Friday, April 15, 2011

Lucas and Aaron go to Mexico

A short story:

In 2004 I moved to Washington, DC after finishing college In Florida. I was an intermediate windsurfer: I could plane in the footstraps, I was getting my waterstarts dialed and I had survived a jibe or two. I sent out an email to the Baltimore Area Boardsailing Association listserve introducing myself and asking "does anyone windsurf around here? Where and when?"

Lucas sent me an email saying, "I'm about the same level as you and I live in the same town of Falls Church, we should probably go windsurfing together." We set a date for the following Saturday and drove to the Belle Haven Marina, which is located on the Potomac River a few miles south of Alexandria, VA. We pulled up to the Marina at exactly the same time, got out of our cars and eyed each other quizzically.

We both were driving 1997 Volkswagen Golf 4-door GL's. We both had these big wide boards strapped to the top of our compact cars. We were around the same age and we both were starving to get on the water. We paid the 5 dollar launching fee and made our way down to the dock to get out there.

It was immediate and obvious that Lucas and I would become great friends. We spent the next few years getting probably less than 10 sessions a year around DC with its light and fickle winds. We would take vacations down to Hatteras and escape for weekends in the Dewey Beach area. We would get maybe 25 sessions a year at the most and it was hard to make drastic improvements in our sailing. He got me into whitewater kayaking for a season, then I picked up and moved to the Bay Area. Eventually we both agreed that windsurfing is way more fun. I'm working on getting him to move out this direction.

Lucas is getting married this summer to an awesome girl (who has been learning to windsurf ?!). She's planing and harnessing like a champ, I think her waterstarts are soon coming as well. He asked me to be in the wedding party so of course the first thing that came to my mind was "BACHELOR PARTY!!!" But it's neither Lucas' or my style to hang out at strip clubs blowing money on lap dances and $10 beers. Instead, we're going to Punta San Carlos for a week of surfing, windsurfing and living like cavemen.

Kevin and Juan are joining us. I'm bringing many, many cameras. Hopefully I'll have a couple things to throw up on the blog when it's all over with.

1 comment:

Sergey Menshikov said...

"I was an intermediate windsurfer" - congrats, dude!