When the whole "downed Navy pilot" thing got cleared up, I had to hit the computer hard for a few days to get some extra work in on a project. Brant took up the slack on the kiteboarding front, and we readied the rig for a visit from our friend, Jason, who was to arrive on Monday the 15th. Jason and Brant had lived together in Hanford once upon a farmhouse, and Jason was eager to come out and explore the underwater realm in the gulf: the foreign world of offshore oil rigs, and the national sanctuary of Flower Gardens. We were going to trip down to South Padre Island four hours away, where locals claimed the water was tropical blue, and a dive called Seven-and-One-Half-Fathom Reef was good enough to make it into the Texas dive books.
Between the kiteboarding saga and Jason's arrival, however, many things transpired. Brant, after an epic downwind run with his kiteboarding bud Jeremy, hopped off his board directly onto a Man-O-War jellyfish, and the thing greedily suckled his leg. He stumbled over to the nearest neighbor's house for some local treatment (I was still upwind with the rig). After telling him to rub his leg with sand to get out any remaining tentacle debris, the friendly neighbor disappeared into the depths of his house. He returned a few minutes later with the Texas remedy.
"I'm not a doctor, but this might help." He thrust a silver bullet towards Brant, who promptly took his medicine without argument.
Brant in severe pain from jellyfish encounter.
When we finally got all the kite stuff in the trailer, we headed to the market to grab some MSG, a sting solution necessity that somehow didn't make it into our first aid kit. Doh. They only had seasoned MSG, so Brant smelled like a pot roast from this little piggy to his knee cap, but the sting went away. Of course, that might have had something to do with the sambuca he had self-administered while I was in the grocery store, but I suppose we'll never know for sure.
We spent that night on the beach, at least until 3am, when the wind gusts of a sudden tropical storm blew over 50mph and pelted the side of the camper with gale force sand. The tiny grains worked their way into every crack and crevice while thunder boomed in the distance. We crawled out of restless sleep to drive off the beach seeking asphalt. As we made it back into the town on Padre Island, we saw transformers aglow and witnessed the ENTIRE town blink on and off while the storm played hide-and-seek with the electricity.
The storm switched the direction of the wind, so we had to get used to it all over again. We spent some of the weekend with Jeremy and Teresa, and alternated between Wal Mart and the Internet Cafe as campgrounds. Brant got more time on the water with his kite, and moved up several notches in the comfort scale, getting the hang of the gusts and getting a preview of the big air that lied in the future.
BP catching a little air.
We picked up Jason right on schedule on Monday, and headed down Tuesday morning for South Padre Island, in search of clear water and dive opportunities.
