hello world. I'm just chilling in my office chair on a Sunday afternoon right now. Rafa just walked in and offered me a beer, but its too early in the day for me right now if you can believe it. OK, I just caved in. He asked me again and I said yeah the second time. I guess he knows me well. And yeah its Sunday.
I'm logged in to last.fm right now (by the way I suggest that you check out last.fm if you haven't, its awesome internet radio customized to what you like) I typed in "Boogie Down Productions" and am now listening to a combination of ("thank you Rafa. Salud" he just brought me an ice-cold Imperial and YES its Sunday!), anyways I'm listening to a combination of KRS-One, Eric B. & Rakim, EPMD, really old school hip hop. The beginnings of it all. Very chill.
Yesterday we listened to Radio Dos all day long in the truck (I'll tell you about that surf trip later), 99.5 FM, Costa Rica's gringo radio station aimed at the retired ex-pat, was the station with the least static, and of course this is Larry's favorite radio station ever. He can't help himself and despite repeated requests to keep his grubby paws off of the volume knob or scanner button, he's all over the radio. I am amazed by his ability to name every artist though. In the car yesterday I decided that if I was ever on that show where you get a lifeline and if I ever get a question having to do with crap 70s and 80s music, I'm calling Larry up before I even hear the question. He probably relived a few high school anthems from early 1980s Torrence during yesterday's drive, but I did catch myself singing "Take These Broken Wings" somewhere outside Samara. We surfed for Larry's mother yesterday, celebrating five years since she passed away from cancer. It was a beautiful day of driving through the Guanacaste countryside and surfing great waves, I'm sure she would have loved the music too.
On Saturday March 14th, near the peak of the big 4-day south swell we received last week, George Chatzopoulos drowned while surfing in El Salvador. George was the brother of Katie Chatzopoulos, a past WRSC guest. A lot of us at the camp dedicated the next day's surf session to him. Surfing takes people from you sometimes, and it is sad.
Without family where would we be? We'd have a lot more free time to be much more irresponsible, that's where. I'm happy I have kids, it helps keep me in check. I love my my family, I am totally stoked.
Here I am giving Otis a bath.
And here I am with Happy, playing with our Christmas antlers. In our house its always Christmas, or until we finally get around to take the tree down.
I got home from California and Holly showed me this video she took of the boys dancing to Bob Marley. Happy isn't yet 14 months old and he's fully walking, trying to jump, getting knocked around by his big brother a lot but definitely standing up for himself. He has no fear, while Otis is quite cautious. Its going to be fun watching them grow up together.
Its getting easier all of the time for me to be a parent, I'm finding more and more time to chill out with my kids. I wake up somewhere between 6 and 630am each morning because Happy wakes up early. Otis and Holly sleep in longer, Happy and I chill in the tv room and watch channel 73. I check the surf, stretch, play with Happy and his toys, check out the news, drink a coffee, chill on the deck with Happy looking at birds or sometimes monkeys right above us. Lately we have had this random group of cows showing up around dawn each morning and eating the WRSC flowers. I find myself downstairs in my boxers at 6am chasing off cattle, a pretty funny sight for the hotel guests I'm sure.
Otis officially started preschool on Thursday March 12th. By Monday March 16th Otis had officially completed preschool. Holly realized how much time she had been spending setting up her new organic market, to a point where she and I are both working every day and she wasn't spending the time she wanted to spend with the boys, so she pulled him out of school after only two days. Its tough to have a part time job doing something you're passionate about, trust me I know. I wish I didn't have to work as much as I'd spend more time hanging out with my family (when I wasn't writing stupid blogs of course)
DIRECTIONS TO PARADISE:
Last weekend and this weekend have been all about surf touring on the Nicoya Peninsula, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Even if you flew down here and rented a car with a GPS and had some really good maps, I'm pretty sure you'd still get lost. If you know where this sign is, you're less than half an hour away from a really good left point break that was going off last weekend. Larry and I surfed by ourselves with overhead 150 meter lefts to ourselves. It was out of a movie, just dizzying.
Here we surfed another left point break that only breaks on big south swells. I'm pretty sure that if you go searching up into the Gulf of Nicoya you'll be surprised at what you find.
A local beach-cantina owner hooking Larry and I up with cold beers and plenty of rice and shrimp.
Lots of river crossings.
