My New-Found Latin Temperament

Most days here are a bit of an adventure, and today was no exception.

First off, we had a power cut for most of the day, which meant that I couldn't use the computer or do any work, so 'forcing' me to go to the beach to windsurf - after all it was windy and what else could I do ? :)

However, I hadn't factored in one aspect of the lack of electric juice - and that was the small matter of our garage door being electrically operated - and guess where the car was ? :(

No worries - we'll get on our bikes and head downwind and down the hill to Playa Sur, and forget about the inevitable uphill pedal back into a stiff headwind after a good days windsurfing.

It has actually been reasonably windy for the past five days, but the forecast for Tuesday has been looking especially good for a while. I went for a 4.7m on my Tabou DaCurve 85 and Nikki was on a 4.2m on our RRD WaveCult 77.

I had a quite superb session up at the harbor wall ... the first twenty minutes I had the break all to myself, nicely powered up on my favorite size sail and getting more and more happy with the board each time i sail it. The waves were a lot of fun - about head high, so too small to do much damage, but just big enough to give you (well at least me anyway) a reasonable rush when I got on one. The nice thing now is that I'm on a fairly steep learning curve re cracking the onshore dtl wave riding and making real progress. Also my port tack jumping is finally coming together with the legs being re-programmed to forget their previous starboard tack life in shingle land.

Eventually I was too knackered to be learning much and several kites had turned up to pinch all the waves, so I headed back downwind to the beach (this part of the session is a wonderful broad reach down large rolling swell and is always an enjoyable trip back).

Still feeling stoked (apologies for the 'dude speak'), I put my gear down and walked up the beach. As I did so, I noticed that there was a geezer playing with one of those stunt kite thingies - whizzing around with full power right in the middle of the launch spot, but also in the firing line of all the sun bathing families with kids playing on the beach.

Just then there was a loud BANG, and I turned round to find that said geezer had landed his kite full speed into my beached sail and board. Needless to say I was not amused, in fact i would go as far as to say that I was actually quite angry (and those of you who know me, will probably agree that I'm usually mild mannered to the point of being a bit bland :)

Anyway, perhaps because of Nikki's recent incident with a wayward kite nearly strangling her (see the post above), I saw red (in a mild mannered English kind of way), and proceeded to bundle up the kite, wrapping the lines around it furiously and walking back towards said geezer, who still had a firm grasp on the handles.

When we met up it was a spaghetti western kind of showdown. He thrust his chest at me and did his best to remember some obscenities in the universal language - of course I had the advantage there, it being my mother tongue :) I pointed out that I was in fact bigger than him, and would he please bugger off and fly his kite somewhere else.

Anyway, I just mention this because I rather think that I'm becoming a bit more Latin in my temperament here. Only the previous night a big dog had tried to kill Basil, our small (but thinks he's much bigger) terrorist terrier, and I went mildly berserk (in my very limited Spanish) to it's owner.

And the other day, when a delivery man demanded two hundred euros from me before he would let me have the computer that I had waited three weeks for (and had paid through the nose delivery, VAT etc for in the UK), again i saw red, and mentioned that we should perhaps call the police to sort it out (a very, very, bad idea !).

This is a new side to my personality, and I haven't had time to decide if it's a good or a bad thing (but I suspect the latter).

Luckily the rest of the day gave me ample opportunity to give vent to this new found Latin machismo in a less worrying way. The wind picked up so much that I was absolutely maxed out on our 4.2m, and in those conditions it's intense sailing with a heavy metal / punk / hip-hop soundtrack playing in my head.

So yes, another day on The Reef, another adventure, and a good time was had by all (except perhaps by one disappointed man-with-a-kite :)