Tag: memories

A Change of Seasons

Courtesy of
https://www.rd.com

September is a great month for sports. Baseball’s pennant races are heating up and the excitement of the World Series is just around the corner. The NFL and College Football previews are mind-boggling and a great distraction for any arm-chaired quarterback getting a leg up on his buddies.

The beaches of Southern California are at their best. The throngs of tourists are gone. The waters of the Pacific are still warm and somehow seem cleaner and more inviting. It is a great time to perfect bodysurfing tucks or to just horse around on the boogie boards with the kids. If I am lucky, I may even squeeze in an epic ocean kayak paddle with my water-dog friend before the winter storms exile me to the snow of the mountains

When September rolls around, there really is only one sport that consumes me: Coaching my kids’ Soccer teams. There is the challenge of learning 25-odd names and faces and the quirks that go with them. There is the sense of accomplishment of organizing reluctant parents into a circle of friends who turn into rabid Soccer fans every Saturday. There is the joy of meeting previous team members and friends on the fields. There is the pride of winning games and the satisfaction of turning losses into lessons of sportsmanship. September means coaching Youth Soccer and it is always a magical time of the year.

I can sense the changing of the seasons. My Sunday mountain biking rides are getting more pleasurable. The unbearable heat of the summer is almost gone. Cool, overcast mornings are soon replaced with glorious sunny afternoons that intensify the great feeling of being in the outdoors. This September there is another change in the wind. It is not crisp like the autumn air. It is not radiant like the equinoctial Sun. But it is more palpable. It is easy to feel it in the horrific pictures replayed on the TV, in the disturbing headlines of the newspapers and in the strident chatter of the radio.

Something is changing. It is history itself. Like watching the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the failed anti-Gorbachev putsch that signaled the disintegration of the Soviet Union, I find myself hypnotized, with the clear perception that an important historical event is unfolding right before my eyes.

I cannot help but share in the collective feelings of outrage, apprehension, reflection and determination resulting from the events leading to the now christened “First War of the Century.” Pundits and talking-heads seem to have all the solutions and provide us with multiple scenarios of how the future might unfold. But nobody knows; History is fraught with remarkable, unforeseen events. I do know one thing: Next September will be a great month for sports!

Originally written 18 years ago, before I discovered BlogSpot and WordPress.

April Fool’s Day or Easter Sunday?

                         Courtesy of Helios Hotel

I have many Guardian Angels; I call them Framily! They have helped me in one way or another, especially after my spinal cord injury. But there is one woman in particular that is my main Guardian Angel and  that’s my mom. She does all the things mothers do and then some; She helps me financially from her  meager resources, whenever I need it. Ever since my skiing misfortune, she visits me for about a month every year. She has a heart condition for which she takes two pills everyday. She then proceeds to walk 5 kilometers to do food shopping and to cook up a storm —She’s Spanish; she uses the international metric system— All she asks in return is for good conversation, occasional technical support and that I pick a good movie or program to watch on TV.

The duty is reciprocal. A few years ago, I devised a game in order to remotely check on ourselves on a daily basis; we pick a phone wallpaper from APOD or Bing and then tell each other our choices for the day. I call her every Sunday like I will be doing in a few hours. And we use WhatsApp to communicate with each other.

So am I mama’s boy? Or are my mom and I each other’s best Guardian Angels? That’s like asking if today is April Fool’s Day or Easter Sunday!

It’s like March!

   Courtesy of AccuWeather

“March Comes In Like A Lion, Out Like a Lamb” I learned this saying a long time ago, from my mother-in-law.

I had to put the heater in my home on auto because the house was at a comfortable 62°. I bumped it up to 66° to make it balmy to framily and my caregivers (Missed one six [Insert emoticon or emoji here] ©).

I want you to know how much I like my new home. It’s smaller but more affordable (Much better than living in a hospice home [Insert emoticon or emoji here] ©).