WRSC stickers are also good for vehicle repairs when your truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
The Nicoya Peninsula is special to me in the way that California is special to me. Maybe it has something to do with that whole before / after mindset, after having lived in both places for long periods of time. I was worried for a long time that Costa Rica was changing too quickly, but now that the world is in a full-on recession I'm quite certain I have quite a few more years to chill out and enjoy the countryside.
Yet another sheltered cove along the Nicoya Peninsula. I have been calling this place my home for over 8 years now, maybe you can see why? All of this plus really good waves.
I'm riding my new 5'9 Hynson Black Knight Quad I got from Boardworks, its seeming to be working out quite well. I'm still figuring out my footing and waiting on an order of traction pads we just made for the surf shop. I figure that a traction pad on this fish will help me rip like Sean Mattison... at least I could wish for that.
I am shipping a container from LA to Costa Rica at the end of this month. If you want a surfboard(s) please tell me which boards you want so I can give you a price and tell you when I will have them here.
Yesterday Larry and I took the 3 interns on a day trip through Camaronal, Nosara and Marbella. I figured it was about time they saw something outside of Tamarindo. I was amazed that Cory and Reggie can go down the line on head high waves after only surfing for 6 weeks. Tommy is lagging a little bit, probably because he's super tall and missed a couple of weeks with that whole appendix removal thingy. It takes Tommy 12 beers to get drunk, so being 6'8 has it's advantages too. This photo reminds me that I'm pretty sure an internship at Witch's Rock Surf Camp is the best way to learn hands-on about running a business while having a good time. If you're serious and willing to work hard in exchange for learning about business and how to surf, email me. Our next internship starts on May 1st, 2009.
Now today, Sunday, after great waves yesterday while Tamarindo was flat, after tons of bad 80s music with the Larry sing-along, and after ingesting about a pound of dust, everyone is chilling back in Tamarindo. Holly held her Pura Vida Health organic market yesterday and again today and is about to close up shop. I'm taking some cucumbers to the eyes with Otis in hopes of soothing the burn. Lots of sun and salt water day after day. I think I should check in with an eye doctor just to make sure I don't have any permanent damage.
My parents just flew down to WRSC last night. A week from today Otis turns 3. We're planning on turning the old boat in front of WRSC into a pirate ship for the birthday party as well as building a swing set for Otis and Happy on the property next to WRSC. There have been some canons going off outside and a tope (horse parade) is now passing in front of WRSC. Here's Chilo, our boat captain, cruising by on a horse. Reality: you'd never see a parade of drunk ticos on horses with canons in front of an Economy Rent a Car in America.
I wish it was football season, I could use a Charger game right about now.
Ahhh... there I was, only a week ago, surfing my favorite little reef whilst sporting my Rodney Harrison Chargers jersey circa 2003 . Warm water, offshore winds, definitely good times I like to experience as much as I can. I guess I was itching to revisit my home state of California though. As any surfer will tell you, nothing compares to going on a surf trip, especially a surf trip to Cali. I had been watching the buoys off of the west coast of the US for two weeks when the surf dropped in Guanacaste and the swell was forecasted to get big off of the northwest coast of the US. It was then that I booked a last-minute ticket and hit the road. The day before I left was pretty chill. I took my family out to a big breakfast in Brasilito at the Happy Snapper with James and his family. Taking a 1 year old and a 3 year old out to a restaurant can be synonymous with hell, and it wasn't long before both kids were screaming and destroying the place. It won't be long before my kids are all grown up, time goes by so fast it seems, so I just wanted to hang with the family a bit before I left on my trip. I feel like I've been connecting with baby Happy more and more, he digs on me and I dig him. He is really special, already walking now and now he's starting to say his first words. Whenever I leave on a trip I worry that I'm going to miss something big in his young life. I am so stoked to finally get back to my family last night, they are truly the best thing that ever happened to me.
