Wednesday, February 22, 2006

All in a day's .... play


I work every other weekend, and am currently on night shift (one more shift until I'm back to days - yay!). Weekends and nights I don't get to leave the hospital as we are basically working with a skeleton crew of just 3 nurses. The hospital has to have at least 3 nurses there at all times. This means no lunch hour. This also means that I am indoors for 12 hours at a time.....Additionally, if I am working nights, I sleep most of the day and then go to work at 6pm. Ultimately, this means I can spend 3-4 days in a row where I am indoors the whole time.

Why am I telling you all this - well, when I am on nights and I have a few days off, I want to spend all of my time outside. The last few weekends I had off I was playing from the time I got up until the time I went to bed.....

Last weekend I got a call waking me "we got a boat up to Ninje can you grab your surfboard and make it here in 5 minutes?" . "Yep, uh, I'm still in bed... Give me 10, can you bring me a granola bar?". Up, brush teeth... Bathing suit, shorts, flip-flops, throw sunblock, chapstick and surfwax, rashguard and booties in bag... Pull down my surfboard and I am out the door. (no coffee... I hope they're not out of diet coke in the machine)

After a few hours of surfing, we got back to the marina at 12:30, settled out and I headed back to my room. A message on my machine from another friend said we were meeting at the marina 3:00pm to go scuba diving at Troy's Coral head. Great dive. This coral head is known for the number of sharks that hang out there. Mostly Grey Reef, White tip and Black tip sharks. Usually there are a few Dogtooth Tuna hanging out with all the pretty reef fish and ugly schools of fish (the ugly fish are the ones the sharks and dogtooth are interested in - they're usually not too interested in us bubblemakers.)

The dive is a quick one, about 30 minutes underwater. We're back at the Marina by 5pm. Just enough time and light to head down to Camp Hamilton Beach and do a couple of quick runs windsurfing. I am still learning, so an hour on the water windsurfing will exhaust my arms, shoulders and back. I am still not using the waist harness successfully enough to reduce the physical effort of keeping the sail up and in position against the wind.

After windsurfing, we're meeting at a friend's house for dinner. Dinners on Kwaj are often a potluck style and include a grill, and some tasty beverages. There's nothing like sitting outside having dinner with your friends after a long day of playing.

Not every weekend is like this. Sometimes, you will often find me zipping home, wet and salty from the ocean to rinse off throw on some dry clothes and a pair of cleats to JUST make it to my softball game. This is why I love Kwaj.

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