You have to do SOMETHING! (Part 2)

      So, what do you do if you're in a superb kiteboarding location?  You go kiteboarding!  Duh!  OK, what if you're in a superb kiteboarding location AND there's a full moon?  You go kiteboarding!  Double Duh!

     We found ourselves in such a situation last week, once again in the company of my brother Mark and  "Uncle" Winston from medical school, as well as a friend of Mark's and our long-suffering wives.  Several years ago Paula found an affordable beachfront house in Turks and Caicos at the premier kite location.  Yes, I know, "affordable beachfront" and "Turks and Caicos" are rarely found in the same sentence.

     If you'd like to rent the house, complete with it's own beach and buckets of wind, it's name is, uh, lemme see, uh, Pacific Northwest Dangerous Creature House With Homicidal Neighbors, complete with rats, mosquitos, loud parties and outdoor plumbing.  And Paula has it rented through 2055 so fuggetaboutit!

    And also, just to warn you, this place has ugly water,

unattractive sunrises,

and other disadvantages too numerous to mention, so just move along citizens, nothing to see here.

    Back to the moonlight thing.  On our first trip to Turks and Caicos six years ago, we tried moonlight kiting, and although I didn't have much success, my brother and a friend had a great time and raved about the experience.  However, they did comment, (Spoiler Alert!) that it was a bit hazardous owing to the fact that you couldn't see the other guy kiting.  I guess that's because of the whole "in-the-dark" thing.

    This year, there was to be a full moon several nights before ending the trip to this place that you don't want to visit, and the wind turned out to be perfect.  

    Luckily, the shallow, wide bay in front of the (undesirable!) house is without any obstructions.  Also, as far as we could tell, there are no official marine regulations in Turks and Caicos against moonlight kiteboarding, and we decided to ignore the more universal common-sense suggestions against it.  Note: it's likely that humans haven't had time to evolve common sense about kiting at night since they've only been kiting at all for a couple of decades.  It may take some time to get that into the gene pool.  

    Or perhaps our judgment might have been affected by our diet during the trip.  As busy as we were on the water, we only found time to consume six gallons of ice cream, two dozen dozen cookies, a giant birthday cake, a half-dozen pizzas and some other well-known brain foods.

    Having checked the lunar phases (see above) we wisely reasoned that the full moon would be at night, so we prepared carefully; after all, our safety is priceless.  We went on Amazon and found the cheapest LED's that promised to be waterproof, knowing that whatever they promise on that site has got to be true.  Right?   

    On the appointed night, with a beautiful full moon rising in an almost cloudless sky, we carried our gear down to the beach and set up.

    There was a brief but heated discussion about which side of a kitesurfing kite was port (red light) and starboard (green light), but soon all was ready.  I got to be the guinea pig.

    It was simply other-worldly zooming along out over the dark water.  The actual kiting mechanics were just like during the day, but the scene...WOW!  "Ethereal" doesn't even come close.  Pretty soon, my turn was up, and I handed my kite off to my brother.

     He and the other two common-sense-deficient friends sailed the bay for the next hour or so.  The lights on the boards and kites were exactly the ticket; to us back on the beach it looked like an infestation of large, mutant fireflies out on the bay.

     Maybe seventy years hasn't been long enough to develop that common-sense thing, but the moonlight kiting session was the outstanding ending of an otherwise cool trip.  It was just plain great laughing and sharing such a unique experience with good friends.   

    We hope that you also continue to do some dumb stuff that stamps your timeline with the occasional exclamation point.  Just remember to stock up on the LED lights early - the threatened tariffs may jack up the price!  

Dave & Paula

Christmas trees

      We lived on a sort-of farm in (then) rural Fairfax County from when I was four years old until we moved to McLean, VA in sixth grade.  The house included a room with a 10-foot ceiling, unusual in the 60's, and a wall facing east that was completely windows; the room was known as 'the sun room.'

    At Christmas, my dad would slog out in the woods and capture a tree to decorate.  Even with the high ceiling, he'd usually have to cut a couple of feet off the top or the bottom to make it fit.   

    A few days before Christmas one year, George the Dog and I were lying on the sofa in the sun room admiring the decorated tree when I noticed that it was beginning to lean forward, and to my horror it crashed onto the hardwood floor, shattering any number of ornaments.  George and I got blamed, but I will promise to the end that I didn't do it.  George, despite intense interrogation also never admitted to the crime.  

    My mom, always one to change the rules in the middle of the game, decided that we could all open one present on Christmas Eve, so after the usual church thing that night we'd hustle home and do so. 

    Paula and I married in August 1977, and I continued the tradition of questionable DIY-harvested Christmas trees, of which Charles Brown would be proud.

 

    Paula, as her expression may indicate, was not impressed and in an after-Christmas sale at Zayre (yes, it was that long ago) picked up a fake tree, and we've had one ever since.  Her family in Oregon, however, kept on culling sad ones out of the forest.  And yes, I used to have hair.  And a 70's mustache, etc.  Lay off, OK?  It was cool back then.  I promise.

 

      She had been wise picking up a fantastic-plastic tree - things got pretty lean during the years of med school and residency and as kids began to pile up.

 

    These were the well-documented Bad Years of Christmas Light Strings (see Wikipedia article - "Psychiatric Admission Increase Thought Secondary to Christmas Lights") during which frustrated fathers would finally give up after hours of trying to figure out which bulb was bad, say naughty words, ball up the whole mess, jam it in the trash and go to K-Mart to buy a new string of lights.  

    Luckily, heaven-sent inspiration led to the invention of LED lighting and the world emerged from that terrible era.  And the kids kept coming.

 

And coming.

 

     And then they grew up and started going.

 

   And before we knew it, there weren't as many hands to help decorate the tree.

 

     And then there were years spent far from home, where Christmas was modest, and there was no time or place for a tree,

 

 though Paula would find one when she could, like this one in Bogota.

 

     Christmas stores wold pop up in December in Peru, with Chinese-made things complete with Spanish "Feliz Navidad" on the package. 

    So for several years, we had our Golden Tree, Economic Model.

 

     However, celebrating Christmas with the missionaries helped both them and us to have joy at that time of year.

      When the Mission Home in Huancayo, Peru was finished, Paula tracked down a nice tree (the nicest one they had!) and the missionaries helped us decorate.

 

      And it helped that there were little kids in the neighborhood.

 

    When we got home, it was time to begin spending time with our grandkids at their place at Christmas, with their tree.

    But Paula insisted we put up ours also, and sometimes we were lucky enough to have some of them around to help decorate it.

 

    This year we put up the tree by ourselves; everyone else is it at a distance now with their own kids and their own trees.

    Many of the ornaments brought back sweet memories.  There were no visitors, but it was beautiful by itself.  The house was still, and we held hands and talked quietly for a little while.

Dave & Paula