Hi!
Realising that my mood and that of lots of the people here is hopelessly dependent on the wind conditions. When you’ve had a solid week of windsurfing or wing foiling, life is so good. Flying along on the hydrofoil or skipping over the waves on a windsurf board is so immediate. You’re completely in the moment, having a fucking blast. When I’m out sailing with others, we sail along near each other whooping and hollering, almost in disbelief at how much fun we’re having. It’s a thrill that life on land can’t live up to, and it gives all of us a buzz that carries through to the next session.
Last week we had crap wind, and after a few days off the water, I found I started to feel vacant. You find yourself looking around thinking, ‘my life is objectively good’, and yet your emotions haven’t quite clocked on. For example, one evening, I cycled to a beautiful isolated beach on Wednesday night with someone from another resort. Swam in the twilight. Ate some mezze. Watched the stars slowly revolving around polaris. Objectively, a lovely evening. But it was like it was happening to my Sims character, and I was the bored gamer operating the controls without feeling the experience. Strange. Let’s hope it’s windy next week.
Miraculously, we had fantastic wind and waves this afternoon, so I had a really good session on the wing foil. Got my first taste of surfing on the foil, and it was a lot of fun. I’ve got that post-session buzz that I just talked about.
Updates from this week:
- Had to remove a large, half-dead snake from the road earlier this week. One of the guests on my bike ride was terrified of snakes and wouldn’t ride past it. It had been hit by a car and was writhing around in pain. I got a stick and flicked it into a bush. Snakes freak me out so I hated every second of it.
- Hardly any wind this week but I managed to have a fantastic windsurf one evening and got both feet in the straps for the first time.
- Integration with other clubs is progressing well. We’ve had a number of fun nights out at Club Vass and Wildwind and Neilson is no longer a dirty word.
- New team member has arrived who is a wing foiling expert and he sounds keen to teach me a thing or two. Exciting times.
Leading the bike rides, I get to know the regulars fairly well. We spend hours talking while riding around the valley, and I get on with lots of them. Lots of people have interesting jobs, and it’s fun to hear about them. As well as lots of people with fancy jobs at big companies, I’ve spoken to a cardiac nurse and a marine biologist.
I’m getting the inside scoop on how our big wide world works. For example, retired supply chain person from Asda told me how breaded fish is produced. Its madness. Fish are caught in Norway, then frozen and put on a cargo ship to China. There, they’re defrosted, processed by cheap Chinese workers, then refrozen and shipped back to the UK to be breaded and packaged in Grimsby. Whole process takes two months! And they write ‘caught in norway, breaded in the UK’ on the box. Crazy.
Quite a few people around who have done some really cool things in their time. This week I rode with a couple who spent 18 months cycling around Asia, then got jobs delivering yachts from Ireland to the mediterranean. We went for a mid-ride drink and they told me stories about strange food, corrupt police and massive storms in the Bay of Biscay.
Makes me think again about what will follow this. I can see how people end up doing seasons forever, its a little safe-haven. Zero life admin out here. You just have to show up to work and be nice to the guests. Coming off the narrowboat, the contrast is extreme. No DIY, no bills, no firewood to chop, no boat to move. But I couldn’t do this forever. The work is menial and the pay reflects that. I do like being in sunny coastal places though.
That’s the gist of it for this week. Hope you enjoy reading this.
How are you? Hows life?
Love
James
