BillyStyle

Yesterday was a great day. We’ve just got one student here at the camp this week, Ed from Sweden. It’s pretty laid back with just one fellow here. In the morning, after dropping the boat in at the ramp, I saw a tall white bird (I still don’t know what they are, I should find that out, some kind of crane or something) was trying to snag a lizard off of a palm tree. I watched it from about 15 feet away for a while. It was cool, its head didn’t move at all while it was creeping up in its would be victim. The bird’s neck was a good 18 inches long and it was swaying this way and that, but the head was perfectly still, weird stuff. He ended up giving up, that was too bad.

Then I rode in the afternoon. The other day I spent some time working on one wake stuff to reclaim some moves I’ve lost. So yesterday I went ahead and landed 2 of the 3 moves on the first try wake to wake. They were a HS BS 360 and a TS Backroll. Nice and easy. I couldn’t get my switch HS BS 3, but that’ll come. I may work on getting my TS 5 back first, since it has the same rotation in it. We’ll see.

The day ended with some tasty lasagna and then I popped in Ninja Gaiden Black that I just bought off of ebay. It’s an old XBox game that I was hooked on before, but now it’s upgraded and I’m super excited about it. So yeah, life’s pretty good right now! I should probably work on getting me a good woman now…and a dollar or two.

So Florida is slightly different than Utah, believe it or not. It has rained here probably half of the days that I’ve been here. The weather actually changes pretty quickly. I’ve seen weeks with almost all sunny weather, and weeks that are mostly gray. It’s a nice variety. I still enjoy the rain, having lived in St. George for 7 years and seeing it rain about 10 times. Well, maybe a little more than that, but it’s a good change.

That’s all for now, have a nice day!

Well, in the past hour, I’ve received 2 requests to update this here blog of mine. So I suppose I will.

I’ll go in this order:
- Excuses
- Update on stuff
- Excuses for the future

Excuses
Right now I’m living out of bags, and just recently put a wireless network card in my desktop computer. I am finally getting used to primarily using my laptop, as I used my desktop for 99% of my INTERNETING in the past. I still prefer the desktop, but its location has a weak wireless signal, so right now I’m using the laptop where the signal is stronger. Anyway, most of my files and such are on the desktop, so that threw a good hitch in my blogging practices.

Update
I dig it here! I’m in the middle of my third week here at the camp. So far, the campers have consisted of 4 Canadians, one Mexican, 2 Australians, 3 Swedes, and a couple locals (one of which is a local cop, Johnny Law we call him). Kind of neat that other than the locals, no people from the USA have been here yet. So I’ve learned some Spanish and Swedish words, but not very much.

As far as coaching goes, I started by just being on the boats during the coaching. Then I drove a bit. Now I’ve spent 2 full days coaching solo. My first day I taught Andrew, the French-Canadian, how to do a front roll. That was awesome. I’ve coached before, so I’m pretty comfy with that, but I find myself doubting my technique a little now because I’m surrounded by such great coaches. It’s so laid back here though that I really feel trusted by the other guys, which is cool. I think it’s like any other job as far as getting comfortable with my surroundings and gaining confidence…only a lot more fun.

I’ve ridden a fair amount, about a few times a week. That should change to almost every day as soon as the holiday stuff passes and people get back in town. A huge perk of the job is that we get to ride almost every day if we want, and we do want!

This is the most racially diverse place I’ve ever lived, and I like it. The only other Mormons I’ve ran into are the ones at church, a bit of a change from Utah. I’m looking forward to getting a place of my own so I feel like I actually live here. Right now it still kind of seems like a vacation. I went home to Oregon for Christmas, so I still haven’t been here longer than 2 weeks at a time.

Excuses for the Future
Soon, I’ll have my condo in St. George sold, and the hunt for living quarters will begin. I assume that during that time I won’t be posting very often either. Until that time, I’ll try to do better!

Update:
Just as I was proofreading this, another camper showed up. He’s Demetris, a guy from Greece, so yet another foreigner, awesome.

Well here it is. The full map of the coast-to-coast. Started in Lincoln city, Oregon on November 24 and arrived in Clermont, FL on December 7. The grand total miles ended up being 3,931 miles, and we probably hit 4,000 with the little detours we went on.

It was an awesome trip. I’ll list the touristish highlights of the trip:

• Depoe Bay, Oregon
• Hoover Dam, Nevada/Arizona
• Meteor Crater, Arizona
• Cadillac Ranch, Texas
• Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere, Texas
• The Leaning Tower of Texas, Texas
• Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, Oklahoma
• Kennedy Space Center, Florida

I may have missed some because we saw so many cool things, but that’s the general idea. It was all quite cool. The best part was that I did it all with my Dad, Bill Sr. He made the trip fun and there really wasn’t any time when either of us felt sick of driving or anything. If anything, we thought it went too quickly. We didn’t get to see the shuttle launch because it got delayed a bunch, but we did fire off a little rocket 600 feet into the air, so that was just about as good!

I’ll post more about my experience as a wakeboard coach, but right now I’ll end with the conclusion of the trip. Good stuff.

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Well, we’re here in my new home, Clermont, Florida. Kind of funny stuff we are both (me and Bill Sr.) going through. Today we were talking about how it’s weird that we’re done, and it’s almost kind of a let down that we have no more distance to drive East. But today was a good day. We woke up, went to the beach. It was pretty neato, the sand was covered in countless little pieces of broken up seashells. We drove down the coastline and ate at Two Can Terry’s. Both had the flounder sandwich, good stuff.

We continued south to Cape Canaveral, where we did the NASA thing. We were hoping to catch the shuttle launch tomorrow, but it’s been postponed til Sunday. We probably won’t be able to make it. Our final stop was in Clermont. That’s where I’ll live and “work.” We’ve been wearing shorts and t-shirts all day. Oh, also, when we showed up in Clermont, the whole stinking town was gathered around this spot a few blocks away from the camp. It was a “Light Up Clermont” event. It reminded me of a town gathering on Funny Farm. Good stuff.

So here’s today’s travel.

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Well, today was the last big leg of the drive. We are pretty close to the beach, but won’t see it until tomorrow. So no more 500+ mile drives, that’s nice. Today we made 2 significant stops. One in Meridian, MS to surprise a friend (Steve Monk) who is on his mission. We got his address and knocked on his door. That was a fun stop. Then we ate good BBQ food in Mobile, Alabama.

Then on through to Florida. We started in Jackson and ended in Jacksonville. Now we’re staying with my old roommate and his wife and kid. It was awesome when we showed up his 2 1/2 year old son cranked up the hyper mode. He was pulling me all over and running in circles, so I made sure we were both screaming, good stuff.

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I’m tired. So here’s a quick post showing our travels from Albuquerque, NM to Jackson, MS. That’s what we knocked out Tuesday and Wednesday. We saw the Cadillac Ranch, biggest cross in the Western hemisphere, and the Oklahoma City bombing memorial.

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