The Sensual Glide

Yeah..... gettin old..... it ain't for sissies. The trick is not giving into it. Keepin on keepin on >>>> MOVING.  Stretching, surfing, walking, working. A measured dose in regular intervals.

My father treasured his 60s..... good years if active. Still able to sail a boat singlehanded. Still able to surf in glide fashion. Like above......  

Gustavo Cerati 2001

Way sad to discover the solo work of (Argentinas) Soda Stereo frontman then find he died in 2014.... what a huge loss and such a fine talent.

Lots of web content keeps his beautiful work alive though. One finely nuanced performance here:

Dengue Fever Hits Close to Home Again

Assassino!!!!!!

With a local highland friend getting nailed fairly severely with dengue fever this past month it's refresher time, for me, regarding its severity. And on how to possibly avoid it in the first place.

My amigo lives in fairly close quarters to other neighbors and while mosquitos vector out (spread) the disease in a pretty small radius odds are one of his neighbors probably made a Oaxacan coast vacation run, someone got nailed down on the steaming coast where dengue, malaria, zika, and chikungunya are pretty endemic, drove the 6 hours back up here to the mile high central valleys, and became a mosquito vector in his hood.

Dengue currently comes in 4 delightful strains. Catching one doesn't make you immune to catching the others later. A small % of initial infections are so bad you bleed out of your orifices. The sad kicker is a second infection is far more likely to go hemorrhagic on you and risk bleeding out.

My friends strain was obviously not the bleeding-out variety but for 2 weeks he labored with high fever, severe joint pain (dengue is nicknamed "break bone fever" as it feels like your joints and bones are breaking), stabbing gut pains, severe diarhea, dehydration, and other fun time symptoms. A friend of his lost his sister to it when her heart became inflamed and she had a heart attack, despite being in a hospital bed.

Currently a vast global uptick in dengue cases, asia being nailed hard lately but cases in Mexico up significantly as well. Seasonal temps going up yearly and thus so with the bug population. Mosquitos kill more humans on the planet than any other animal. My own uncle died of a mosquito bite years ago.

 Here's a few delightful pix:

Some mild bleeding out symptoms

Once nailed critical to isolate the patient from further vectoring out the disease to others

Wow.... gimme some of THAT, aye!?!?!?

It seems EVERYONE down here knows someone personally who has gotten dengue. My dentist got zika and her house is in the capital city center. A guy in the campground here last year had just gotten out of the hospital after two weeks in there getting I.V. fluids and care. A local surfer I spoke with down on the coast had just had his sister in the hospital with dengue.

When I was in my 20s and cruising the oceans in the merchant marine, or coming to to the latin american tropics for vacations in my off times, I was damn cavalier about mosquito borne illnesses. It's a numbers game in the end. Spend a lot of time in hot disease zones and your odds go way up of catching some bug. Less % of contraction up here in the eternal spring altiplano but obviously still a risk.

Here's some video of my own strategy in avoiding mosquitos about our house here:

In our alaskan sailing days nothing to worry about. In the tropics: watch yore top knot (as Bearclaw Grizzlap told Jeremiah Johnson).

Prone-O Surfboard Design

Prone surfing has traditionally been viewed as the wimpy outcastlandia of elder surfers and unbalanced dweebatronics but it's a wide open frontier actually.

It makes a 5 foot wave into a double overheader perceptually and is much kinder on wipe-outs. Much more tube time.......

This board is the end result of this designers quest for the ideal prone riding surfboard. The tail is broad for ease of wave catching. The width goes 5" more than the usual widest available board. The rocker is relatively flat like a fish.

Vastly increased perception of speed with your face inches above the power source. Emphasis on glide over extreme maneuvering. Dare we call it.... gasp.... "soul surfing" material.

Hippy dippy early 70s retro surf spirituality...... so sue me, melon farmer.

Secret Oaxaca Surf Village #473

I ain't telling yas where its at, melon farmers. You're gonna have to piece it together from the video:

Undiscovered Oil Port Salina Cruz

Coast at Salna Cruz.... note the beach break peeler going off and trucks in frame for size reference....

Off the gringo tourist trail luscious spot #461. These spots give you some great value and haven't been spoiled like Costa Rica, Panama, or the gringoized portions of Mexico. Immersion to learn your spanish.... with a shit ton of great sand covered point breaks, beach breaks, etc. in (usually) uncrowded conditions.

The whole coast from Salina Cruz over to Huatulco is undeveloped and portions are rural and some wild. Wild buns, melon farmer..... good times.

Most folks prefer Huatulco, or maybe Puerto Escondido, over to the west a bit on the Oaxacan coast. Salina Cruz is on the "istmo", or the isthmus where it's only 100 miles between the gulf and the pacific. Wind in winter whistles through this funnel when the northers blow down. And conditions the air.

What it does do is dry the area significantly: cactus country. And that dry humidity, to me anyway, makes the area so much nicer to live in then over the coast a bit at Escondido. Over there the towering coastal sierra range cuts off that northerly flow and it is t*r*o*p*i*c*a*l with sticky nights.

Bahia Ventosa is Salina Cruzes little beach hamlet. About 3 miles out of town and to the east a bit. Maybe 1000 folks live there.........

No tourist infrastructure for gringos  here.... locals come here though..... it ain't half bad........ and cheap to boot

Salina Cruz (pop. 80K or so) is a working mans town with a big oil refinery. A trans istmo pipeline brings the gulf oil fields crude over here where it is processed and shipped out to northern mex pac coast nodes. Folks have money here. Not crazy tourist town money but a sound little city with everything you need.

Point about 4 miles to the west of SC..............

But the treasure of the SC area and points just a bit west, to Huatulco, is its waves........................

Waves On A Surf Mat Seem HUGE..........

Her head is about 18 inches off the waves surface. From her perspective the wave spans almost all her eye lens capacity from top to bottom.

A stand-up surfers head would be about 5 feet off the waves face.  To have a similar perspective to the mat surfer his lens span would require a wave probably double overhead in size.

This is especially nice for older surfers who would risk really bad injury surfing a double overhead wave. Add in the tactile feeling of really tucking into a wave physically, the whole length of the body, and  even more sense. No risk of this kinda injury:

Laid my bike down in a high speed turn last week.....

Imagining getting dragged over rocks or reef by a big wave kinda boggles my scrotomic, to say the least.

Check out 4th Gear Flyers great surf matting page here:

SurfMatters blog click HERE