Oh, and I don't get to surf for 4 weeks... ouch, so I am going to try to get in shape swimming, back in the gym... everyone in Costa is jacked, makes me look like dough boy, time to get back.... jacked....

Been a while, sorry about that, since we have made the call to make the move, we have been swamped with everything. Friends, family, work... suddenly we only have 11 weeks until the move, and two of those weekends will be back in Costa, deep sea fishing with the parents for one, July 4th with the crew, and this weekend we are hitting up Jennie springs. So in the next 11 weeks or what turns out to be 9 weeks and 7 weekends, we need to see all our family and friends, sell our place, and I am having LASIK next wednesday. Had my pre-op yesterday, and all went well, I am cleared for the easiest surgery, sick!!! 2700 bucks and I don't have to worry about glasses, contacts ever again... sounds like a deal to me (if all goes well). Gonna be a busy few months, but I am pumped!

Still need to update with the Car Crash story, and some Boca Barranca action...

Talk about a crazy few weeks... best week ever in Costa, a day in the Aug, and then a week in Pittsburgh. Cant get more different than that. Pittsburgh could have been pretty boring, being a family trip, but we had a blast. Now just 6 weeks of living in St. Auggie and then another 8 days in Costa, then four weeks, then living in Costa!!!! Cant get more exciting than that.

Now we just need some surf at home. More to come on our last trip, just couldn't write too much in the iron city.

Death Rodeo….

We were treated to an unexpected experience while in Nosara. On Thursday night, we went to Ponchos for dinner, best guac ever, to find no one there… The place is pretty popular, so we didn’t know what was going on. We sat at the bar, and met the local kids that run the place, well, they look local, but the are actually from Vegas, and there dad is a shaper who shaped with Dick Catri in Hawaii, shapes a sick fish… how do you go from shaping in Hawaii to living in Vegas??? That sounds shitty to me. Anyways, Curt, son of the shaper, told us that everyone was in Nosara for the rodeo. That it lasts for three days, gets progressively violent and that someone dies every year, usually a drunk gringo. We were sold, and made plans to go the next night. First off, this is not a traditional states rodeo, maybe from the wild west, but not the PBR. There are two types of tickets, one regular stands seats, 2000 colones (4 bucks) or you can sit on the fence for 1000 colones. Now the rules for everything in Costa are different, like the lane lines are suggestions, well, in a rodeo in Nosara, fence seats mean either on the fence or in the ring, you choose. And in the ring doesn’t mean spectate, it means participate. So to sum it up, you have a bull with a rider, two guys on horses to lasso the bull after the rider eats it, 10 wasted folks running around the ring trying to slap the bull, oh and the local dog that likes barking at both the bulls and the horses… recipe for fun.

We were drinking imperial, headache in a can beer, and chilling in the seats. Andrew wanted to sit on the fence, but we talked him out of it. First few bulls were status quo, for this type of event, people rode bulls, fell off, scrambled for the fence, dove under, then the other participants ran towards then away from an annoyed bull, the folks on the fence took every opportunity to kick the bulls as he ran by. Oh, there was also La Plata Azul, an 8 piece horn and drum band that played tunes during the whole thing. They were introduced before every bull.

The fifth bull was different, he was bucking wild when the rider was trying to mount. Took an extra five minutes to get him out. He came out charging, definitely the largest bull we had seen and also quite mean. The rider didn’t handle the third jump very well and on the forth was thrown vertical, flipping forward over the bull at least 10 feet off the ground, the bull stood five feet, and he cleared the bull by a solid five feet. His forward flip stopped half way then the ground abruptly landed on the small of his neck. He then bounced off the ground and it was very apparent that his senses and control was gone. He landed limp. I have never seen anyone knocked out so totally before, boxers always seem to tense up for a minute, this guy was limp. The bull charged off towards the fence, and everyone realized that immediately that this guy was in serious trouble. 10 folks, fans and clowns alike ran in to take the rider to safety. They had the rider picked up, his head was swinging and the bull charged the group. The folks dropped the guy and the bull ran him over. The process repeated and this time the folks got the rider to the fence, bull charged, dropped the rider, bull ran over him again. The got back to the rider and slid him through the fenced. That is all we know, not sure if the guy ended up in the ground or with a bad headache.

April 5^th – 7^th

Our next few days in Nosara were insane. We had solid 4-8 foot surf, with perfect conditions and evening glass every night. The way I describe Guiones is like epic Florida that doesn’t close out, with long swell intervals, just bigger and better exponentially. The sessions all seem to run together, but I remember specific waves. The biggest section I have beaten on a left to vertical whack, many frontside wraps in a sick pocket, speed walls that made me light-headed, and more turns on single waves than you get in a typical session back home. Andrew and I also missed the call one morning by pulling up to the beach between sets, waited for a few minutes to declare it was only head high, went back got our retro CI fishes to find that on the return there were sick, sucking four to five feet overhead sets macking through. So, we sacked-up and paddled out the twinnies. It was pretty steep and drops were a challenge, but those things fly, fastest I had going on water not behind a ski boat for sure…. Now we just had to be sold on the job front.

On Wednesday afternoon we had a meeting with our prospective broker. The outcome was what I was hoping for, that both decisions would align and make the overall decision easy. Well, with 4 major development projects going on, the opportunity for Sarah to manage the HOA for one of the projects and the beauty of the county and friendless of the locals who wouldn’t want to buy real estate in Nosara??? Anyways, we were pretty sure during the meeting that it was a go, but we made ourselves wait 3 days to tell anyone, just for due diligence.

April 4^th – We caught a plane in Miami, Sarah’s folks let us crash at their place the night before, and pops gave us a ride to the airport (thanks for hooking that up). The flight left at 8 AM and I’m not too stoked to fly, but not too much turbulence, and actually I feel real safe flying Lasca, cause who would want to hijack Ticans??? They are super chill folks who are down with everyone. Got into San Jose at 9:30 and cleared customs easy, picked up the rental car, a Kia Sorento. Rental cars suck most of the time, but this thing was horrible, and we definitely didn’t help it out any.. more on that later. Got lost in San Jose right away, my bro Adu, who is moving down with us is notorius for getting lost, but it didn’t take too long. Found our way to Calle Uno, which was the only named rode we drove on and started our adventure. The drive to Nosara isn’t bad, its like 4 hours and most is paved. For how chill a people Ticans are, they don’t have much in the way of driving skills yet. They pass on blind corners, go three deep on sketchy two lane roads, and have quite an ambivalence towards lines and signs. The last hour to Nosara is not paved, and still reminds me of my first trips to Costa in high school. Actually I think that driving on the unpaved roads is safer, as people drive slower and pay more attention. Arriving in Nosara was cool, the town reminds me of a super small Laguna Beach just not ruined by people. There is one strip that contains most of the business and the office we will be working at is at the end of the road, just 1km to Playa Guiones, right down the hill. The first thing we did was check out the office and meet Chip the owner of Caldwell Banker Del Mar and our future boss. Chip has lived in Nosara for 4 years and has the place wired, so when the first thing he said was “The surf’s pumping!” we were stoked. Session 1 was epic by Auggie standards, evening glass after 15 hours of travel. Overhead sets and ripable waves. It took me 45 minutes to figure out how deep you can take off at Guiones… real deep. The wave is powerful, but real forgiving. For grub we went a couple hundred meters down the road to Ponchos, which has the best guac I have ever eaten. They make it from scratch for every order, including the tortilla chips.

Sarah, and I decided that we had to make two decisions about the move, lifestyle and professional. Well, after 4 hours in Nosara, there wasn’t much question in regards to the lifestyle decision… definitely a go.