I have lost a good amount of weight since my arrival to Costa Rica. I think somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds. I attribute my weight loss to a few things. First, my diet. Switching from a college student’s diet to the diet of the 3rd world country defiantly took a few inches off my waist. Instead of eating burritos and 2:30AM and drinking three nights a week, I eat a diet of almost purely rice and beans and only get served food when it’s meal time. And yes I am hungry a lot. The second cause of my weight loss is sweating. It is always hot in Vergel. and it’s not the dry type heat that I was used to in Arizona, its a wet, muggy, jungle heat.
The combination of my weight loss and the nonexistence of dryers here has caused many of my cloths to stop fitting properly. My pants especially is where I’ve noticed the biggest difference. I officially had to go up a loop in my belt.
The problem with my weight loss/clothes got me into a little bit of trouble on one of my recent trips to Dominical. It was a typical Sunday afternoon. The sun was out, the beach was packed, and the waves were big and powerful. I decided to go out for a quick surf before the US and Brazil went at it in the final of the Confederations Cup final later in the afternoon.
The waves were good and I caught a few really fun rides. It was however when on one of my paddle outs that my troubles began. I duck dove under a wave and on my way up to the surface I felt my shorts slide down a little bit. I didn’t have time to pull them up before the next wave came, so I duck dived it leaving them where they were. This time on my way up to the surface my shorts fell completely off. They didn’t stop down around my ankles, they fell completely off. I was laying on my board totally bare-assed and there was another wave coming toward me that I was going to need to get under. Rather than trying to duck-dive again, and moon the entire beach in the process, I decided to ditch my board, swim down, and try to fish out my shorts. Luckily I found them down around my leash. I untangled them and pulled them back on all the while trying to dodge the big waves breaking in front of me. I paddled back out to the line up happy that I didn’t have to give the crowded beach too much of a show.
I tied my shorts as tight as they would go and kept surfing. It was however only a few minutes later when I found myself in almost the exact same position; in the water, naked, trying to find my pants. I fished them out and pulled them back on. As I was treading water tying to tie the drawstring a wave came. I dove down under it, and just as I reemerged on the other side I felt my leash snap off my ankle.
I swam the 50 yards or so to the beach and when I arrived I couldn’t find my board anywhere. I signaled to my friend Jeremy, who was sitting under a palm tree if he saw it wash ashore. He pointed over to the lifeguard tower and gave me a little applause. Not really understanding what the applause was about, I walked over to the lifeguard tower and saw my board lying there broken into two pieces.
The board had a huge buckle in it and I new that it was going to break sometime soon, I was actually surprised it lasted as long as it did, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. Two little kids came up to me and asked it they could have the board. I knew it was going to be way too expensive to fix it so I gave them the broken pieces.
The Confederations Cup final was about to start so me and some friends went to our favorite beach-side bar to watch it. Jeremy bought me a beer to ease my pain and we spent the rest of the afternoon watching the game. The bar was packed with Americans and Brazilians so I’m sure you could imagine the atmosphere was pretty exciting. Unexpectedly, the US took a 2-0 lead over world-number-one Brazil in the first half. Jeremy, who is a huge soccer fan, and I ended up getting a little too excited and ordering a few too many drinks. But thats another story.
I wish I could have broken my board doing something cool- like pulling into a ginormous close out barrel, or landing wrong after boosting a huge air. But my weight loss and stretched out shorts denied me of that. Oh well. At leas it was only a board and a leash that were permanently lost and not my pants.
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