There’s a line in Hank Williams’s “Why Don’t You make Up Your mind,” where he says “The hide’s gettin’ scace” (pronounced “skayce”), meaning scarce. I don’t know why, but it’s stuck in my mind for years. In the song he’s moaning about difficulties with his girlfriend, but I’ve always thought of the phrase as having to do with the body getting hurt.
My latest was tearing some shoulder muscles last week. No, not again! My body feels so battered from a lifetime of activity. — sports, carpentry, adventures. Thank god I wasn’t the football star I wanted to be. Yet still — operations on both knees, right shoulder, right wrist (carpal tunnel) and the capper, a bad broken arm a year ago–all since turning 70.
OK so I’m whining here, but I’m on an up-note. After moping and gimping around for a week, dreading another operation, visiting the doc, dealing with pain, suddenly it turned a corner. Must have been the red wine in the evenings (plus big doses of Ibuprofen). But all of a sudden I could raise my arm halfway. Yeah! I’m gonna get better. Two things to convey here:
1. You always get better. Pretty much. So no matter how deeply depressed you are when injured, it’s gonna get better if you do the right stuff.
2. Don’t give up. Get right back out there on that bike, surfboard, trail, slope — maybe with more caution and care. Because you’re gonna lose it if you don’t use it.
Looks like he’s got an abalone or big clam on his belly. They use rocks to crack open shells. I had a friend in high school, Mike Barnato, a swimmer, who said he wanted to be reincarnated as a sea otter.
I wrote this last week for my surfing friends from the ’50s. It’s a tribute to an extraordinary guy who was, among other things, the foremost big wave surfer in Northern California in those golden years.
“Out, out brief candle!”
He had this quote on the nose of his balsa wood board in 1955, crudely written (in longhand), and funkily glassed. It’s a quote from Macbeth, Shakespeare commenting on the brevity and inevitability of death.
I used to wonder if it had something to do with Rod’s dad dying at a very early age. Maybe he thought he wasn’t going to last long, but luckily for many of us, he did.
I first knew Rod in San Francisco high school days in the early ’50s; he was a city swimming champion, in the 220 and 440 yards. I was one of the swimmers at Lowell and we knew the best city swimmers: Jim Fisher and Bill Floyd at Lowell, Jose Angel at Washington, John Stonum at St. Ignatius, Billy Wilson at Sacred Heart, Rod at Lincoln; all of these except Bill Floyd became surfers. Many of us trained at the YMCA on California Street, and then the Marine’s Memorial with coach Lyle Collett. Charlie Sava, who coached SF girl Ann Curtis to 2 gold medals in the 1948 Olympics, was the city’s genius coach.
I was going to Stanford and in 1954, got started surfing, and thereafter spent half of each week in Santa Cruz. By the time I moved up from Cowell’s to Steamer Lane, I met Rod. He was going to San Jose State, but spending all the time he could in SC. He lived in his car with his dog Steamer.
…with the Pacific Ocean, that is, in which I just paddled about a mile on my 12′ Joe Bark paddleboard. First time paddling, first time swimming in over 2 months. Boy, did that activate some chi!
I saw a lone seal cavorting. It reminded me of a swimming teammate of mine in high school, Mike Barnato, who said he wanted to be reincarnated as a seal. I thought it might be Mike out there.
Maui’s finest watermen including Kai Lenny, Jesse Richman, Robby Naish, the Porcella brothers, take on Jaws… Windsurf, kite surf, tow in, SUP and all while Dan maneuvers his Hughes 500D (helicopter) like a DJI Phantom to get the shot nobody else dares to get.
I just listened to this wonderful woman on NPR, being interviewed by Michael Krasny. Just one of her accomplishments: two years ago, at age 64, she swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida in 53 hours.
“I’m a way better athlete in my 60s than I was in my 20s…”
“Get your body ready…”
“Have your body be as lean and taut as a cheetah and then you can do anything in life.”
Chris Thompson just sent me this trailer of his documentary, and it knocked me out. How rare it is these days to have someone that gets it. This is the real stuff. Rod is power personified, jeez was he rolling here, the Van Dykes, my lord…
I’ve been swimming here 3 times on this trip. It’s about 8 feet deep by the rock. Not another soul in sight. Takes me a little while to decompress, for the barriers of disconnectedness with the wild world to drop away. Alone, no cars, people, electricity…lying in the sun, body 100% bathed in sunlight (Viva said in Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine in the ’70s, “The sun is my lover.”
Pretty soon I notice there are tiny insects buzzing around just above water surface; once in a while a silver flash when a baby fish will jump out of water and grab one.
I’m rolling with layout of Small Homes. It’s like magic: I start with a bunch of photos and columns of text and start assembling. I’ll pick a lead photo and blow it up on my little (inexpensive) 6-year-old Brother DCP-9040CN color printer/copier and start laying things down, getting pics to size on the copy machine, shifting stuff around, adding text, taping it down with Scotch removable tape and voila, it’s lookin pretty good.
Note:we want to hear what people are doing about shelter in cities (other than paying $3500/month for a studio apartment in San Francisco). Email us at smallhomes@shelterpub.com
I’ve got so much going on right now, what with the book production, and also due to the fact that our sales have dropped off (in the midst of incredible feedback), so we’re working on marketing. Goal is to get people in bookstores just to pick up one of our books.
I’m back in the water after about 20 years of running (mostly on the mountain). Swimming and paddling my (12′ Joe bark Surftek) paddleboard, which whisks through the water. The other day I got in a strong outgoing tide, paddling hard, and was going at least 10 mph, if not 15, water spraying from the bow, pretending I was a speedboat. The water in the ocean is uncharacteristically warm right now. Some days 65 degrees. Am I in LA?
More to follow on Foster Huntington’s unique tree houses. It was in the high 80’s yesterday and Foster and I went swimming first in a swimming hole in the Washougal River, then in the mighty Columbia.
