Brian and Jackie: August Beach Trip

This is one of the traditions I love the most. Maybe it's because it was during the August Beach Trip 2007 that I met the rest of Jackie's family, or maybe it's just because it's the beach, and I love the beach. That first trip was an eye opener as to what it would have been like to grow up in a family of 10 kids. It was madness but I survived and here I am now, lovin' it.

This was the first time I've been to the beach house with Reg so I was very excited. He's an adventurous guy and this is where we found ourselves within about 20 minutes of him arriving...

I bought the inflatable kayak because I wanted something to do at the beach house besides Phase 10 and it was the best purchase of the year so far. Reg and I had a good time out in the waves. He wore his sunglasses out there and had them on until a wave crashed down on him.

If the kayak is the purchase of the year, then this is the picture of the year. Thomas was excited to go kayaking so he got his wetsuit and life vest on, about 2 hours before we left the house. He killed time by playing Nintendo, but kept the gear on the entire time.

6 of us went kayaking on the 2nd day. Thomas rode with Reg while Jonathan played it safe and rode with Kristin.

We, of course, didn't have to rent but we also had the slower kayak.

When we got back to the house after this, Jackie and I took it out into the ocean. We were trying to catch waves until one of the waves caught us. I was trying to turn it around in time but didn't get much further and a parallel position to the breaking wave. It gobbled us up and flipped us over. We both came up and hit our heads on the kayak. The water was probably in the high 50s, low 60s so pretty cold, especially for Jackie who didn't have a very good wetsuit.

When I came up and looked at Jackie she had the look of death on her face. The combination of the cold water and being trapped under the kayak is not good. I calmed her down, swam to the kayak, and then we kind of floated in to where we could touch. That was enough for that day.

The following day we walked the kayak up the beach so we could try and make it to the twin rocks just about 500 meters (according to google maps) off the shore. The current was going south and we wanted to walk the kayak instead of trying to paddle that thing against the current. The plan worked like a charm and we were even able to find a little spot where we didn't have to fight many waves. We paddled around the rocks and decided to just let the current take us home.

A sea otter showed up about 10 feet from the kayak but Jackie missed it. As I was telling her about it, it popped up again, this time just about a paddle's length from our boat. It was awesome. He stuck his head out of the water and just stared at us for about 5 seconds. What are you idiots doing out here? He swam around us for a few minutes and then he went back to the rocks. We named him Rocky. We got back to the outside waves and decided to try and catch one. Well, we got too close into the shore again and a big wave crashed just before us. It flipped us like the day before although this time we were a little more prepared. I came up expecting the same look of death on Jackie's face but she was solid as a rock. She was swimming around gathering the paddles.

We got back into the kayak and then caught the best wave of the trip. We got to the top of the wave and then we finally shot down the face, both of us leaning back as far was we could with our hands in the air. I was sure she was going to come flying over me but when we caught the wave it was like dropping down a little 3 foot waterfall. Jackie knows now what it feels like to be "stoked".