Surfing, Fishing, and Reality

We made it home safely from Kitty Hawk, NC late Friday night and reported to MMS first thing Saturday morning for an organizational open house that ran through Sunday evening. The open house went really well. Vacation was nice.

As far as surfing...I was able to pull my wetsuit on to flounder around in the ocean on my surfboard in less than ideal, stormy conditions...only to wash up on the beach a few minutes later without successfully riding any waves. By the time I hobbled back to the car I thought I would have to call the EMT squad to cut me out of my wetsuit, throw me on the gurney, plug me into the oxygen bottle, and haul me off to the ER to reconstruct all the muscles in my upper body...I could barely move and hadn't experienced that level of exhaustion any time in recent memory...and the pains just grew worse over the next few days. It wasn't exactly how I'd imagined things playing out.

But I was able to do a bit of fishing with Cameron and Joelle. For a guy that used to play on three or four softball teams at a time and who could spend hours upon hours in the ocean carving up waves...waiting for an indifferent fish to take the bait and pedaling my bicycle short distances have become the hallmarks of my physical abilities.

Here are a couple pictures of us fishing at the private pond. It's not very big and they stock it with fish. Not exactly something to base an adventure movie on...but it was VERY exciting teaching Joelle how to fish and giving Cameron his second annual fishing lesson. Now, he can not only pick the lures he wants to use, but also cast the lures with my spinning reel without any help. That was really cool.

Cameron inspects Joelle's first fish.

Joelle's fish.

Cameron and "Uncle" Keith on vacation, fishing at the pond.