And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

-Talking Heads, 1980

How many reasons did I need to move out of the United States, the greatest country in the world? Though just kind of left in a barn, letting the days go by, uncovered for decades. Mice have moved in to live where the seat foam used to be. Paint is chipping and fading where the rust hasn’t taken over. The tires are dry and cracking, the door hinges squeak. The vin number is still legible and it rumbles as it runs, exhaust leaks drowning out the other clunks. Not even wars can fix what ails this jalopy, maybe UFO’s will. Keep in mind, like everything, it’s for sale, and don’t low ball me, “I know what I’ve got!”. Same as it ever was.

I have a three year old and when it’s time to put on underwear I don’t ask her “what color underwear do you want?”. That would be parental suicide…hours of contemplating the various colors and patterns, the world would come to a halt deciding between, days of the week, princesses, plain pink, or Paw Patrol? No, you ask her “do you want the red undies or the blue undies?” She’ll pick one, hopefully, with less commotion so your day can progress and this is American political policy. You are either red or blue, you’re offered no other variations. I think I prefer pink panties, but sweet jesus  I’d appreciate some choices. The powers that be, “they” want to keep it simple stupid. Same as it ever was.

I am stupid and worse, I don’t care. If I had a solution to the homeless problem I probably wouldn’t do anything about it. If I had the cure for cancer, at best I would write it on a napkin and send it to someone else in hopes they might bring some relief to those suffering. I’m not a superhero, I’m just pre-extinction biomass, with a frothy desire to surf. I’m stardust with a conscience, not much of one at that. While I went to a liberal university and learned the power of protest and often the futility therein, I also learned that apathy is where my heart is. You might compare making change in this world to eating an elephant, though I see it more like eating the whole herd and possibly the species to extinction, along with the zoo, the poachers and the conservationists. Throw in some Range Rovers full of tourists, no, safari photographers….one bite at a time, that’s how it’s done except I lost my appetite. Change happens too slow for me and thus things in California were the same as they ever were, or worse. 

But I made them better.

Nicaragua never called to me, until it did.  More like California was telling me to leave.  I would never have what my parents had, not without more advanced degrees, of determination and on paper. I had heard rumors, friends that had passed through Nicaragua and came back with tales of offshore winds and empty waves. The stories were true, but Nicaragua was a hard sell, Costa Rica was stealing the show at the time.  I'd been there a couple of times which was enough to fall in love...I had spent a good portion of my life in Mexico and I didn't want to leave that mistress. Nicaragua?! Wasn’t there a war going on? 

When the opportunity to live and work down here came along in 2011, I was a half hour CNN news update away from jumping off a cliff. I had spent my last two decades chasing ten days off a year to catch some warm water waves. When I got those fleeting chances, I was too out of shape and too pasty white to enjoy it. Day drinking eased the pain. The idea of  tasty waves and running a surf camp being my daily bread was all I needed. A salary, or some fraction thereof on top of it…sign me up. I loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.

Playa Miramar Nicaragua that is. I was offered a job as General Manager of Surf Tours Nicaragua. It was a (very) small business owned by and English fellow and his American wife. They had a small evil fuck trophy that was possessed by bad parenting. It wasn’t their fault, but it was their fault. Most of us try to discipline ourselves out of our biological children. They were just apathetic like me, but in a parental way. They hired me because life in Nicaragua was too much for mom, which meant she was leaving and that if he wanted to ever see her or his child again, he was leaving too…one man’s dream is another woman’s nightmare. I got the job. 

When contemplating my move out of the country I felt like I had two options. I could “tip-toe” down and feel the waters and see if I liked it enough to commit for the long term. Or I could dive in head first and see if the water was deep enough not to break my neck. In retrospect I basically took both pills, swallowed one and shoved the other up my ass; I sold everything, bought a sail boat, loaded it with what was left of my life and cast off into uncharted waters. I figured if the job worked out, great. If it didn’t, me and my floating Winnebago would head off to the next KOA. It was not the same as it ever was nor would it ever be, but that was fine with me.

It took one month and three days to get to Nicaragua from San Diego. The tale of the journey is another, longer story, this is the story of how did I get here? How did I get the beautiful wife and the beautiful house? The journey was the next step in my process. Deciding to make the move was the first bite of the elephant…chewy, gritty, definitely salty, but palatable, organic elephant.

The morning I arrived in Nicaragua, January 25, 2012, after that one month and three days at sea, I was about 5 miles off the coast of Salinas Grande, a beach to the North of Miramar,just outside of Puerto Sandino.  At the time I didn’t realize how much of my life I would spend at that beach and adjacent river mouth in the coming years, literally more than any other human on earth. The wind was howling strong and I wasn’t sailing, I was under motor. In fact I had to keep the motor at idle speed in gear just to stay in place. It was too rough to anchor, it was too dark to make landfall in an unknown and tricky place for navigation. I would find out just how tricky in the days and years to come. My watch was over at 4am…but I didn’t wake my crewman Paul. He was useless when awake, less so when asleep. I stayed up, smoked some cigarettes and listened to some music to pass the time. Yes, I smoked then, I drank even more...it was a pirates life for me. About 5am, light started soaking into the eastern sky, I glimpsed a new horizon for the first time. I added some rpm’s, enough to make headway against the seas and cued up some David Bowie. It wasn’t my plan to have Space Oddity crescendo as the sun cracked that  new horizon wide open on the last day of this cathartic journey, but it did. I was peaking on the blue pill as the red one kicked in. “This is ground control to major tom, you’ve really made the grade…”  Bowie sang to me, the wind howled, the sun rose, I cried, not a little, but a lot. It was a profound moment for me, a couple decades of depression released, the lead stress of the journey lifted at last. I smiled through it all. I didn’t completely understand at the time what it was, but I knew things were not the same. How did I get here? I was tired of the red and the blue pill. I wanted to take my protein pill and put my helmet on. I wanted to live where you go to vacation. I wanted to raise my children to be better than me. I wanted a reason, any reason to jump into the blue, hold my breath and make each day count.

And so my life entered a blur that won't stop 'till I die. I let the days go by; I surf, eat, surf, work, build, surf, sleep, and repeat. I smile frequently, I cry occasionally, I laugh all the time.  More than a decade has ticked off, one bite at a time, I got my appetite back. I run my business when it’s not running me.  I’m married to the country, my life is here now. I have a beautiful wife, a beautiful house, I drive a very large automobile. While it was Bowie who had me stepping through the door, it was Byrne who had me dive into the blue again, I let the water hold me down. It’s once in a lifetime, but it will never be the same as it ever was.