No matter what happens between Mik and me, you are always  welcomed to visit and stay in my home. Except that you will have to sleep in the den/office on a futton, or in the living room in a very comfortable sleeping sofa. Unless you want to sleep with me and be woken up by a crazy guy howling back at a wild coyote outside my window, or be woken up at 5:30 am to classical music while I do my Dawn Patrol exercises.

xo xo xo  xo xxx xo xo  xo xxx xo xo xo  xo xo  xo xxx xo  xxx  Sri

My mother-in-law was right; At least about the weather for March, in SoCal. It was cold and rainy for the first couple of weeks of the month and today, it was a beautiful day!

💞 [FYI] [NRN] My New Home } Title of email originally sent to my  immediate family (both bands).

Soid is 60!

What can I possibly learn from this individual? I’ve been asking that about my great friend Soid, most of my adult life. I’m not an English native speaker, and as it turns out, the great majority of raunchy sayings, I have learned from Soid.

But allow me to take a stroll down memory lane: I distinctly remember how I met Soid; I was working as a dock-master; at the OCC-UCI Inter-Collegiate Sailing & Rowing Base, Soid and his UC Irvine crew mates had just won an important rowing regatta. As is customary, members of his eight-men big boat, ended up in the water as part of the celebrations. Soid, been an excellent swimmer, decided to venture out close to the Lido-14 docks, where I was administering​ sailing tests. Not only was I concerned about the difficult docking maneuvers that my students would have to complete, but I was also worried about the possibility of a keel or rudder hitting Soid. I let him know about the situation in no uncertain terms; He didn’t say anything, but while swimming away, he gave me a look that undoubtedly​ meant: “Who is this f*cker trying to orchestrate my high?”

Later that evening, I returned to my dawg house, where to my surprise, the UCI eight-man rowing team, including the pretty coxswain, were celebrating with a BBQ, a couple of kegs and several macho competitions. Soid and I, didn’t say much when we saw each other again, we just laughed; We’ve been friends ever since. For the next couple of years, we mostly met when he and our UCI rowing friends visited the dawg house. But we always had great times.

After college, we lost track of each other: I married Sally one year after UCI –This disturbed my roommates and friends to whom marriage was an event way into the future; And I wasn’t ready for all the female drama waiting for me in Venezuela; I know now what I knew then: I made the right decision– Soid went to Oregon to get his MBA and to Arizona for work reasons. We would meet again when my UCI buddies decided to invite me to my first All Boys Trip at June Lake. I think they were worried about their strange customs and whether I would like ABTs; Boy, were they wrong!

Soid tried to poke fun at me during my first ABT; I ended up teaching him how to dance Salsa while wearing nothing but Depends. And I taught everybody how to drink vodka like a Cossack, while balancing backwards on a kitchen counter –Careful, I’m sure there are old grainy VHS tapes somewhere– But ABTs would be the start of a tradition for me: I would never consider an ABT fully started until I had a chance to chase and wrestle Soid when he first made an appearance. I guess it was my way to compensate for Soid’s bouts of coprolalia, that would peak at ABTs.

Two events stick in my mind because of how special they were: Most people don’t realize that Soid is generous, specially with his time. As I was getting ready to do my first Pier-to-Pier swim, he made sure that I could finish it. We took a double-kayak from Corona del Mar to Laguna Beach, where he made me swim around offshore buoys and considered me ready. Of course, we still had to paddle back to Big Corona. We had a great time!

As we progressed into our family and working lives, I would see Soid many more times. By then, I had acquired a taste for rowing sleek outriggers in the beautiful Newport and back bays. That’s how I would finish up my Friday’s; I would mostly row by myself but if I was lucky and could make it work, I would invite dear friends to share some time on the water followed by an ample dinner. Most of these friends were going through some tribulations. Soid may have been going through some problems, but I didn’t care: All I wanted to do was to spend time with my friend. I remember the outing because hundreds of fish were freakishly jumping out of the water; We may have selfishly thought that this was some sort of sign. In reality, there was an overabundance of aquatic insects and the jumping fish were feasting. We never had to mention anything serious. We had a great time!

I doubt Soid knows that I am still learning from him. The lessons are more subtle now. I know I will be learning from this individual for the rest of my life.