Archive for February, 2008

Best Grocery Store I’ve Seen

Published at February 27, 2008 in Observations. 4 Comments

Yeah, pretty exciting post huh? A big grocery store chain down here is called Publix. It took my brain a few weeks to accept that as a name of a grocery store, but I’m cool with it now.

It’s the only grocery store I’ve ever gone into and found myself thinking “What a great store.” The few I’ve been into are clean, well stocked, huge, and have a great selection of just about anything I could imagine. We had an English fellow here at the camp a few weeks ago, and he went there with us and found that they had a British food section. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

So yeah, this post is really awesome and exciting, haha. I was just so impressed by the place that I had to put something up about it. How bout that!

Death Almost Happened

Published at February 18, 2008 in Awesome and Wakeboarding. 5 Comments

So on Friday, we were out on the boat to watch Mr. Ben Greenwood ride. We had a whole lot of weight in the boat, so it was having trouble getting up on plane. I jumped up into the bow of the boat and, with another guy up there, got as far forward as I could. I ended up sitting right on the tip of the bow when all of a sudden I began to lose my balance…the wrong way. I’m not sure exactly my thought process at the time, but I think my survival instinct kicked in and I believe I shoved with what I could against the boat. I did this as I was falling into the water so I wouldn’t be in line with the boat’s propeller.

So I went down in the water and (again, not sure if I’m telling the truth, but I think it’s what happened) I gave a quick paddle away from the boat on the port side. After a few seconds had passed, I knew I was safe, and popped my head out of the water.

I was wearing Ben’s sunglasses before I fell in, and wasn’t wearing them when I emerged from the water. The boat had stopped, so I was halfway between the boat and Ben. I immediately began apologizing for losing his glasses. He shouted “I don’t care about the glasses. What about you? Are you missing any arms or legs? Are you bleeding?”

It wasn’t until then that I really realized the danger in which I had just put myself. I kind of laughed and said that I was totally fine. I got back in and after the water calmed down (some huge boat was joy riding), he had a great ride.

So the moral of the story is: Don’t be stupid like me!

Luckily I had a very smart and aware driver who continued to go straight when I fell in the water. He said he didn’t want to turn either way because the boat’s behavior when you turn the wheel is unpredictable enough to make that dangerous. He did the smart thing by going straight and backing off the throttle after he had passed by me. Good times!

What it’s Like

Published at February 11, 2008 in General. 5 Comments

I imagine people are wondering what my new style of life is like here in Florida. I’ll try to sum it up here in a post.

I live at work, The Wakeboard Camp, so that means that about 70 feet from my door is the lake. It’s a mostly round lake, about 2 miles in diameter. So every morning, I wake up and look out on the lake. Typically one of the coaches (sometimes me) will have breakfast made by 8:30, so I’ll go up and eat a little after the campers are done eating. Next, the morning coach will get the boat ready and head out on the lake with the campers. In the winter, we have been running one boat due to the small number of campers. If I’m the coach, that means I drive the boat and coach people how to have more fun on a wakeboard!

Then comes lunch. We lounge around and the breakfast maker has lunch made around noon. We relax and clean a little til it’s time to ride again at 2pm. Sometimes we’ll go out and the coaches will ride at lunch so we get to have fun and the campers can enjoy watching us do some of them flippy spinny things. Then the afternoon coach heads out and does his thing.

Dinner is usually at 6:30, and then the work day is over. So since I live here, even when I’m not on the schedule, I usually end up helping out with little things here and there like driving the trailer to the ramp to get a boat and stuff like that. In a typical week, I’ll ride 4 times or so. This is the winter though, so this is the slow riding season.

There’s also some phone answering and email checking, but they don’t have me doing too much of that yet, and I’m happy to not be doing a lot of that at the moment. I’m here to wakeboard! Saturdays are my least favorite day, because we clean the whole place on those days. I really don’t enjoy cleaning. I’ve learned that over the years. I’m fine cleaning my stuff, but there’s no way I could have a janitorial job, I’d quit on day one. But usually after cleaning, we’ll go ride the rolly weekend water if it’s not too bad.

In the evenings, we go bowling somewhat frequently and I get talked in to going to the sports bar across the street to have a drink (they have beer, I have pop or water or anything else I can think of that’s not alcohol) and watch the local bar-goers.

For all you concerned about my church-going, yes, I am attending church. It’s funny, down here, I really look forward to going to church because it’s different than what I’m surrounded by all day. In Utah, it was just more of the same stuff so I didn’t enjoy it as much. I guess I’m the kind of person that wants what isn’t right before me…or something. Most of the ward members are converts, and it’s a well-attended ward. Okay, that’s long enough for this post.