avellanas. Certainly not as bad as in Russia -forgive the crazy segue, but if you want to see horrid highway conditions, check this out.Despite that fact, I did manage to get the cruiser very stuck in a relatively small creek crossing the other day. Due to a lack of a couple of key components in my self-recovery arsenal, most notably a stupid little connector for the hilift jack, I couldn't get the truck out myself. Instead we (two passengers were with me, friends, thankfully, not clients) got some local fellows to lend a hand trying to pull the partially submerged cruiser out. No dice. Their 2wd SUV didn't even move us a little bit. But it did work to drive back to a local surf spot where we grabbed another guy who was willing to come help in his Tacoma. With a lot of rigging and re-rigging, and no small amount of "let's try it again", we finally managed to pull the cruiser forward enough to get a little bit of traction, which was all that we really needed to get out.
To thank the whole crew (there were seven of us in all) I treated everyone to lunch and beer at a little beachfront soda (think: family kitchen that serves food to the public at very low prices, but with virtually no selection). One of the many wonderful things about coastal Costa Rica is that you can still sit on the sand with a fantastic ocean view and enjoy a delicious FULL plate of porkchop, salad, rice, beans and fried plantain, along with a beer and/or a fresh juice and pay less than $5/person. Everyone had a great time and the whole incident turned into a fun little adventure instead of a ruined day.
An upshoot of that experience, and some gentle nagging by our close pal Soop, is that I've got a renewed sense of enthusiasm for attacking the very long list of upgrades and fixes on the cruiser. So far this week I've repaired the brake master cylinder, bled the brakes, replaced some broken grease fittings, replaced two worn body mounts, adapted and fitted the bullbar to the front, cleaned inside and out, adjusted the relay rod, tightened some loose bolts underneath, and painted and modified the battery tray/hold down system. Doesn't sound like all that much work when I write it out in a quick list, but it feels good while driving around.
Labels: landcruiser
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