Early on Wednesday morning, my thoughts were on the storm that had passed us, leaving us with big waves and windy conditions. We decided not to pursue surfing because of the wind and instead I drove with my wife to St. Augustine to discuss a future backpacking trip with my brother, the seasoned hiker. We got a late start and got there in time to hit Obi's Filling Station, usually a great place to get a burger near the beach. Wednesday was not the best day for Obi's. The orders were wrong, and the food wasn't steaming hot either. I'm blaming it on a bad cook that day, and one can hope this was an anomaly.
We soon moved on to taking my backpack apart and seeing what things I am missing and what things I cannot take along. My brother is a minimalist backpacker and among other things, I was told my knife was too big. His idea was something more along the lines of a fingernail clipper, which I assured him, would not present much of a threat to a charging bear, or serial killer seeking a lonely stretch of woods for his next victim. Truthfully, after listening to my brother's exploits, it sounds like the only two things I have to really worry about are freezing to death and starving to death. Apparently there is plenty of water around, so dying of thirst probably won't happen. As my brother reminded me, he has hiked 700 miles and it hasn't killed him yet. There was great comfort in those words...
Before we had even gone to Obi's for lunch, we had stopped at the St. Augustine pier and saw the waves going off. I was surprised because it didn't look that choppy, and there were more surfers than I had seen in the water before at this spot. A weekday in St. Augustine, I expected maybe one or two surfers, but I saw more like 30. We drove back to the spot before leaving for home and I took my board out for a while. I think I was a bit of a surprise there, this old guy in a floppy hat on a paddleboard while most everyone else was on short surfboards. There were some powerful waves in the lineup, but it was a little deep and hard to catch the outside sets, so my board was the perfect weapon and I managed to pull off some good rides and get out of the water before somebody got hurt...after getting bounced off the bottom 3 times, I knew who that was going to be..
St. Augustine Pier, I will be back! Obi's? maybe....
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