In the Loop

I thought I would do something different today. A very brief insight into our lives, an update if you will on things that have been happening:

• My wife is now 28 weeks pregnant with a baby girl. The pinkness which was always confined to my wife’s cupboard has started to mushroom in other parts of the house. I will need to keep an eye on this!
• My business which has focussed on management consulting for the last year will continue to do so but will also include a new twist. My partner and I are going to venture into some new and unknown territories as we pursue some opportunities which have presented themselves recently.
• Tweety, the old yellow Ford F100 that I am busy rebuilding is still looking old and sad despite 8 months of work. I have realised that I need to take more interest and get seriously involved in the creative aspects of her renewal otherwise she will always be a dog! Now that I have my mind around the artistic license required, I am keen to do more.
• The book I was writing lies within the depths of my computer, untouched. On the positive side, my mental book plan has changed again, and I really think I have an awesome angle. Excuses need to stop and words needs to be written...
• I still cannot drop in on my halfpipe (sorry, my children’s halfpipe)! All in good time...
• My surfing has come on in leaps and bounds mainly due to the halfpipe. Having a standing wave in the garden will do that for one!
• The new highlight in my boys lives are the judo lessons on a Monday and Wednesday evening. The lessons cause untold excitement and energy to explode into being. The three of us are doing it together and I hope that the end result is an increase in discipline.
• Our little stream in our garden is back to being a stream after the intense rain a couple of weeks back. I heard yesterday that our area last received that much rain about 60 years ago.

Life is good. Too good in fact. I feel guilty that I don’t do more to add value to all of the lives that surround us!

Old Stories Retold

A neighbour asked me to scan some old photographs of her mother as part of a collage that she was creating. After whipping them on the scanner and pulling them into Photoshop, they all received a hefty working over to make them presentable again. My learning curve with regard to retouching old damaged photographs was astronomical and yet I am just scratching the surface.

The reason this is all so exciting is because two albums filled with my grandfathers World War II pictures recently fell into my lap. Many of the pictures need lots of love and care, which all takes much precious time. I had been frightened to start, but now am thoroughly inspired.

Take a look at this picture, a postcard from the war. I am fascinated by the amount of detail, clarity, and sharpness in a photograph taken by somebody 70 years ago without any incredible digital interventions. Imagine getting this right in a war zone in the rain with big heavy equipment. And it tells a such an incredible story...

Better than Heaven and Hell

Talk to me about going on an adventure and I will sign up on the spot. There is nothing quite like exploring the unexplored and the associated excitement. Mix an adventure with lots of surfboards, wax, and cold water mountains and you will see me frothing at the mouth!

I slept little on Saturday night in anticipation of the early morning surfing safari. 5am in the middle of winter is dark and cold, but minor issues like that are solved with carrots and a beanie. 4 mates climbed into a double cab, unlimited free diesel, 9 surfboards, 8 bottles of water, 5 bananas, 4 strange looking Taiwanese energy drinks, 3 cameras, 2 litres of Coke, a bad Roxette CD, and more than sufficient adrenaline climbed in with us.

Two and a half hours of driving saw us laughing ourselves silly, mainly due to the complexities of the male bonding routine. In other words, get together, have fun! Just past Shelly Point, we found Heaven, a gigantic heaving mass of cold Atlantic water. It looked like an incredible wave but required massive amounts of hard work to get even close to the action. We watched carefully as a local paddled out. 15 minutes later he was still valiantly fighting the invisible forces of the ocean with a long way to go. Heaven would just have to wait!

As luck would have it, Hell was just around the corner. It was just as big as heaven but required up to date insurance policies and a close relative specialised in orthopaedics. We watched in rapture as they huge waves thundered onto a reef just below the surface. There could be no mercy for anyone getting this wave wrong. Perhaps not even for those getting it right!! Hell would have to wait too.

Some locals lead us to a spot near Hell called Pastures. A great wave that provided us with hours of joy! Eventually, I stumbled out of the surf with most of my body parts numb and unfeeling, including a smile, physically frozen in place. Could the life of a surfer get any better?

Next stop was to be the legendary Elands Bay, reputably the most perfect left hand break in South Africa, the jewel of our adventure. An hour further up the West coast revealed a tumultuous, wind blown, maelstrom of chaos. EBay was closed for business! The dictionary of local surf was hastily consulted to solve this adventure dilemma.

(Picture by Stevo, our photog)

With fresh tears glistening in the sand, we retreated back to Pastures, where we passed a couple more hours of enjoyable wave sculpture. With weary limbs and a complete reliance on power steering, we were homeward bound.

It was a great adventure made truly memorable by the amazing waves that we had the privilege of taming. The success of the day had nothing to do with waves though. Instead it was all about the shared adventure. But deeper than that it was about four men shedding their defences and really bonding on a level that was meaningful.

It was a remarkably powerful experience for me and something that I think all men should regularly do. Not necessarily putting yourself at the mercy of the sea but spending time on an adventure, no matter how silly it may be. I feel absolutely revitalised, ready to kick my life up a gear!

Unemployed and Willing

A heap of poles in an ugly pile of rubbish, long ones and short. Wet, slimy, and dripping the autumn leaves that have coated them over the last couple of months. A truck load of sand looked on, preferring to be smoothed over the sloping ground but happy to be a pile. Everything just waiting...

For us!!! The jungle gym team...

Yup, building jungle gyms again! But this one was slightly different. We worked really really hard! OK, that not be why this one was different.

