Top 3 of 2009

Throughout my life I have had some fairly definitive moments and it seems as every year goes by life become even more special than the last. This year in particular has been one of my most favorites.


Uno uno uno!

"This is how it works:
You're young until you're not,
You love until you don't,
You try until you can't;
You laugh until you cry,
You cry until you laugh,
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath...
No, this is how it works:
You peer inside yourself,
You take the things you like,
And try to love the things you took;
And then you take that love you made,
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart,
Pumping someone else's blood --
And walking arm in arm,
You hope it don't get harmed,
But even if it does
You just do it all again..."
— Regina Spektor

Without a doubt, hands down, the best thing to go down in the year 2009 was Regina Spektor at the Orpheum. The days and events surrounding the concert with filled with great fellowship and awesome food ex. lamb burgers and Granville Island Winter Ale. But seeing Regina in person, hearing her voice, and watching her lips sing the songs that sink deep into my soul was immensely awesome. I can definitely see myself heading to far off places just to see this lovely lady again.


Deux
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."
- GK Chesterton
I will gander that I have more adventures this year then ever before. My number two of 2009 consists of the following adventures.


1. Flying across Alberta solo
2. My two weeks at Living Springs Bible Camp
3. Driving to Alaska
4. Back-country snowshoeing

Within those adventures I've managed to gain some pretty awesome skills and scares. Learning to fly a plane, check. Getting your campers to like the floor and eat moths, check. Getting a hook smashed into your face while fishing for salmon is Alaska, check. Getting away from it all by traversing a snowing mountain, check.








Numero Tres.

Surfing is something that I always thought was the coolest thing you could do. I love the ocean. It is so powerful and mysterious. It scares the crap out of me and gives me great peace. Though I had been surfing at Tofino I knew I wasn't really experiencing the stoke that surfers talk about. I had never been able to ride the clean part of a wave. I always caught the white wash. Now there is nothing wrong with riding white wash expect that it's dirty and loud and really not very cool. So in order to achieve the stoke I headed to Costa Rica for two weeks.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The beaches, waves, and people are extremely beautiful. Although everyone on the trip wasn't there to surf, I was. I woke at sunrise put on my SPF 60 and hit the beach. For the 10 days of actual surfing I figure I averaged over 8 hours a day in the water. Learning to surf was extremely frustrating. The constant battering of the waves. Your mouth and throat raw from the salt water. Constant gagging making you wish for just a single drop of fresh water. Finally making past the break I would just sit there probably for hours trying to recoup and line up for a set. Always in the wrong spot at the wrong time, I would miss wave after wave. Finally catching one I would eat ocean sooner than a jelly fish. This struggle went one for about 8 days. Each day I got better but also more and more frustrated.

With only one or two days of surfing left I began to feel as though I would never catch a wave. Through what was surely a miracle I saw myself in what seemed like the perfect spot for an oncoming set. I quickly turned my board and began paddling. The large lump of water was soon right behind me and it felt like I was about to fall down a ten story building. I pushed myself up and stood on the board. It felt like I was going 100mph the wind rushing past and everything going by in a blur. All of a sudden everything went quite, all things in my mind became focused and it felt like perhaps I just died. I don't know how else to describe that feeling. I don't know how exactly a piece of foam and energy can deliver such a feeling but i'm sure when God created this world He knew very well what hidden secrets the waves would give to His people.