SUNDAY March 1st So, I flew to Los Angeles Sunday afternoon. My friend John Alexander picked me up at LAX. He was driving the infamous Uncle Rico van and I was overly excited about it. Uncle Rico is one hell of a great van. 1985 Chevy V8 with an ugly fiberglass roof extension. It is the same van that Uncle Rico drove in Napoleon Dynamite, except its brown instead of orange. For anyone who has waited outside of LAX to get picked up, you'll know that most of the people getting picked up are getting picked up by friends and family members driving new SUVs, rich sports cars, high-end everythings. And then came Uncle Rico. John and I immediately hit the road and headed due west to El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, in a holding pattern for my good friend Justin who lives in Venice Beach. Justin was bringing my wetsuit and surfboards as well as a thousand WRSC stickers. We were chilling out in front of his house for what seemed like forever, Justin and Paige were driving back from San Diego to LA and 2 or 3 hours later than they had said they'd get up there. I barely snuck in through his doggie door and found his weed, which was lucky. By the time they got home John and I were putting together a jigsaw puzzle. We got my gear, chilled a bit, hit the road after 9pm and drove north, deciding to spend the night in Oxnard. We pulled into a Walmart parking lot.
MONDAY March 2nd In case you didn't know, Walmart is a great spot to crash for the night. I've done it a few dozen times in my life, though maybe I've slept in my car a bit more than you have. We cruised down to C-Street in Ventura and got some fun waves. This was the first time I had put on a wetsuit in a couple of months, fortunately it was a 4/3 and I had some booties too. The swell hadn't really started to hit yet, it was only waist to chest high, but surfing C-Street was cool in itself. It ended up being my favorite spot on the trip. After surf, we cruised through Ventura. I'd never really hung out in this town, I thought it was pretty mellow. I'd only surfed in Ventura at the harbor once during a contest in college, its kindof like LA "north" but at the same time quite toned down and relaxed. Its a strange combination of old meeting new, old school style surfing seems to be pretty big here and I like Ventura for that. I wanted to stop by the Walden shop but they were closed. Then I went and found the Wetsand surf shop on the strip. I had spoken to Chuck, the owner of the Wetsand shop, on the phone once before and sent a couple of emails about giving wetsand.com the webcam feed. When I showed up at the shop I found Chuck and said hi. One of his employees said he was busy, but then he wandered out onto the floor. Unfortunately he thought I was there to sell him something and proceeded to tell me that he had sold wetsand.com last year and wasn't interested. I got strange vibes from the guy and was a bit let down when I sensed no aloha spirit whatsoever. Surfers are a traveling bunch, if you surf and you meet a fellow surfer, there should be some immediate connection between you. Something along the lines of "if you're ever in tamarindo look me up" and "if you're ever in Ventura lets go surf" kind of thing. I felt none of this from Chuck, sad to say. Maybe he was having a bad day (it was a Monday morning), but we definitely weren't. After yet another breakfast burrito and plenty of WRSC sticker tagging, we took off for the Pismo Beach area and scored a great sunset surf at the Saint Andrews reef. There were sea otters in the lineup and plenty of kelp, reminding me I was in great white shark territory. It wasn't crowded though, and the wave was setting up nicely over the reef and throwing some really nice right bowls. No barrels, but tons of fast drops and nice shoulders.
TUESDAY March 3rd We spent the night at John's house, his family is great. I lasted about ten minutes before falling asleep watching some new tv show I'll never get to see in Costa Rica. When we woke up we went back to the Saint Andrews spot but it had turned to junk. The swell had picked up but it had gotten stormy and onshore, still a beautiful day though. The weather reports showed that Santa Cruz was in the middle of a nasty storm so instead of continuing north we turned back south. The waves wouldn't be as big but they would be much cleaner. Even though I grew up in California I never realized how many right point breaks there are. As we got further south the winds cleaned up, it got sunny, and the waves started to look good everywhere we went. Here was an empty beachbreak south of Campus Point in Santa Barbara, breaking pretty nice. We scored Rincon at about chest to head high, really clean but a bit crowded. Its such a good wave, though on every wave you have everyone down the line watching you surf, just hoping you fall so they can take off on you. Tons of fun waves and we surfed for hours. No water back in the van because we're idiots, we were totally dehydrated and just Pacificos in the fridge. Lots of WRSC stickers found their way onto trash cans and street signs in the Rincon parking lot, then we drove back up to Carpinteria where we spent the rest of the afternoon riding John's kids' rip sticks, these two-wheeled skateboards that are really fun to ride. I skated for HOURS, probably because the one paved road I have in Tamarindo has cars driving so fast that skating on it would be a death wish. We found a brewery, I can't remember the name but the beer was good and we drank plenty of it. We camped in the van in a neighborhood on the side of the road, falling asleep watching One California Day, a new surf movie. its pretty good. John snored all night long which really sucked, next time I'm taking ear plugs. It was like a band saw cutting through metal. It made me want to hold a pillow over his face but that would have been rude.
