This Padre Island surf isn’t the best but the wind here is usually strong and steady.
Kite surfers combine kites and surfboards and hitch themselves to the wind for free rides, skimming the top of the surf like stones thrown across the top of a lake’s surface.
Wearing wet suits, their rides today last as long as this wind lasts, and, in South Padre Island, the wind is no hundred pound weakling.
An older surfer with a red kite laments that there ” isn’t enough wind ” as he holds a finger up to test which direction it is coming into the beach.
Regardless of misgivings , he still gets his kite aloft, follows it into the surf, lays back, and lets his kite pull him upright. It appears, as I watch him, that he is moving quick, parallel to the beach, his kite blasted by the breezes
Letting nature pull you for a free ride is hard to beat.
Sharing the water with others who love what you love is also fun. There are several of these kite surfers out there, taking care not to run into each other.
Last time I looked, we live and play in a paradise.
Early, gold hunters show up with wading boots, windbreakers, wide brimmed caps, sunglasses, their gold detectors dipped into frothy water.
The sky, water, and beach run together like a tightly edited film. Everything in this landscape moves but seems to stand still. Clouds blow past, waves roll in, seagulls take flight. A raven stops on a fence. Shell seekers prowl and the gold hunters are left alone with their devices.
They wear headphones that keep their ears listening for upticks, bleeps of sound, excited electronics. All movement cancels itself out, like white noise on a television. If you are still and look straight ahead, all you hear is the wind and all you see is the horizon – frozen in the moment.
Spanish galleons crossed these waters in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries taking gold from the America’s back to Europe. For as much as was lost at sea, many times more got safely back to vaults and banks and the King’s Treasury.The gold funded wars, New World exploration, luxurious court lifestyles, foreign affairs, palaces. Merchants became rich, pirates created legends, and their names were stolen by professional football teams.
While our prospectors move methodically, a middle aged surfer adjusts his gear and prepares for another trip out.
” Not very big waves, ” I suggest.
” They are big enough,” he smiles, ” I am a beginner. ”
Beginning anything new in your fifties is something to write about. This much older than a teen shows me his black wet suit that helps insulate him from the cold Gulf of Mexico water.
Who is to say who is having more fun – those hunting gold, swimming, or riding waves on a surfboard?
It is a gorgeous day where land meets sea, whether you are on sand or in the water.
Old dogs are always learning new tricks.
Sand is the most common material on the beach.
While we walk on it, draw initials or hearts with arrows through them, there are those who use sand to sculpt fantastic visions.
Outside Pier 19 in South Padre Island there is a sand sculpture. There is sand art in front of the visitor center on Gulf Shores Drive. Even some creations done on the beach ,by anonymous hands, take ideas further than a small bucket, a plastic shovel, and a kid’s hands and imagination can ever go.
There are those who say we humans are sand, but gifted with mobility, speech, and the breath of life. We are walking dreams, puffs of smoke, fireflies on a dark evening, mermaids doing the backstroke on a midsummer night’s swim. Shakespeare, as a writer using sand instead of words, would have built incredible sand castles surrounded by moats and topped with colorful flags. On the plains outside the moat would be raging battles ,and, in the highest towers ,huddled men would plot while women played lutes and whispered court scandal.
Sand in Michaelangelo’s hands would turn into lightning bolts flung from the hands of God’s.
This mermaid and porpoise make good companions. Flowing lines are always more peaceful than straight ones. This couple defines contentment and commitment.
They are waiting for the Sorcerer that froze them in time to relent.
Isla Blanca Park, at the south end of South Padre Island, is full of recreational vehicles that are more homes than campers.
Snowbirds come down here to the tip of Texas for months, unfold carpets in front of their rigs, set up lawn chairs, bring out plants and yard ornaments, and congregate with friends to talk about fishing, the direction the country is going, kids, and the past more than the future. The fifth wheels, motor homes, trailers are mostly new with multiple slide outs that gleam in the sun. On the drive down many acquire a coat of road mud, grime, and fallout from hundreds of miles traveling down from Canada, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan.
This morning men clean one of our neighborhood RV’s from top to bottom. After the wash, they hand wax and polish till this unit looks like it did when it came off its showroom floor.
Dave, who brought his Air stream trailer, contracts them to wash and wax his truck and trailer for a hundred and thirty dollars using a special Air stream wax. Three Mexican contractors finish it in half a day.
Like at the Happy Trails Resort in Surprise, vacationers are not concerned with the nationality of the men or their wives or girlfriends doing the job. They are here, ready to work, have tools and experience, and turn out service that gets them referred all the way down the street.
RV’s, like boats, take hands on attention.
Being retired comes with responsibilities to do as little as you can for as cheap as you can get someone else to do it.
People love dogs.
Dogs behave as we humans should behave. They are loyal, patient, love unconditionally, and show affection.
Many retirees who pull their Rv’s to the Isla Blanca Park in South Padre Island, Texas do so because they don’t want to leave their dogs home with strangers or alone in a kennel with other dogs where they pick up a lot of bad habits. It makes economic and moral sense to take your dogs on vacation with you because dogs are family from the first day they adopt you.
This morning two adults walk two dogs. Even though leashes bind animals to their masters, one senses the leashes could be released, the dogs would scamper, but ultimately return to their masters sides where they belong.
This morning humans wouldn’t think about letting their best friends run away from their side.There is a $2000 fine if dogs are found running loose and the beach is patrolled by uniformed men in official trucks.
People love dogs more than money, but not by much.
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