Building jungle gyms in poor areas generally results in people asking me for a job. It is kind of difficult to hire in help when you yourself are doing the job for nothing. Trust me, everyone who asks, finds this a difficult thing to believe, that anyone would willingly work for nothing. After the digging of 6 deep holes, a youngster sauntered up to the fence and asked the ‘can you give me a job’ question. I gave the usual answer together with the usual challenge that he was welcome to help for the day. For Nothing!

For the first time ever, this chap said OK he would work for nothing. We were flabbergasted and confirmed many times that we would not be paying for his services. 21 year old Bongani just smiled and said he may learn something and that would be good. He worked like a Trojan and without his help; we would never have finished the job.

In the end the jungle gym looked great but it was Bongani who really made me think. You have to wonder at the desperation that makes a 21 year old unemployed youth take on a non paying hard working job for a day just so that he may learn some skills. Simple skills like using a hacksaw and adjustable wrenches. That must be tough! He still lives with his mother who is a domestic worker for a family in town. She supports him and a younger brother and sister.

It was a window into life in one of the poorer areas of South Africa and it was not pretty. I happily paid the chap for his services, much to his surprise, knowing that I got more out of working with him that he could ever imagine.

Perhaps a small lesson here is that so many of us are filled with all sorts of skills and that sharing those skills could really make a big difference in other people’s lives!

Belted in and Fuming

I remembered something today. It was an incident on a plane. There are always incidents on planes but this one was a little humbling, and deeply buried within my psyche. Which probably explains it’s surfacing about four or five weeks after the event!

I climbed aboard this particular flight, found my seat, and gladly settled myself for the last of a three flight homeward trip. A woman sat down a couple of seats away, which was unremarkable, apart from the deep chesty coughing fit she was having. She must have coughed up half a lung in the next few minutes. I sat there thinking, brilliant, smoked herself silly, and now the rest of us have to suffer. Can she not get herself under control? I must admit that I got rather irritated and annoyed!

Eventually after frightening most of the passengers, a flight attendant asked her if she was OK. He then fetched a bottle of water. And guess what, it seemed to do the trick.

So simple, yet not one of us morons sitting on the plane gave a moment’s thought to the poor woman unable to breathe. Instead it was all about us and the dire irritation she was causing.

That flight attendant is my new hero. With a dumpy bottle of mineral water he thoroughly quenched my always do good attitude, by actually doing some good!

My new challenge to self, turn irritations into opportunities to assist, instead of self indulgent blame.

Fathers and sons

Saturday found my mom, Luke and I hiking in the mountains near our home. We chatted along the way and Luke surprised me with some of his technical knowledge about the weathering of rocks. Something that we had discussed almost two years previously on another adventure. I was amazed that he had taken that information in and that it had stuck.

On our way down the mountain, Luke kept slipping on the loose stones. His slip sliding approach was mainly as a result of his inexperience, choosing the wrong places to step, moving his weight at the wrong times, etc.

My first instinct was to explain all of these technical details to him, so that he could immediately get it right. And then an epiphany struck! I keep trying to pass on my life’s experience, knowledge, and wisdom to my children and expect them to take it all in and be perfect from then on. Strangely, it just does not work that way. Besides the fact that I am not perfect either!

I got to thinking about my role as a father. Surely it is not for me to be the perfect know it all, but rather the gentle guide. I imagine that there is time for both roles, but my focus should be on the latter. Unfortunately, in my bid to give as much as possible to my children, I have spent far too much as the information dispenser. I certainly did not learn everything from my parents. Much of my learning has been from experience, surely I need to provide those opportunities to my children and let them learn in a safe environment. Surely they don’t need to hear me droning on all of the time...

So Luke and I took a winter swim in an icy mountain pool, well beyond chilly, but far more important than another information sharing session!

Extra, Extra

My 1956 Ford F100 has been sent in for a complete electrical rewire. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of agreeing the electrics with the man responsible for the piece of work. I can tell you that it was an exciting visit! Once the electrics are complete, we will be able to start the engine and drive the car, albeit whilst balanced on a bread crate!! Then we will be able to see what else needs to be fixed before moving on to the last stage, the interior upgrade. At long last, I can see some light with regard to this car...

The sea was also perfect yesterday, large swell without a breath of wind. Conditions unheard of here but resulting in beautiful smooth rolling waves. I could not help myself, those waves just lured me in! I had a fantastic surf and pulled off my first ever radical top turn. A tight turn at the very top of the wave, where the fins break free of the water. For any surfer out there, this is a non event, but it has been a hard long learning curve for me! For the first time in many years, I felt like a real surfer and not a fraud!

What a brilliant day, I even cracked some amazing work! And the weekend is still to come....

FIghting Fit

My sons and I embarked on a rather ambitious adventure last night. Although, I must admit it was only I that found it ambitious. My sons think they have discovered utopia!

We went off to the local Judoka in order to join our first Judo class together. The boys absolutely loved it, almost 2 hours of exercises, fighting, wresting, and loads of incredible throws.

It has been more than 23 years since I last set foot on a Judo mat. Some things came back to me, things that had been ingrained in my being from the many years of my youth spent practising this art. Then, I was pretty good at Judo. Last night though, I was well and truly humbled!

I did discover that my fitness level is fantastic and I still have loads of my flexibility. This morning my body aches and I have some most spectacular bruises to show for my effort.

My wife is more than a little concerned... I feel challenged!