WEDNESDAY March 4th I woke up to find that we had been parked in front of a middle school. Two dudes sleeping in a shady van parked in front of a middle school overnight probably wouldn't go over well once school opened so we split at daybreak. We drove past Rincon but it was onshore, the storm had moved south. We went back to Ventura, pulling back into the C-street parking lot to find onshore winds but still some waves. We decided to wait for the tide to drop (ended up hanging out there all day in the parking lot) The view from the van, watching the waves, chilling out making pancakes and eggs and coffee. Some of the best things in life are free. The fishes, waiting patiently to go surf. Finally, the tide dropped and the wind died. The waves got really fun. We surfed for 3 hours, until I couldn't surf anymore without eating something. After food it was all about the rip sticks in the C-street parking lot and putting up stickers everywhere. I met a ton of surfers, most of which already knew about our surf camp. Hopefully this trip will create some new guests as I spread the surf camp gospel. By mid afternoon we were on the road driving to San Diego. We met my parents for some dinner and beers, then back to the house I grew up in to play some Shaun White Snowboarding on the PS3 and then it was sleepy time.
THURSDAY March 5th Somewhere around this time I was told by my staff that there had been incredible winds in town and that the Kahiki restaurant, and the entire Iguana Surf rancho and attached shops for that matter, had burned to the ground. It was a pretty big fire, I included a couple of pics below.
What a bummer. In the week I was gone from Tamarindo a few strange things happened, or maybe they just seemed strange because I wasn't here like I normally am. Meanwhile, in San Diego on this morning we ended up at Fletcher's Cove in Solana Beach and found some great shoulder to head high waves with hardly anyone out, probably because of the fatal great white shark attack that happened here last summer. After surf came another burrito and more tagging with WRSC stickers in the parking lot. I guess you could stop reading by now, because basically all I did on this trip was surf, eat burritos, put up stickers and sleep in my van.
But, if you're still reading, here you go: That night we went to PB and ate dinner at the same restaurant I met my wife in, Fred's Mexican Cafe on Garnet Ave. John and I had way too many drinks, somehow I didn't realize that it was Cinco de Fred's which means they hand out shots and charge basically nothing for huge beers and margaritas. It was this night that I got into a fight with the chicken for giving me a bad coupon.
FRIDAY March 6th After drinking way more than we should and deciding it unwise to drive, we spent the night in the van at the top of Mt Soledad with a nice view of downtown. In the morning I spotted the largest raccoon I'd ever seen, it was the size of a dog, probably because it was eating rich peoples shit out of their garbage. I'm surprised nobody had called the cops on two hoodlums in an Uncle Rico van on the side of the road in the richest neighborhood in SD. We took off when it got light, before 6am, it was freezing and our wetsuits were totally wet. We surfed Scripps, it was decent but the worst day of the week for me (maybe because the waves had been really good every day before and this day was only average). Afterwards I made arrangements to stop by the Boardworks shop in Encinitas to meet my friend Sean Mattison and hook up John with a new Hynson Black Knight Quad surfboard. Here's Sean ripping on one of them.
