I got my car inspected this morning.  No hubbub or anything.  Scott, my boss, was very cool about it.  He’s usually pretty understanding about extra-curricular activities, as long as work is getting done.  And speaking of that, I think I might do some work tonight to get a head start on tomorrow.  I’m taking a half-day tomorrow.

I’m kind of excited about that.  Amanda and I are heading to Topsail Beach, which isn’t far, but it’s time for her family’s annual Memorial Day weekend there.  Her grandparents rent a beach house (two of them now) and we stay there until Monday.  I’m not entirely sure why I’m looking forward to it so much right now, but I am.

Maybe it’s because Ben and Jessica Lambeth are coming down to stay with us.  I expect that’s part of it.  There’s also the fact that work has been so tough lately, it’ll be nice to get away.  I’m also buying my first surfboard tomorrow.

Well, that’s not entirely true- it’ll be my second.  Ali was my first, but I never rode her.  She was given to me by Charlie Bowsher, who happened to have one and gave it to me when he heard I was learning to surf.  She was a bit dinged up and couldn’t go in the water without some repair, and I never got around to getting her repaired.  On top of that, it’s an extremely retro board, and Coach Barry said that riding something like that now would set me back a bit, just because I’ve learned on newer, more modern and better boards.  So she’s getting me a little bit of credit at Surf City.

So tomorrow I’m picking up a 7’2″ NSP.  Amanda called Hot Wax before I could and they told her they had three 7’2″ boards.  One was a Surf Betty and two were not.  One was blue and one was green.  Since I’m used to the blue NSPs I decided to go with the green to be different.  I was trying to think of names for it this evening.  I called and had them reserve it for me, but if they have both the blue and the green ones tomorrow, I might choose the blue.  I haven’t decided what I like better or which I will like better.

After work today I went out to surf.  I met Michael out there and grabbed one of the two Surf Betty boards Barry got for Kirsten.  I checked with her first to see if she was cool not only with me riding it, but also taking it out for its maiden voyage.  She didn’t care, so I grabbed Little B (what I’m calling the 7’2″ Betty for now- the old one will be Old Betty and the other one Barry got for Kirsten, a 7’6″, will be Big Betty) and Michael and I went on out.  I waxed her up and headed on out.

The waves weren’t very good for a while.  They were about waist high I guss, but they broke with no power behind them.  I did catch a pretty good one early one and was able to turn pretty well with Little B.  For the record, the reason I used Little B was so I could make sure I’d be comfortable with a 7’2″ surfboard.  I was, and I really enjoyed it, because after Mike “Lars” Bocaljon came out, then Theo came out, it got pretty good and fun.  Barry was out there for a little while, but I didn’t see him much because the rip current was deceptively strong and kept pulling us down the beach.

But yeah, later on it got really fun.  There was decent push to the waves, although I just let a number of them catch me, but all of us were catching waves and having a good time.

I had a couple near-mishaps.  On the first one I had just poked my head out of the water, pushes my hair out of  my face and wiped the water away from my eyes when I see a giant yellow board flying right at me.  Michael had wiped out and the Banana was coming straight for me.  It reminded me of that part in Live Free or Die Hard when the car is flying at Bruce Wilis and he ducks, only to be saved by the car hitting to other cars on either side of him.  I threw my arms up over my head, took a quick breath then ducked for a few seconds.  Nothing happened, although Lars said he saw the whole thing and it looked pretty funny.  It gave me a bit of an adrenaline rush.

Another time, Michael and I both caught a wave and were riding it side by side when he lost it and his the Banana shot up like it was going to go over Little B’s deck.  I was able to just push it away with my hand, which somehow seemed kind of cool.  Very wax on-wax off.

Theo left after a bit and the Mikes and I surfed until it was pretty dark.  We went in finally after each catching a few “one more” waves.  We packed up the Banana so we can take it to Topsail this weekend for Michael to use then Barry showed me how to strap it to the top of the car.  (Michael’s riding with us and we need something to take the Banana and my new board.)

I got home to where Amanda was meeting with a woman who wanted to sell us a $2000 air filter/vacuum cleaner.  Amanda hadn’t wanted to meet with her, but the person who set up the meeting was really persistent, and Amanda seemed to be having a nice time talking to the lady when I called her.  She was still there when I got home but they were just about done.

We didn’t buy it, for the record.  Amanda was really impressed with its cleaning power though.

I showed Amanda a thread on the message board.  There’s so much to it that I don’t feel like really going into it now, but I was called condescending by a friend for saying that I pray for non-believers.  That hurt my feelings a little bit.

After Amanda went to bed I played a couple games of Catan with Michael.  He won the first game and I won the second one, although I think we both came in second when the other one won.  The computer AI was on hard.

Zach Dotsey