Day 1

Welcome to my December 2010 trip to Puerto Rico! Starring yours truly as head schemer and Sheena Harvey as the steadfast co-pilot/co-conspirator once again. This trip, like so many of the others the past 3 years, is dedicated to my love of surfing. Surfing is what makes me tick. It makes me feel super grateful to be a living human. It makes me feel alive and well and connected. It’s how I appreciate mother nature and spend time with her. It’s a way to stay in shape, it’s a way to have fun, a way to bond with other like-minded individuals, and it challenges you mentally and physically in such a terrific, thrilling way.

It’s also a way to see the world! You can surf all over the globe. Puerto Rico is one of my favorite spots for a lot of reasons—mainly it is close and affordable and has some of the best waves available. Also, it’s beautiful, the food is great, the weather is epic, and the people are awesome!

This marks my 5^th trip here in just under 2 years. But every time I learn something new, and it’s different because my surfing ability is different with each trip as I progress over time. And being here is a huge part of that progression. How great it is to take what you learn on Florida waves, which, because of their usual imperfections, are more challenging, and apply it to waves with ideal conditions!

We landed at 3am Wednesday morning. Picked up the car my local friends Kathy and Terry Hall left for us at the airport and drove promptly to their rental apartment in Jobos where we are staying. Caught a few hours of shut-eye before it was time to wake up and go on our first surf!

We headed straight to Wilderness, my favorite spot in neighboring town Aguadilla. I was stoked to see a couple of my friends I knew from my last month-long trip were there too. And what a day at Wildo. The waves were so good! About 7-10 feet in size and near-perfect, clean conditions. And, most amazingly, hardly many surfers were out in the lineup! I'd say that's a little bit unusual for PR on a good day. I asked one of the guys why that was and he said, "they're all too tired from surfing so much." Apparently, they've had constant good waves for the last 3 months in PR.

So we paddled out... I was a little timid going from the transition of my home waves of Cocoa Beach to the bigger, more powerful waves here at Wildo, so we started a bit south of the main peak, where the waves are a little smaller and less intimidating. As our session went on, we slowly inched our way over towards the main peak, and thus getting more into the action. It helped when my local friend Masso paddled out and started encouraging me to paddle for the big waves.

One such wave was a gigantic right... I made the drop, and it was not super steep, so I didn't think it was that big of a wave. However, as I made it to the bottom of the wave and went to do a bottom turn, I looked up at the peak and it was WAY up there! Double over my head, which would equal around 10+feet. I rode it just for a few seconds until this huge thing closed out (to the non-surfers that means no more rideable wave, just rumbling wall of white water). At this point I was going so fast and I was trying to stay ahead of the wall of white water... I got the "speed wobbles" and ended up falling and getting steam-rolled! It wasn't too bad, I just relaxed, let the wave have its way with me, and after a few seconds I was able to swim to the surface.

I caught a few more waves, with my last wave being an incredible 7-foot left which was long and steep, giving me enough speed to crank some really good turns all the way down the line.

When you go on a surf trip, all your surf buddies from home say "catch one for me!" So I decided I really would. I’m dedicating that first awesome left to my goofy-foot Team O captain Jessica Stern!

Sheena ended up hitting a little part of the reef on her way out of the water and got a small cut that bled. She was immediately doted over by several of the guys hanging out on the beach, as if she had a serious injury. They brought her paper towels, cut open a fresh aloe leaf, helped her clean it up and made sure she was ok. I love how friendly everyone is at Wilderness. I guess it doesn’t hurt that she’s a cute chick too ;)

I must say the rest of the day was rather uneventful—we had a massive veg-out sesh after surfing. We were tired! We watched TV but both fell asleep and ended up missing our evening surf session. We had an awesome dinner at One-Ten Thai… which is kind of a surfer hang out in Aguadilla and it’s super yummy.

.... onto Day 2... continued in blog 2

my tradition on taking a pic of the JetBlue saying on the plane to/from Puerto Rico... since I kind of have an alter-ego of sorts called "Blue"

at the beach at Wilderness

Sheena, a little cut up

Masso gave us a fresh coconut he cut open

Sheena and her male nurse, Adrian. Actually, he really does work at the hospital...

Eating some passionfruit out of the yard. Kathy and Terry have several fruit trees on their property of every tropical fruit you can imagine!