Wednesday, March 19, 2008

not gonna happen

Well, I was supposed to haul the boat out this weekend and repaint her bottom and clean up the hull, but I found out the yard will be closed on Sunday and that's the day I need to be back in the water and headed back home to my marina. Crap! So now, I will hold out until next weekend when I have more time and the yard will be open longer. I will try and get some good pics of the boat on the hard and the bottom work. Im also getting some vinyl stickers with the name of the boat for both sides. She is to be named "2 Far 2 Drive" and I will go through with the whole shebang of the tradition of naming the boats. After all, I want Posideon and Neptune to look well upon me and always give me gently following seas. Ok, well, I dont want following seas all the time but in general, protecting me would be nice.

Work has been a little crazy. With all the updates and everything going on, the IT dept has been nuts. We have been rolling out new things everyday to try and make the new finance software run much better. We have been employing and utilizing technologies that 3 weeks ago, we had only heard of, now we are running Windows Server 2008 virtualized with Terminal Server rocking out, handling several clients at full speed. We have 2 other virtual servers running Server 2003 and they are acting as terminal servers as well. We have been messing with the terminal server stuff to increase line speed and app response to our remote locations. Needless to say, its been a blast.

I missed some damn good surf today and that kind of sucks. I decided not to go at the last minute when I already had the green light to burn some of my comp time and now Im kind of regretting it. My buddie Charlie which some of you may remember from 3 long years ago (one of the guys I went to Costa Rica with and the guy who introduced me to surfing) went and said it was not as good as the pictures showed. He said the afternoon which was around the time I would have been back to work, was waaaay better with a high tide filling in and the current calming a little. Either way, it was nothing short of glass out there today. Well, this is Texas and its spring time, one of the best and most consistent times to surf here.

Well thats about it. Look out for the pictures of the boat on the hard coming soon. I gotta get her ready for her Freeport trip!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Battle with the Boat

Well, Im about to start placing orders for parts today so I can start getting everything repaired. I have to replace the sheeves at the top of the mast after I broke one and Im doing them all out of a strong desire to not have my halyards (ropes that raise and lower the sails) get caught in the top of the mast again. Its going to to be fun I can say that much. The haul out is scheduled for the last week of march but it might get bumped, we will see.

Work has been a blast. Im still fighting my way through BDD and its just driving me nuts at the moment. Its hard to dedicate a lot of time to it when your manning the help desk as well. I keep getting stop 7B errors which I believe are directly related to HAL incompatibility issues. Hehe, tech talk, sorry.

So for a response to the comment left to my last post, I will delve a little into the "alternative forms of living" question that was asked.

I have been fighting and analyzing the idea of what we do with our lives for the past few years. The whole shebang, Buy a house, buy a car, get married, have kids, pray they do something great, and move on. I believe that there are alternatives to this and avoiding this path is not necesarily a bad thing. After all, it is my life right? I look at many things that are happening in our world. Pollution, Blind consumerism, capitalism, neopolitical movements, globalization and I realize that the innocence of the world is gone or fading very rapidly. We now have access to almost any part of the world, instantly at our fingertips. Almost everyday, weird and obscure languages, perhaps once part of a beautiful and flourishing culture, are dying in favor of the international business language of english. Afterall, to rise from what is considered "poverty", you must beable to speak english to do foriegn business. To hang on to ones roots and cultures is almost a death wish for some peoples.

I try and live on the minimums. At times, I could do a lot better, I think everyone could, but trust me, I dont have a lot. I dont have an iPod, no gaming systems, no new car, no fancy cell phone, none of that mess. My dreams and desires have me living on the minimums, living life and seeing the joys that life and actions, not objects can bring me. Some people relate this to being very religious but thats not my case. I have an understanding that material objects end up in a dump and thats all they do. I have my material comforts, dont get me wrong, but Im very picky when I buy one, I make sure I can maxamize its usage. I traveled through Mexico and Guatemala for 2.5 months, 73 days with a friend, my car, our surfboards, and a tent. We slept in the dirt, in the car, in the tent, often covered in sweat for almost the entire duration. In 73 days of traveling, we slept in a room of some sort for only 10 days. We lived on street tacos, PP&J, cans of tuna, and ramen noodles. We ate good when we wanted to, but we enjoyed our basic foods almost as much so we decided to stick with the basics. We lived among the people and got to know them very well. I found this to be an amazing experience and it has completely changed my ideas about "travel" and "vacations". In Guatemala, we would watch tour buses full of rich Americans come through town as they "window watched", rolling slowly down the streets. They dare not leave the safety and comfort of their airconditioned bus, these Gautemalan's would surely murder them for their money. Its true, I was a victom of an attempted robbery; half of it my fault. I should not have slept there, lying prone under a palapa next to a fire. I should have slept with my machete as I always did, but I chose not to. Perhaps God was teaching me a lesson in faith and just how fragile our bodies are, and how quickly life can be taken from us. That robbery, the stabbing, the punk that got away before Joe could take an arm from him with the machete didnt change a thing about my view on people from other countries, especially Mexico.

My ideas of living now are changing a little. More and more news has come out that supports my idea of living to the max. I believe we as humans have had our time here, but we have betrayed our planet enough and the repercussions arent too far off. Im not talking about Global Warming or any of that political hype crap. I believe we might see a complete ecosystem collapse within our lifetimes if we continue at our rate. Im looking more and more into living "off the grid" and just trying to enjoy whats left of our beautiful world. Sailing is showing me how possible this is. Im working on my next trip, the drawing boards are up, the plans are rolling. Where I will sleep, eat, and visit; Im not sure. However, I do know that it will be an epic trip, either by sail or by van. Im planning at least Mexico, all of Central America, and possibly shipping the car/sailing into south America and exploring through there, especially Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. My strive to see the world, to surf, to live my life not confined to an office is still strong. My spirit has not been crushed while I am doing my time in the 9-5, or 8-6 in this case. It is providing a means to put some long terms plans together for the ultimate escape. My head is still above the water.

Ill post some more pictures of sailing soon.