Day 1 part 2

A day of firsts...

Today I am the proud owner of my first beater!! I bought the "Beach

Bomb" for just a few hundred dollars... and it's worth every dime. I can't believe I own 2 cars, and that one of them is in PR. I aim to hang on to the Beach Bomb--a 1986 Mitsubishi SPACE WAGON--for as long as it's ticking, to have a vehicle when I travel to PR in the years to come.

This morning, I met up with friends Kathy and Terry Hall, who sold me the wagon. They have a super cool property on top of the cliff that overlooks Jobos Beach. Their property is cool because they have almost every tropical fruit tree you can imagine, along with several other vegetables, herbs, flowers, etc.

Left, picking tangerines, mmm. Right, papaya tree.

Side note: there's a huge mango tree outside my place...just about another few weeks and they should be ripe!

I was expecting the Beach Bomb to be a beater, and fully prepared to handle not having AC, but could not tolerate it when at first it

seemed as if the Bomb had no music source whatsoever. I started asking Terry all about what it would take to get a radio/new speakers/etc put in, and we started tinkering with the wagon. Terry happened to have a couple speakers on hand, so we replaced them. It was fun to help him, I love electronics stuff and taking things apart! We also got the radio to work so that now I can use my FM transmitter to play MP3s. Pretty rudimentary soundsystem, but it works and I'm fully stoked!

Next I talked to my buddy Tom Luker about the surf that day. Tom is a really cool dude that Sheena and I met on our December trip to PR. He's in his 60s and surfs every day. He moved to PR from New Jersey 20 years ago--just picked up his life and went for it, and hasn't left since. He was a big inspiration to me when I was thinking about coming down here for an extended stay. Every day, he wakes up before the sun and checks all the spots, so he is the best source for "where to go."

He tells me Wilderness or Wishing Wells is the call, and I'm all too happy with that call. Wildo is my favorite! To get there, you have to drive through a golf course which is up on the cliffs, and down to the water below, via some treacherous dirt roads. It's a very beautiful, wild-looking spot (hence the name), and the break is terrific. It's known for its "gentle giants."

Well, today, they were giant alright, but I'm not sure if I would call them "gentle." The surf reports were calling for 5-7 foot, but I've gotta tell ya that was not the reality! It's funny how in Cocoa Beach, it seems the reports always OVERestimate wave size, while in Aguadilla, the reports seem to always UNDERestimate size. I guess a lot of the waves were 7ft, but there were plenty of plus sets. I saw a few that had to be getting close to double overhead.

This shot taken with my iPhone from very far away, then cropped. I need to invest in a good camera that can take surf pics, stat!

I was a little intimidated, but I ran into a friend who had just gotten done surfing and encouraged me to go paddle out. So I did. The paddle out was not hard in the right spot. I had some friends of friends in the line up too, which made it so I wasn't really surfing alone, which was very good.

Anyway, long story short, it was super fun but I did pass up a few waves due to intimidation factor. There was even this one enormous set that came through, almost catching a lot of us on the inside. For those of you who don't surf, just think, huge wave crashing directly on top of you because you're not far enough out in the ocean. I managed to duck dive these just in time and escape but I tell you I have never felt adrenaline like that from almost getting caught. After that set passed, everyone was kind of looking around to make sure everyone else made it through. Some of the guys were looking over at me and I acted like I was completely calm and cool, even though I could hardly breathe and my heart felt like it was about to shoot through my chest! Hahaha

I did however, catch the biggest wave I think I've ever caught in my life!! It was one of those waves where you make the drop into it and you go airborne--not once, but twice--on the way down. There was some automatic voice in my head that had to pipe up and tell me "don't freak out" as I was making this crazy drop. So I didn't, and I rode this crazy wave...I was so astonished that I couldn't even turn, I just shot straight down the line, hauling ass. This wave was WELL over my head, by at least four feet. Talk about adrenaline. After that wave I said to myself, "OK I'm done!!" It was awesome but it was about all I could take at that point!

I took a while to chill on the beach at Wilderness watching everyone surf before taking off. As I looked around, I was taken with the beauty of my surroundings and the awesomeness of the surf. I remembered why it was I wanted to come here in the first place: it's simply a slice of heaven.

Left, surfer paddling out at Wildo, and lots of spectators on beach today.

Right, happy Wildo lab!

Anyway, time to sleep so I can surf in the morning bright and early with good ol' Tom Luker. Goodnight!