Hello there internet people. Spring is here and it feels summer-ish in Central Florida. We’ve been busier than expected at the good old Wakeboard Camp, which is pretty sweet. I can’t remember if I’ve put it on here before or not, and am too lazy to check, but I’ve noticed a funny thing that happens when you work somewhere you enjoy. I end up spending at least three or four more hours a day at work than I am scheduled to work. A lot of that is because I go ride with my fellow coaches, but I also end up just hanging out with the people there.
We get people from all over, so it’s fun to hang out with them. It’s kind of like I’m going to different little hang out spots all over the world, but it always happens about three minutes away from my house. Kind of a neat thing. Just in the past month, we’ve had people from probably seven or eight different countries.
A theory I’ve recently concocted is that many Californians seem to think that California is not one state, but two: Southern California and Northern California. I would add to this that those same folks are unaware that California doesn’t actually end just to the North of San Francisco and Sacramento, but continues on for about another 250 miles or so to the North.
To me, it makes more sense to call the San Fransisco area Central California. Maybe they don’t know what California looks like, I’m not sure. Pay attention though next time you’re around a group of people from California.
Other than that, I’m still me, still riding sideways on the water, still rocking and rolling. Until next time, be excellent to each other!
Has anybody noticed this? For the past handful of years, Major League Baseball seems to have two seasons: Baseball Season and Steroid Season. There is no off season, which is a shame, because baseball just doesn’t quite cut it anymore.
There were a few years where I was into baseball, then I completely lost interest. That’s fine that it’s something that people enjoy, I can understand that people have different tastes than me. What I do have a problem with though, is the media’s infatuation with the soap opera that is now pro baseball. I am a fan of the NBA and NFL, and other pro sports, so I check ESPN’s website often. Baseball stories take up possibly half of the front page stories. They cover a couple dozen sports, and pro baseball hogs the attention for some reason.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that nobody really seems to care about the integrity of the game. They seem to solely be interested in the gossip of the whole thing. If this doping problem were to happen on such a large scale in any other sport, people would say the league is a joke and attendance would severely suffer. But baseball is America’s past time! So who cares that it’s filled with a bunch of cheaters, I can still go to the game and get drunk and pick a fight, woo!
Yogurt with fruit on the bottom is much tastier than the kind already blended together. I had forgotten this over the years, but now I’m back on the fruit on the bottom stuff, woohoo!
Also, this picture is neat!
Posted by Billy | Posted in Observations | Posted on 19-08-2008
Florida’s summer weather is different than any other place I’ve lived. In just the past couple weeks, the weather has been what most call summer-ish, so I’m going to base this on what’s happened so far in that time.
The days start out pretty calm, very humid, sticky, and warm. All those make for great morning wakeboard sessions. Then like clockwork, between 2:00 and 4:00pm, the wind gets a bit of a chill to it, then picks up by about 20 mph and the lake gets horrible. Typically lightning, thunder, and sometimes rain are involved. I guess afternoon storms are the norm here. So we’ll usually bring the boats in to the shore and hang out at the camp anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours. After the storm has blown over, the lake is usually very smooth again, and the day ends with a great sunset and a calm lake.
The coolest part about all of this is that when we bring the boats in, sometimes us coaches just play in the rain doing stupid stuff like little kids…while we’re on the clock. Like last week we soaped up the trampoline in the rain to see if we could jump up on it and slide all the way across. Then we went to the water and flew a big flat tube (the kind you lay out on to relax on the lake) like a kite. Good times, good times.
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!
Posted by Billy | Posted in Observations | Posted on 27-02-2008
Yesterday I got the wind knocked out of me. It was no big deal, I didn’t think much about it for the rest of the day. Today my back is a little sore from the wakeboard wreck that made me lose my breath for a bit. That got me thinking about some stuff hardly blog-worthy, which is exactly why I’m blogging about it!
As a wakeboarder, I get the wind knocked out of me from time to time. It’s kind of funny when it happens whilst floating in the water. Usually after a hard wreck, I struggle to get my mouth to where I can breath in some air, because I have just exhaled most of it upon impact. When I can’t breath when I get to that point, it’s a pretty unique feeling I suppose. I’m used to it now and just wait it out, but I imagine there are people who can’t remember the last time they had their wind knocked out. I love that phrase. It’s the only time our breath is referred to as wind, neat.
Anyway, I bet most people won’t get the wind knocked out of them 5 times their whole lives. Something I’ve only done once that I remember though, is falling down a flight of stairs. That’s another panic inducing moment. It’s one of the worst feelings because it lasts for what seems to be a very long time, and you feel like you should be able to stop yourself with each bounce, but just can’t stop until eventually you land on the floor. At that moment, your brain catches up to your body and you realize what just happened and wait for the pain to set in.
There’s no real point to this post I guess. I think I just realized that my panic level got much lower with getting my wind knocked out because of the frequency with which it happens. I wonder if other panic situations are similar in that aspect.
Neat, I just found an explanation of what happens when the wind is knocked out of a person. And as we know from Michael Scott, anybody who wants can edit Wikipedia, so we know we are getting the best possible information: Having the wind knocked out of you.
Yogurt with fruit on the bottom is much tastier than the kind already blended together. I had forgotten this over the years, but now I’m back on the fruit on the bottom stuff, woohoo!