I got to Boardworks and met up with Sean as well as Phil who runs Boardworks, I'd met Phil a couple of times at the surf expos in Florida and always told him how much I dug their boards. Sean helped design the Hynson BK Quad for Boardworks, I had just met Sean a couple of weeks earlier in Tamarindo when he was down here helping run the surf contest we just had. We hit it off, probably because I totally respect the guy for how much he rips. He and Phil decided to make me a team rider for Boardworks and hooked me up with a 5'9 Hynson BK Quad. I now ride for Boardworks. It took me only 15 years of surfing to get sponsored. Here I am with Phil on the left and Sean on the right. Lets make this blog the official announcement, the Hynson BK quads are the real deal. I will still continue to finish my shaping room and I will be making custom polyurethane boards on-site at the camp, but I'll be carrying a full line of Boardworks boards for rent and for sale. Hynson, KG, Steward, Ben Aipa, too many to name really. I got back to CR last night and this morning I had the new board waxed and was surfing Casitas. I'm happy to say that I was totally stoked with how it performed. I was worried that maybe a 5'9 was too short, but really there wasn't a bad difference from my 6'0 fish, only good things like being more responsive and snappier. STOKED
As far as the rest of the trip, John took off after he got his own board, a 6'6 Hyson BK Quad. We chilled in the van on the side of the Boardworks shop for another hour or so and skated in the street, watching the waves and hoping the wind would switch or die. It didn't. I tagged more street signs with WRSC stickers. John took off with the Uncle Rico van back north. Saturday was more surf, then some shopping for gifts for my two awesome kids. A lot of other things happened during the week, too much to bore you with in this blog. I had a great trip. I always have a great trip. Life is one great trip. Since I live above my own business and am always on-call here, its nice to be on the road, appearing homeless, chilling, surfing, drinking 40s in beach parking lots like a bum, talking to random people, tagging stickers everywhere, hanging with my parents, hanging with my friends, road tripping, joking, laughing, missing my family, being happy to come home. 7 days was just what the doctor ordered. pura vida - joe
here we go again - Joe rambles, mostly about surfing, for 4 pages without spell check, paragraphs, or any good sense of the english language whatsoeve
I must have done something really nice to Continental Airlines, as practically every time I fly I'm getting these mysto upgrades to 1st class. I'm a cheapskate by nature, literally buying Imperials over mixed drinks when I go out in town and haggling over a couple bucks when buying trinkets for my kids from the local vendors in town. I'd haggle if it was $2 or $200 or $2000, I guess thats how one gets ahead in business, or at least one way to do it. I found a $600 ticket to California and somehow I'm sitting in seat 1B somewhere over Belize or Mexico and I'm thinking about how I've just embarked on another surf adventure and how I'm truly stoked. My staff think its funny that I plan trips but wait until the last minute to actually buy my ticket and go. To me it makes no sense to leave Tamarindo when the waves are going off and while California is windy and lacking swell. Last Thursday the surf started to drop in Tamarindo and the swell models started forecasting the waves to arrive to Cali from the big storms that have been formed in the north pac for the last week or so. Me, with my commitment issues, finally bought a ticket on Friday and here I am, on my way to surf big waves in cold water, the endless winter. The decent sized NW swell should be coming in tonight. My buddy John Alexander will be picking me up in LA in Uncle Rico's van and we're hitting the road for a week of California surf. I had a thousand Witch's Rock Surf Camp stickers sent to my parent's house, my dad sent them, a couple of boards, my 4/3 suit w/ booties and hood, a cell phone and some other random necessities with Justin McCabe back to LA, I'll be seeing him in Venice Beach this afternoon and then heading north after perhaps a PM surf if theres waves or just chilling out with old friends for a couple of hours. I'm not quite sure where we're going first, I need to check the surf report once I get to LA, but it looks like we'll go north to Big Sur or perhaps even Santa Cruz and then follow the swell as it travels south back to San Diego. I'm getting amped and making sure to listen to plenty of punk music to get me in the mood for surfing in FREEZING NorCal water the Hives : Here_We_Go_Again.mp3 I'm pretty tired from the last couple of months and I could use a few days to get lost sleeping in a van down by the river, surfing and hanging out with good friends. The stickers will find their way onto beach parking lot signs, all of my friends' cars, 7-11s and public bathroom mirrors. Somehow I know I'll #1 run into some random friends #2 promote the surf camp as the best thing since sliced bread and #3 have an opportunity to refocus and make a plan for the future. I find it very helpful, quite therapeutic, to disappear from time to time and reflect on whats happening in life. Life is complicated, complicated in a very good way. I'm very lucky to have the ability to get up and go, but then I remember that everyone has the ability to do such things. Surfing doesn't cost very much, sleeping in your van is pretty much free. Gas is a lot cheaper than it used to be and its fun to camp and cook instead of spending cash on motel rooms or Cracker Barrel. Just surfing. Surfing at Pleasure Point and Moss Landing, surfing in Big Sur, Rincon and Ventura, surfing in San Clemente, Trestles, Oceanside and ending up at Blacks in SD. My accountant says I can write all of this off by the way, how sweet is that? I don't think I brought enough warm clothes though...
