Alaias seem to be all over the place these days. Check out this article from today’s New York Times:
Ancient Surfboard Style Is Finding New Devotees by JAMIE BRISICK
Water, Water Everywhere And Not A Drop To Drink
Hijinks On The High Seas… And Beyond
Author Archives: Casey Butler Harwood
Thanksgiving Weekend: Better Than A High School Reunion
I have it on good authority that Thanksgiving Eve is a pretty widely celebrated event (unlike Sunday Funday – Hello, Jersey!) but I think beach people do it up right. We’ve got boardwalk bars and theoretically, no bennies to behold, as it is not appropriate wife beater-donning weather. You and everyone you wish you went to high school with go out and get merry. Then, to your parents’ dismay and/or relief, you crash on someone’s couch and end up at home just in time for an absurdly early dinner feast. Or at least that’s how it “should” be. This year on Thanksgiving Eve, I slept in my own bed, and spent the [hangover-free] next day baking apple pie. Seaside hardly saw any of the familiar faces, let alone the used-to-be-familiar ones, who usually show up on this venerated bar night. Maybe we can blame the economy. Or the fact that we’re beginning to grow up?
On Saturday, I celebrated two of my friends’ birthdays with dinner and a party, which definitely made up for a lackluster Wednesday. Just about everyone I missed on T.E. was there. As I scanned the room full of good-looking guests, I realized that the couch looked like a scene from 1080 Snowboarding: 4 or 5 guys with scruffy facial hair and beanies lounged with beer cans resting on their Billabong-clad knees. These guys have lived in Hawaii and Costa Rica and talk of returning, and oddly enough, dreaming of traveling to these paradises made me feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
The morning after:
Blown-over sand dunes = forced rule breaking (if you want to access the beach).
Ship Shape Part 2: RUNNING
I’m also not really a runner. Are you sensing a pattern here? I like to swim and ride my bike, sheesh! I don’t have a bicycle here because the idea of riding on the same streets as these crazy taxi drivers scares the scheiße out of me. And swimming is a venture yet to come, as soon as I purchase a non-bikini and figure out exactly why the Palladium pool intimidates me so much.
Anyway, despite the fact that I was on the high school track team, running has never been one of my strong points. My knees get sore, I wheeze, I get bored and start counting or repeating nonsense phrases in my head… it’s not pretty. Nonetheless, I believe that running is one of the most complete workouts and, hey, maybe it’s time running and I resolved our differences.
As it turns out, I’m not the worst runner, and I can even run farther than 2 miles. Astonishingly. All it takes is odd people to ogle and the promise of coffee at the next block to draw me along. Who knew?
Ship Shape Part 1: YOGA
Part of my mission as a surf-thirsty city-dweller is to stay in shape. Surfing is one of the few things capable of motivating me to exercise, so, fittingly for this site, I try to think about how each workout I do will affect my surfing.
I’m not a complete yoga neophyte, but I’m definitely not one of those people who do yoga twice a week, or even once every two weeks… well, you know what, I’ve done it before, let’s leave it at that. The point is, I hear that it’s good for surfers, and I decided that as part of my “training” (heh. I use that word extremely loosely) I would give this bendy thing another shot.
I’m not sure what I expected, exactly, from Yoga To The People, but after being buzzed into what felt like someone’s apartment building and spying the yoga room with lovely, calming hardwood floors and tranquil exposed brick, I thought, This shouldn’t be too bad. I paid $2 to rent a mat, set it out in uncomfortably close proximity to everyone around me, and before I knew it, I was sweating my ass off (literally, I hope). By the end of the 60-minute class, all of these little, forgotten muscles felt utterly exhausted. The next day, I’m almost as sore as that time I was crushed by a giant Australian. Each and every muscle in my body hurts, which I’ll take as an excellent sign. I plan to make this a semi-regular thing (at least once a month), so I’ll let you know how it affects my surfing, er, sometime soon, I hope.
Oh, P.S., did I mention it’s practically free?
Mucho Gusto
I love this city. You know that “center of the universe complex” that people talk about? Yeah, I’ve got it. I moved here 2.5 months ago, from New Jersey (I’ll take no shit for that, thank you very much). Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon period, but New York has brunch with all-you-can-drink beer, an abundance of art, falafel on every corner, millions of beautiful, intellectual people… so in short, it’s a Utopia. Except for one thing: I am going through withdrawals. As I said, it’s ironic because Manhattan is surrounded by water, and the ocean really isn’t that far away… if you happen to own a hovercraft. Most of us city surfers (and especially the grad students like myself, who are seriously lacking in both free time and funds) need to take planes, trains, and auto-mo-busses to access an actual beach, which generally takes about an hour. So here I’m going to document the ventures, adventures, and misadventures of an oceanophile stranded in the city, along with anything else I find even remotely relevant or interesting.
Water, Water Everywhere And Not A Drop To Drink 