Updated forcast for the morning. Even bigger…

Friday
Northwest gales to 35 knots decreasing to 30 knots in the late morning and afternoon. Blowing snow in the morning. Snow showers in the morning…then numerous snow showers in the afternoon. Waves 12 to 16 feet subsiding to 6 to 10 feet.

Crazy. I guess we’ll find out in the morning if it’s even worth making the trip out. By the that I mean if it’s even posible to make the trip (road conditions) and if it looks safe enough. Crazy.

Let me just say that I love Nike commercials. It’s almost a given that I’ll enjoy any new Nike commercial. Not that I necessarily love the company or even the product they produce, just the commercials. It’s just so easy to get inspired by some peppy ethereal music and shots of an athlete training like there’s no tomorrow. It works for me at least.

Nike broke their usual mold just a little with their latest ad when they tossed in some AC/DC as the backdrop. I think it works though and here’s why. It’s not the lyrics…

Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution

Hey there, all you middle men
Throw away your fancy clothes
And while you’re out there sittin’ on a fence
So get off your ass and come down here
‘Cause rock ‘n’ roll ain’t no riddle man
To me it makes good, good sense

Good sense
Ow
Oooh yeah

…because it would certainly be a stretch to say that they have anything to day with athletics or the pursuit of physical fitness. And I don’t think it’s overtly the way the music makes you feel (say, if you heard the song without the images). So here it is. It’s the pace of the song and the way it mirrors dragging yourself out of bed and plunging into exercise. It starts slow, almost reluctantly, picks up the pace, picks up the pace some more, then boom, go go go.

I guess I don’t know why exactly this would be inspiring, but I suppose it helps you picture athletes cranking up their day even when you feel like doing the opposite. I think anyone who’s ever done the early morning training thing at least will definitely identify.

Anyway, I looked around on the Internet trying to find the extended 60 second version of this commercial for download and couldn’t find it anywhere (I like the way the ocean swell rolls through in the surfer scene in the long version and I think the build up is more effective) but couldn’t find the commercial even for viewing anywhere but nikeair.com. Long story short, I eventually gave up and just made my own copy of the commercial. So here it is for download if anyone’s interested. The commercial is called Awake.

Download Nike Awake Commercial – WMV format – 3.63 mb (zipped)

Storm’s a brewing outside. The dogs are not pleased. They’ve been cooped up all day and are now rampaging around the livingroom. Nora’s been chasing Taylor around for the past twenty minutes, biting her ankles and jowls.

We had thunder and lightning this morning and have a pretty steady freezing rain right now. I’ve been watching the surf cams and weather reports, waiting for the wind to shift to a W or NW or WNW, whatever, just not an East. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen before dark. Bummer. That’s okay though, I guess, because tomorrow morning’s wave forecast looks huge and so far is predicted to carry over into Saturday. I’m going to try to get out both days if possible.

Friday
Northwest winds to 30 knots decreasing to 15 to 25 knots in the late morning and afternoon. Mostly cloudy with scattered snow showers. Waves 9 to 13 feet subsiding to 4 to 7 feet in the afternoon. (wunderground.com)

Jordan made it down to Corpus Christi last night, arriving to eighty degree weather. I was jealous enough that I spent about three hours this afternoon applying for jobs in national parks that I have no chance of getting. I could be a forestry technician near San Diego, right?

Surf Report # 12

Location: Grand Haven, MI – North Pier
Time: 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Air Temp: 28° F
Water Temp: 34° F
Wind: From W 10-14 mph
Waves: 3-5 feet
Gear: 5/3 wetsuit, 5 mm boots, 3 mm gloves, .5 mm hood

Holy crow! What a great session! My sources claim that the water was 36 degrees, but as I dodged ice bergs near the shore I’m willing to wager it was a tad colder. The air certainly was under the freezing mark. Ever spent an hour and a half in near freezing water? I have and I can tell you that removing your gloves after this is a might difficult. Especially when you have ice caked on the outside of your fingers. Also had a nice layer of ice on the bill of my hood and a chunk of ice dangling from some exposed bangs. Funny stuff. One of those days that I didn’t mind the feeling of numbness all over though.

Took about ten minutes after I entered the lake to warm up the water inside my wetsuit and after that everything was reasonably toasty other than my fingers (I really need to invest in some nice thick lobster claws). Waves were super fun and I think it had to do with surfing near the pier rather than farther down the beach at North Shore (maybe more trapped water pushing toward shore?). It just felt like the waves had more oompf today. Felt comfortable catching most of the stuff I went for and probably had three of my top five all-time rides this afternoon. Felt good placing my board on the wave and felt good popping up. Even had a few suedo bottom turns. Dan was catching more than his normal share of waves as well so it definitely was a nice power day. A couple fishermen watched us from the pier like we were crazy.

Uploaded a boat load of pictures to Flickr. Check ’em out. I’m in the process of making my pictures more accessible from this site, but thus far WordPress has not been cooperating. Hopefully I can cobble together the right code one of these days.

Trammell was upset this afternoon when I wouldn’t let him outside with the other two dogs. He was sitting by me by the back door while I looked out of the window watching Taylor and Nora run around. He looked up at me and whimpered a few times then did something that made me intensely happy. He reached up his paw and batted at the door knob a couple of times. Smart pooch.

I feel pretty good about my productivity level for the past two days. And by productivity I mean how much fun I had. What else would that mean? Yesterday I took the dogs out for a run in the morning, then played a couple hours of fairly intense full-court basketball, followed up by some light soccer, and later spent a couple hours at the beach surfing and running around in the sand. Finished the evening mellowing out playing video games. Then today I took the dogs out again in the morning, played two hours of raquetball and swam a kilometer at the YMCA, stopped at the library, and took the dogs out again when I got home. Now if I could just find a way to get paid for all of this.