For anyone reading this blog living on the California coast and surfing the swell this week, ping me and tell me if your local break is going off. We'll probably be close by anyways and if so we'll come check it out, surf it up with you, tag the place with stickers, hot box the van, then tag your car with stickers and give you some more to do with as you wish. Help keep the dream alive through roots guerrilla marketing and plenty of good vibes.
The surf in the Tamarindo area has been pretty excellent up until the last couple of days. The contest we hosted was held in the Tamarindo Rivermouth with solid chest high to overhead conditions, offshore winds, and big barrels. It was pretty SICK. i was going to do this whole write-up about the event and highlight some of the 400 photos that we took, especially the ones of Luis getting the multi-second tube rides that won him the contest. But then again the surf was so good I was out there most of the time when I wasn't working. The sand bars are set up really nice right now out in front of WRSC and getting tubed has been like playing Transworld Surf on the PS2. Here are only a couple of pics that we posted on the surf report, giving you a slight idea of how good the waves were during the event. The rivermouth was reeling for about 10 days. I'll make sure to get more pics online as part of the next WRSC newsletter, which I swear is going to get sent out soon, maybe even while I'm in CA. Its been a couple of weeks since I blogged, a lot has happened. Its always a blur, and I'm always meaning to write things down more but that never seems to happen. I had some friends from college Chad Butler and the Foreman brothers hang out in town. They started the band Switchfoot back in college and have made it pretty big-time, touring the world and playing big shows. They flew in from a concert in Guatamala City. Ricardo took them out to Witch's and Ollie's where they scored some great waves, but you couldn't get me away from Tamarindo with how good it had been locally so I didn't surf with them. We hung out at the camp one night, then the next day I was taking Holly and the boys up the Tamarindo estuary on the boat w/ Chilo to check out some wildlife during a sunset and John Foreman and his wife Emily were chilling out in the restaurant, so they decided to cruise along too. We chilled and checked out birds with my boys. John and I were talking about college. He dropped out of UCSD after 3 years to tour full time, up until then we had been focusing on the same ICAM music major, which is pretty much summed up as a digital music degree. I on the other hand finished UCSD but haven't used my music degree or film degree at all except when I mention that I went to college, thats about it. All of the surfing I did kept me going down the path into the surfing industry, and don't get me wrong I'm really happy about it. I guess its pretty common to not do anything related to your college degree, or to not really even need a college degree to do what you were going to end up doing anyways. Its pretty cool that we could chill on the boat and talk about how we'd both kind of made it in our own ways. I am appreciative of my situation, as I view the world economy as being pretty bad and still I'm able to support my family through surfing. It is hard to describe the feeling of doing what you really love as your career, I hope everyone can experience it in their life. Holly and her business partner Andrea officially launched their new organic market Pura Vida Health last weekend. Holly has been talking about doing this for years, and finally now she has the free time to actually do it. It seems like she has been pregnant for the last three years straight but I know that can't be, it just seems that way. Lately she has spent quite a few days on the phone with local farmers, then traveling around Guanacaste picking up everything from fresh Talapia to organic yogurt to goat milk to goat cheese. Maybe that yogurt was goat yogurt. That makes me realize I have a lot of goat products in my fridge these days, hmmm thats actually a little weird now that I think about it. There is an organic market that has been going on every weekend in Nosara for the last two years, and now Holly and Andrea hooked up with them and they're going to start in Tamarindo in two weeks. Pura Vida Health will be hosting the event every Saturday on the side lot next to the surf camp hotel in our gardens, with the idea to fix the drain along the street soon to create more parking as the event grows over time. Tons of produce, fruits and vegetables, all grown locally and without toxic pesticides. For those that don't know, we started a company about 3 years ago called Zephyr Eco (www.zephyrecoproject.com) and will soon start construction of a fully sustainable Eco Lodge built off grid and from sustainable materials. Part of the project is an organic farm and nursery that will eventually supply the on-site restaurant with all of it's produce. The plan would be to also provide WRSC with much of it's needed produce from the same farm, integrating better products into our menu. I'm hoping to learn a lot about farming in the near future. The rainy season is about to start so it seems like a pretty good time to get started planting seeds. OK California, get ready because here I come. I can see Los Angeles from the airplane window and the stewardess keeps telling me that I need to turn off all of my portable eletrical devices. I'm wondering why I don't take last minute trips like this more often. Oh wait I do, because I have commitment issues. Wait, is that what I meant to say?
