Redemption??

I swear I must be the worst blogger in the universe. I honestly think every day about writing but here I am once again - haven't written in well over a month - lame. In that time I've been to Costa Rica, been SUPing and surfing in Hatteras, kegged beer, attended birthdays, followed oil spill - plenty to talk about so today is the day!
One disclaimer first though - aside from the couple good days of surf I had in Costa Rica I can literally count the number of surf sessions I've had on one hand since my last post - it's been Godawful surfwise - so hang in there because this could easily become an angry frustrated rant - I just don't know how it's gonna turn out!
Alright, let's start with the good! On April 7th Laura and I hopped in the car and drove up to DC after work spent the night and went to the airport in the morning and flew out to Costa Rica for my friend, Alexandra's, wedding. I had been anticipating this trip for quite a while because it was Laura's first time to CR and I was anxious for her to meet my buddy Andres who is like a brother to me. We got to Costa, picked up our car no problem and drove to Andres' office and picked him up and spent the night with he and his wife at their house in Escazu which is a suburb of San Jose. Laura hung in there while Andres and I laughed and talked trash like a couple of idiot frat boys. The next morning we got up and drove down to Playa Hermosa on the killer new road that pretty much cut the drive time from San Jose to Hermosa in half - I was amazed and I tried my best to convey to Laura how amazing it was but I'm sure she didn't really get it understandably. Once in Hermosa we rented a bungalow steps off the beach - it was KILLER - I've stayed in the Hermosa Bungalows a ton because my friends Alexandra and Twinka live there but I've never rented one. Any time I've ever rented a place to stay in CR it's been a cheap little place so to stay in a nice place that I was paying for was a real treat - actually it was a treat that we had a car too because I normally travel around by bus and by thumb so I was really spoiled this trip! Friday night we went to a rehearsal dinner barbecue at Alexandra's house with an unreal spread of food that I'm not going to describe because I haven't had lunch today and I'm starving. Saturday morning we got up early and drove down to Esterillos and went for a surf in fun overhead kind of mushy waves - Hermosa was really closed out and didn't look makeable at all. If you've never surfed Playa Hermosa it's an unbelievable wave - really heavy and hollow and clean BUT when it's closed out it can be horrifying. Taking a closeout section on the head at Hermosa is a humbling experience - it puts you on the bottom and holds you there and grinds you up. I didn't want to deal with that and I didn't want to put my lovely girlfriend through that since we really only had a couple days to surf so we went to Esterillos and rode the softer easier wave there. Saturday night was Alexandra's wedding to her husband, Alex, - the setting was incredible. They found this little spot up on the side of a mountain that looks out over the Pacific ocean and was simply gorgeous. It rained but didn't dampen spirits - it was beautiful.

Is that a wedding site or what?? Sunday morning we got up and went back to Esterillos for a surf as Hermosa was doing the same thing as Saturday. After the wind started wrecking the conditions we packed up and drove down to Parrita to the waterfall there. I've been there a bunch of times but the 1km hike there is pretty different every time because it's an operating farm so they always have different crops & it's cool. This time they had a ripe crop of tall sugar cane growing and once we crossed the creek the field had a bunch of cattle wandering around. Laura was not at all happy about walking past the huge cows but she made it and we saw a bunch of monkeys in the trees as well on the way up to the waterfall.

Trekking through the Sugarcane

Once of the many cows that made Laura nervous!

Sunday night we went to The Taco Bar in Jaco - one of my fav places to eat - stayed up late and had some drinks. Monday morning we were up early and hit Jungle Surf Cafe for some enormous and delicious banana pancakes - hung around the pool and got some sun then packed up and drove back to San Jose where we met up with Andres and turned in our rental car. The evening (our last unfortunately) was a whirlwind of seeing a bunch of friends in San Jose - it must have been torture for Laura because she doesn't speak Spanish and there was a LOT of fast talking Spanish going down for sure! Andres, Estefani, Laura and I went and had a fantastic dinner in San Jose and then reluctantly got up early and said our goodbye's and flew back to DC where I promptly screwed up buying Metro tickets and bought 4 $20 cards instead of 2 $6 cards. That fiasco took the better part of 40 minutes to fix then we had to get back to my dad's house, in the car, and drive back to NC. Talk about a whirlwind!!Back here in NC the surf has been absolutely horrible. A bunch of Andy's buddies from Vermont were here for a week and I did manage a mediocre SUP/fish session with them one day and Laura and I had another afternoon of total crap on longboards - my shortboards are hibernating though and it's killing me. Fingers are crossed and I'm doing every Voodoo dance I can think of to hope that the forecast small groundswell for tomorrow actually materializes.

A garbage day on the SUP

Same garbage day on the singlefin

I said in the opening paragraph of this post something about the oil spill in the Gulf and I intended to write my thoughts about it but I'm going to hold off - to say I'm pissed off about it is the understatement of the century so I'm going to collect my thoughts a bit and write something in a future post. My shop is open and fully stocked - we've been having a pretty good spring so far and I'm really optimistic about the rest of the summer season - just need some waves to help lift the spirits!