I have this yellow hat. its a flexifit hat made by the skate clothing company Think. It is probably my favorite hat in the world, and I own may hats. I can't remember where I bought that hat, or when I got it. I think I got it just before I joined the army, but didn't have it in my possession until I moved to Germany. the hat has been on every major field mission and every deployment I've been on. It has been through hell. The hat has lost all elasticity in the flexifit part of it and has been repaired by my stitching it tighter with regular thread every now and again. the underside of the bill has been marked up by my drawing and doodles in everything from markers to pencils. In places the hat has began to unravel and leave stray threads from various places all over the hat. The bill is curved into an extreme roll that has been curved and rolled so many times its stuck that way. In places you can see the plastic bill stabilizer coming through the yellow material.
One of my friends has told me its was very easy to pick me out in a crowded bar in Germany because I was wearing my yellow hat. It got me to thinking. Everyone has a yellow hat. This statement alone has gotten me laughed at. I'm not trying to be deep. I hate that term. I'm trying to speak in metaphors. its different.
My Yellow Hat set me apart from lots of different people in Germany. It made it easy for friends to pick me out in a crowd. My yellow Hat was an outward expression of individuality. So when i say what is your yellow hat, I obviously don't mean you need a bright lemon yellow hat. What i mean is what sets you apart from everyone else? what makes you special? How do friends pick you out in a crowd?
What is your Yellow hat?
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
De-Hydration
I grew up close to the ocean. Well, not geographically close...
The suburban town I grew up in was about an hour's drive on any given SoCal freeway. Not being a driver myself, getting to the beach was difficult. I have always loved the ocean. I like to tell people that in order to teach me to swim my father threw me into the ocean and hoped the best for me. In reality I took swimming lessons at the high school pool during the summer.
I recall several trips to the beach with my family growing up, especially a few when we went we drove all the way to Oxnard when my father worked in the area. Were the waves that much bigger when I was a kid? I remember watching in horror at giant walls of water rushing towards me as I tried to paddle into the wave to body surf. The last time I went to a real beach (a few years ago) the waves weren't half that size I remember.
I don't recall what gave me the bug to become a surfer. It might have been those early trips to the beach where I actually saw a surfer once, maybe it was the beach boys, maybe it was a clip from a movie sometime. I'm not really sure. What I do know is that I had no direct influence with actual surfing. I was too poor to own my own surfboard. Hell, we didn't even own a boogie board. The closest thing to surfing was learning to body surf at beaches at Venice, Balboa, Corona del Mar(when there is even waves there) and Huntington Beach, CA. I do remember the first time I bought a SURFER magazine.
It was a trip with some kids from Church to Perris Lake, CA for a week camping at the lake. It was so hot the magazine didn't last because the glue int he binding came apart. The whole week we were there, I kept looking at the pictures int he magazine. reading the articles from front to back. It was a special photo edition that took pictures from the early days of surfing in Southern California and reproduced them using surfers and places from the mid-nineties. I remember not caring who all the new photos were of. Those old black and whites of places like Waimea bay, Malibu, Windansea, and people like Bruce Brown, Robert August, and my favorite surfer Gregg Noll held my attention until the magazine was just a stack of crackling paper. When i am stressed out, i have only to buy an issue of SURFER, or LONGBOARD magazine and i can relax. I have been having dreams of surfing for as long as i can remember since.
I remember asking my parents for a surfboard. the response was
"you don't know how to surf."
"How can I learn if I don't have one? how about surfing lessons?"
" you don't have a surf board."
To this day I recall this conversation and the frustration with my parents about it. I didn't own my own surfboard until I was 23.
The first time I went surfing was in Maneandero, Mexico at a church mission trip with the youth minister's son Travis(who I later joined the army with). the waves looked good, coming off of a point into a large bay that produced endless perfect peaks and broke into soft sand dollars along the bottom. The waves didn't have enough power to carry a person on a shortboard, but for Longbaords it was more than perfect. I have never set foot on a shortboard ever since.
Fast forward to some time around 2002. I was stationed in Germany, in one of the most beautiful towns i have ever been in Heidelberg. I was feeling much like I am now. Very dehydrated. I looked to the Internet for surf reports, surf cams from home. I often kept these streaming cameras open on my computer desktop at work to have some sense of peace. I went nuts on amazon.com one day and ordered every DVD of Bruce Brown from his first videos he showed in theaters with live sound to Endless Summer II. I watched them until my DVD player burned out. even today I rarely watch any surfing video that was made after 1970(Endless Summer II and Longboard videos excluded).
When i got deployed for the Start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, being stuck in the middle of a giant desert with perfect beach sand made my "De-hydration" only that more prevalent. Eager to cash in on the "soldier deployed, care package" craze, i wrote to several places requesting things for me and my fellow soldiers. Toes on the Nose sent us towels that I posed in font of Saddam International Airport just after we moved into Terminal C gate 27 as my home for a few weeks. I took my first real shower and had had a plush red hibiscus toes on the nose towel to dry off with. it was glorious. Later, in a rolled up ball, it served as a perfect pillow.
As soon as we starting getting reliable Internet services, the money from being deployed for so long started to burn a hole in my pocket. I went to Robert August.com and bought my first surfboard. A nine foot, Wingnut Lonboard from Endless Summer II. It was about eight months later, when I went home from Iraq following my father's heart attack that I got to go to Hunting ton Beach and get in the water for the first time in years with a surfboard.
The waves were crap. a beach break of four feet, breaking crashing into an inch of water. I didn't care, For all i knew I was at Waimea bay and surfing crystal blue waters on a warm summer day. That was nearly four years ago.
