Monday, September 20, 2010

One in 10 million

I'm laying on the couch in long underwear, drinking my coffee almost the exact opposite of the way I prefer it. The dryer is running, the sun is shining, and the dog doesn't know it but he's going to the vet in about 90 minutes. Five out of the last six weekends have been spent either away or with out-of-town guests, and I do not intend to leave town again for several weeks. I'm enjoying this moment: settling back in to routine.

However, I am proud to announce that I've knocked off several of the things from my 30 Before 30 list:

#22: Ride a wave on a surf board

Over the last weekend before school started, I was in VA Beach with T visiting his family. Even though we usually spend that time catching up with his old high school friends and lazing on the deck with his parents, the weather was unusually perfect and we were unusually motivated to not be lazy. With minimal cajoling on my part, and enthusiastic prodding on the part of his mom, T loaded his old surf board into the car and we drove downtown to his old surf spot.

The water was extremely calm, with almost no waves breaking on the shore. Couple that with my ridiculously poor upper-arm strength, and I never did get up on the board. Even if I had, I probably would've chickened out and dropped before I had a chance to ride a wave, but we'll never know. Ahem. Anyway, what I did get to do was ride a wave in while laying flat on the board. It wasn't how I envisioned riding a wave on a surf board, but I'm still counting my surf lesson with my hot surf instructor as a win for my 30b30 list, because I made it all the way to the shore while clinging to that thing for dear life. I even got the sand in my suit to prove it!

#29: Go to a farm with my mom

Last weekend, my mom and I went to a farm in Red Oak, Virginia. It was a "working" farm, meaning you could help out with the animals and such if you wanted. We didn't. But we did go horseback riding in the backwoods, past fields of wildflowers, old tobacco barns and hidden whisky stills. We did pet goats and donkeys and rabbits and cows. My mom got to wander through a fenced in area full of various poultry - guinea hens, chickens and...more chickens? And we ate an incredible home-cooked dinner of corn on the cob, barbecue chicken, dirty rice, dill green beans, squash with onions and salad. Not to mention the sweet tea. Precious, precious sweet tea. And we sat on the front porch of the farm house in rocking chairs, looking out over the fields where bulls sat in bits of tree shade swatting flies with their ears. I had a great time hanging out with my mom, and she had a great time being around her "people" (animals). I'm really glad we got to share that experience.

#16: Go fishing

And then this past weekend, T & I had to go back down to VA Beach. (Long story.) While we were there, I requested demanded that we go fishing. Outside the odd outing with an ex-boyfriend or old high school pal, I haven't been fishing since I was a little kid and my grandpa would take us out to the lake by our family's cabin in the Shenandoah mountains. Sometimes we went up to PA to fish with my dad's cousin, who was a skilled fly fisherman and taught me how to string a line.

I'll be honest. The most tantalizing part of the fishing experience, to me, was getting to sit for a couple of hours in a lawn chair, drinking beers and reading in the sun. T gathered up all his family's old fishing gear from the garage, and we set off to a nearby fishing pier that claims to be the longest pier in the Atlantic. (Don't they all claim that, though?) A few dollars and a bag of bloodworms later, we were set up on our own little piece of the pier, with our Yuengling cans, New Yorker magazines and fishing rods cast deep into the Atlantic.

Less than five minutes after we arrived, a guy came over to give us his left-over bait (another bag of bloodworms, a can of nightcrawlers and a box of squid). T caught a croaker in the first hour, and I fretted over whether to toss him back as I bought a bag of ice for the bucket and tried to ignore his death throes. A leathery old man walked up to T as I was hooking a bloodworm and exclaimed, "You're letting her bait your line?!" to which T shrugged, "She insisted" and I turned around to defend myself, "I can bait my own line!" The seaman laughed, cigarette dangling from his lips, and told T, "Hang on to this one. She's one in ten million!"

That may be so, but I never caught a fish :) And to tell the truth, I'm kind of glad.

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