Always thinking

Deep sea fishing trip

Deep sea fishing: cool as it sounds, the reality was rather brutal. Open ocean is ruthlessly bumpy, the wave wall easily reached 10 ft, our little fishing boat was like a helpless leave blown left and right. I was actually excited the first 15 minutes out on the open water, until every cell of my body tells me to vomit and take a dump right away thereafter I had hidden in the tinest rest room on the planet for almost 2 hours: ocean made me so sick that I couldn't sit tight without holding on to the nastiest trash can for less than a minute, it, rather, looked like the lifelihood, rice bowl to me: I can not live without. By the time I came out, I was surprised to see the small cabin was filled with people living by the trash can, I could not move one inch further than needed so to make myself "comfortable" by Joanne who slept away due to seasickness as well. The air in the cabin became sore, smelly with all the throw up. Large amount of flies all of sudden came from no-where from the open ocean. All I could see and not stand the bumpy pictures of sea walls up and down the horizon. I thought lot of things: I realized how important the land is to fisherman, how tough a life and story the "old man and the sea" was made from. I realized all the people that I used to ignore at workspace shares with me the same lifehood: the boat; the same human reaction to mother nature. I am no longer better than them, I am only one of them, a selfish one.

When I was sick in the cabin, I knew the right thing to do immediately is to be against all my will and stand up on my feet and walk out to the deck and breath the fresh air and look out to the horizon: that is the only right thing to do to recover. It's easy said than done. Life is like this most of the time, when I have to do to walk across that line with all energy I have left and out I shall see the sunshine. I did though, at that point, smell is no longer a problem, cleanniess is no longer a problem, surviving is. I managed to walk out to the Sun and was so jealous of the people who not only could live through this wave, but catching the fish and having fun. I called the extreme that I could not surpass. There goes dozens seagulls: another creature that I related to at the time, the grace they carry while fly horizontally in sync with the ship and look at me and everyone else in the world, was simply amazing. They can land on the ocean whenever they feel like and comb through their leathers like nothing happened, while I was only managing to survive. What makes me better than anyone else, including animals? It's just difference, not comparison.

After we landed on the solid ground, Phil and I were cheering, this is where we call home, does not matter if it's 10000 miles from my actual home, does not matter if I have a family here, the ground, solid ground is simply the home.

Phil shares lot of insight with me on the way back, we talked about the racial differences and preferance, previous relationships throught the crowd and traffic of annual half moon bay pumpkin festival. He is single and he pumped out something like this:

"All I want is a girl who can leave me alone"

That is quite a classic male shoutout to ladies.

posted by Road less travelled @ 9:23 PM