I’ll keep this brief as I’m pretty sick with disgust at the VA Tech happenings. There is absolutely no argument that you can make to me that the right to carry a gun should be a sacred American institution. None. Don’t tell me that if they students in the school had been packing that they could’ve defended themselves (amid the chaos would you really want a terrified eighteen year old deciding who the bad guy is?) Don’t tell me that the second amendment demands it (at the time our forefathers were mostly dealing with single-shot muzzle loaders). There are just too many stupid psychopaths in the world. So, yes, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, or whatever, but a little gun control would make it a heck of a lot harder to make a rash mortal decision.

Great day today. I spent eight hours at work getting paid to get my high ropes certification. Paid to climb around on rock walls and dangle from sling lines! How great is that? Very great, that’s how.

Then…

Surf Report # 28

Location: Grand Haven, MI – North Pier
Time: 5:00 pm- 6:15 pm
Air Temp: 36° F
Water Temp: 35° F
Wind: From NW 16 mph
Waves: 4-7 ft
Gear: 5/3 wetsuit, 5 mm boots, 3 mm gloves, .5 mm hood

Straight from work, I zipped out to Grand Haven. Pulled into the fisherman’s parking lot under cloudy skies and blustery conditions. Waves were ridiculously big (pictures below do no justice), but were super peaky and disorganized. Had a half dozen really fun (if short) rides anyway with a bunch of junk rides thrown in for good measure. Two that stand out: 1. An early ride where I caught the confluence of two enormous waves just as they collided and rode perched on top of the whitewater peak looking down at the ten foot drop between the position of my board and the trough, laughing in the churning maelstrom, but staying upright for a good long ride. And 2. A ride near the end of the session where I rocketed down the face of a similarly large wave, cut back left, then back right before getting absolutely mauled by the wipeout (one of those wipeouts where you’re getting yanked around and upsidedown underwater while your board flails somewhere in the space nearby).

Only stayed an hour and fifteen though as the cold was getting to my loosely protected right hand (dog-punctured glove) and given the violence and temperature of the water I really didn’t want to push my luck too long out by myself. It’s tough not having a surf partner these days.

Let me preface this by saying that those of you living in a warm weather climates are never allowed to complain about the heat. Ever. I don’t care if it’s 130 degrees with 100 percent humidity. I don’t care if your car tires are melting into the pavement and door handles are too hot to touch. Where gunfire is breaking out on the highways in the heat of road rage and your swimming pools are evaporating into the stratosphere.

Ok. Below are pictures from our backyard from about ten days ago. Yes, the lawn is thoroughly dog-destroyed, but hey, the sun is shining, the grass is growing, dogs are rolling on their backs while they play with the neighbor’s pitbull puppy. Also note the section of back fence being propped up by a table.

Fast forward to today. The picture on the left was taken from our front porch right before I went out to play basketball and on the right you can see a view of the backyard including the section of fence now toppled by thirty mph winds.

What the heck? Mid-April. A month into spring we really should not still be getting four/five inches of accumulating snow. The dogs don’t seem to mind too much though. Here’s another picture from the front porch after I got back from basketball and a few shots of the dogs gallivanting (also a few more on Flickr if you’re interested). Only upside, I guess is that maybe (big maybe) if the winds shift to a NW like they are supposed to later tomorrow and the roads are clear enough, it just might mean a trip out to the big lake tomorrow night after work.

Today at basketball I took a full-speed pass off the face from about five feet away. A few minutes later I went horizontal while trying to block a shot and landed awkwardly on my wrist and hip (it’s hard to explain how this happened, so I won’t try). I was also clawed and elbowed multiple times and nearly had my head taken off by another errant point blank pass.

And it was all great.

After the awkward landing, I hopped up and did a little wrist twirl to make sure everything was still intact (it was, though painfully so) and immediately felt happy. Had a little extra skip in the step on the way back down the court. And I know what brought the happiness in spite the already beginning bruising.

It all has to do with the “doryoku”.

I read an article about a week ago in Sports Illustrated about Daisuke Matsuzaka which first introduced me to this term. Basically “doryoku” is a Japanese term meaning unrelenting effort, or maximum effort, or something to that effect and seems to be a concept taken very seriously in Japanese culture, including spilling into sports life. (Sadaharu Oh, 868 career home runs, used to sign his name with the word instead of his name). From what I can gather, a related term, “Gambaru”, seems to be the verb of this concept. I.e., the act of putting out maximum effort. Here’s a bit of additional reading if you’re interested.

Anyway, I like the term and my point is that I think I’m happiest when I’m putting forth unrelenting effort, usually in sport. It’s fun to get smacked around and elbowed and land funny as long as you’re hustling and competing while doing it. The best days are those days when it feels like you’re body really couldn’t have handled much more.

Last week I did my official “removal of the ice scraper from the car for the warm weather” ceremony. Yup, chucked that hunk of plastic right into the back of the coat closet. “No need for you any more this year!”

Last night as I wiped the three inches of snow off of my windshield with my coat sleeve and chiseled the ice away with my finger nails after getting out of work, I couldn’t help but think back on my twelve years of driving and how I always, without fail, regret putting the ice scraper away. No matter how late in the Grand Rapids year. I then drove home in blustery white-out conditions, deftly avoiding huge swaths of black ice as the salt trucks showered my car with chunks of salt.

Seriously…