Since then, my Surfboards have been sitting on my back porch in the board bag to avoid yellowing and damage. its gathering dust mostly. Trips to Dewey and Rehoboth Beach in Delaware(the closest thing to me) are no good because even there, with a decent river mouth, there's no waves to speak of, even some good slop to bounce around in would be nice. But alas, nothing.
Recently, in talks with my Girlfriend, seems we will be taking an early summer vacation this summer to visit her Parents in Hawaii. Nothing could be more perfect for what has been feeling like a major spell of dehydration. My skin is dry and splitting, my lips feel chapped way too often, trips to a swimming pool cause me to close my eyes and submerge myself and pretend i am somewhere tropical at the beach.
The suburban town I grew up in was about an hour's drive on any given SoCal freeway. Not being a driver myself, getting to the beach was difficult. I have always loved the ocean. I like to tell people that in order to teach me to swim my father threw me into the ocean and hoped the best for me. In reality I took swimming lessons at the high school pool during the summer.
I recall several trips to the beach with my family growing up, especially a few when we went we drove all the way to Oxnard when my father worked in the area. Were the waves that much bigger when I was a kid? I remember watching in horror at giant walls of water rushing towards me as I tried to paddle into the wave to body surf. The last time I went to a real beach (a few years ago) the waves weren't half that size I remember.
I don't recall what gave me the bug to become a surfer. It might have been those early trips to the beach where I actually saw a surfer once, maybe it was the beach boys, maybe it was a clip from a movie sometime. I'm not really sure. What I do know is that I had no direct influence with actual surfing. I was too poor to own my own surfboard. Hell, we didn't even own a boogie board. The closest thing to surfing was learning to body surf at beaches at Venice, Balboa, Corona del Mar(when there is even waves there) and Huntington Beach, CA. I do remember the first time I bought a SURFER magazine.
It was a trip with some kids from Church to Perris Lake, CA for a week camping at the lake. It was so hot the magazine didn't last because the glue int he binding came apart. The whole week we were there, I kept looking at the pictures int he magazine. reading the articles from front to back. It was a special photo edition that took pictures from the early days of surfing in Southern California and reproduced them using surfers and places from the mid-nineties. I remember not caring who all the new photos were of. Those old black and whites of places like Waimea bay, Malibu, Windansea, and people like Bruce Brown, Robert August, and my favorite surfer Gregg Noll held my attention until the magazine was just a stack of crackling paper. When i am stressed out, i have only to buy an issue of SURFER, or LONGBOARD magazine and i can relax. I have been having dreams of surfing for as long as i can remember since.
I remember asking my parents for a surfboard. the response was
"you don't know how to surf."
"How can I learn if I don't have one? how about surfing lessons?"
" you don't have a surf board."
To this day I recall this conversation and the frustration with my parents about it. I didn't own my own surfboard until I was 23.
The first time I went surfing was in Maneandero, Mexico at a church mission trip with the youth minister's son Travis(who I later joined the army with). the waves looked good, coming off of a point into a large bay that produced endless perfect peaks and broke into soft sand dollars along the bottom. The waves didn't have enough power to carry a person on a shortboard, but for Longbaords it was more than perfect. I have never set foot on a shortboard ever since.
Fast forward to some time around 2002. I was stationed in Germany, in one of the most beautiful towns i have ever been in Heidelberg. I was feeling much like I am now. Very dehydrated. I looked to the Internet for surf reports, surf cams from home. I often kept these streaming cameras open on my computer desktop at work to have some sense of peace. I went nuts on amazon.com one day and ordered every DVD of Bruce Brown from his first videos he showed in theaters with live sound to Endless Summer II. I watched them until my DVD player burned out. even today I rarely watch any surfing video that was made after 1970(Endless Summer II and Longboard videos excluded).
When i got deployed for the Start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, being stuck in the middle of a giant desert with perfect beach sand made my "De-hydration" only that more prevalent. Eager to cash in on the "soldier deployed, care package" craze, i wrote to several places requesting things for me and my fellow soldiers. Toes on the Nose sent us towels that I posed in font of Saddam International Airport just after we moved into Terminal C gate 27 as my home for a few weeks. I took my first real shower and had had a plush red hibiscus toes on the nose towel to dry off with. it was glorious. Later, in a rolled up ball, it served as a perfect pillow.
As soon as we starting getting reliable Internet services, the money from being deployed for so long started to burn a hole in my pocket. I went to Robert August.com and bought my first surfboard. A nine foot, Wingnut Lonboard from Endless Summer II. It was about eight months later, when I went home from Iraq following my father's heart attack that I got to go to Hunting ton Beach and get in the water for the first time in years with a surfboard.
The waves were crap. a beach break of four feet, breaking crashing into an inch of water. I didn't care, For all i knew I was at Waimea bay and surfing crystal blue waters on a warm summer day. That was nearly four years ago.
Since then, my Surfboards have been sitting on my back porch in the board bag to avoid yellowing and damage. its gathering dust mostly. Trips to Dewey and Rehoboth Beach in Delaware(the closest thing to me) are no good because even there, with a decent river mouth, there's no waves to speak of, even some good slop to bounce around in would be nice. But alas, nothing.
Recently, in talks with my Girlfriend, seems we will be taking an early summer vacation this summer to visit her Parents in Hawaii. Nothing could be more perfect for what has been feeling like a major spell of dehydration. My skin is dry and splitting, my lips feel chapped way too often, trips to a swimming pool cause me to close my eyes and submerge myself and pretend i am somewhere tropical at the beach.
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