Sadly, my beloved travel companion was not able to join me on my current jaunt. I attempted to jury-rig a bizarre, yet in no way kinky, homemade skycam (damn you Merkley) that involved my bed frame and belts. I inadvertently ended up dropping my SLR camera (said travel companion) to the ground, lens first. I'm not quite sure of the extent of the damage, and whether the UV filter or the lens itself is cracked. Once I return to Baltimore, I will have to take the camera to the doctor and am hoping for an easy and cheap remedy.
And so, with no camera to document this trip, I have decided to finally finally join the ranks of bloggers world wide. This makes me nervous... I feel less pressure to take a perfect photo than I do to write a grammatically correct, intensely interesting blog. Photos are a wonderful and FAST way to capture detailed memories, and are very safe in that images are open to interpretation. Unless there is a telling caption, photos do not include the details that a written memoir does.
Jacksonville, Slacktionville. I travel often for work, and for vacation. Many of my vacations actually piggyback on work trips, which saves me quite a bit of time and money. Even while on a trip for work, I try my best to make the most of the experience, to see a city outside of the hotel room, airport, and client's office. In some ways it's hard to get motivated after a long day of work and an early flight, while you're on your own in a different place. But I never regret lighting a fire under my butt and getting myself out and about.
This trip to Jacksonville has been especially wonderful. I thought yesterday was great. I arrived early in the day and worked from the hotel, and went out around 6pm. I drove about 20 minutes to the beach with the intention to do some reading and just chill by the water. I didn't really know where I was going but figured that it's always easy to find the ocean, you just head East or West, depending where in the world you are. Once I made it to the beach, I was thrilled to see a restaurant where I had eaten with my friend Melissa years ago. She used to live in Jax, and I would come to visit her. It's so funny how life finds you back in the exact same spot, whether it's a purposeful return, or accidental.
The sand on the beach was so white and soft. I read a bit, people watched, and did some yoga. The setting wasn't 100% perfect, the activity was a bit distracting. Luckily, I was able to head back to the beach after work today. I decided to drive my rental Prius aimlessly toward a new, unknown beach. I love the damn car so much that I could drive to the moon and back and not mind because it's so comfy and cool. I am a white person after all (stuff white people like blog). I always forget how many big, beautiful homes abound along the ocean front. My roadtrip revealed many of these homes, and eventually gave way to a more and more undeveloped landscape. Finally, I saw a sign for a parking lot and pulled into a desolete lot where I changed out of my work clothes.
I headed on the wooden boardwalk toward the beach, which led to stairs that took me through a dense strip of forest. I reached the top of the stairs and saw the ocean for the first time today. The trees and dunes had kept the ocean out of sight for the entire hour long cartrip. The view was absolutely gorgeous and made me take pause. Lately I have been feeling closer and closer to God, or the wonder of nature, or whatever it is that makes the Earth so beautiful. The beach was completely empty, and protected from the road by the grass covered dunes. The sand was coarse and included many different sized shells.
I started to run down the beach and felt a bit nervous. There wasn't a soul to be seen, and being my paranoid, Baltimore resident self, I was illogically petrified that someone might be around that wants to harm me. About 3/4 mile into my jog, I saw a pair of people a ways off who were fishing. This made me feel much better. I kicked off my sneakers and waded into the water. It was amazingly calm and warm, and fish were flying out of the water left and right. I hadn't brought a bathing suit, and decided to strip off my pants and get in waist high. About 10 minutes later, I decided, what the hell, I'll go straight up naked. No one could see me, of course, and it felt incredibly good. At one point, something knocked into my leg. I definitley had sharks on the brain, especially because I have my period, silly as that sounds. A fish flew up out of the water. I guess I scared him as much as he scared me.
Once I had enough swimming, I went back to the beach for some yoga action. I'm convinced that yoga is best done on the beach, because the sand gives way during some of the moves where a hard surface is not the least forgiving. It's the slacker yogi in me.
I admit that I'm proud of myself, today was an amazing day. Ben Frankin said "Does thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of."
