Hello. It’s Me.

A hop, skip, and a jump across the country, but BambooBlister is back.

I’ve done just about everything possible to not write this right now. I vacuumed the apartment, did a load of laundry, made myself lunch… a cup of coffee… all of procrastination’s usual suspects. Heck, I even chugged and refilled my water bottle for no other reason than to delay the inevitable: my highly anticipated (just kidding) — my unremarkable return to BambooBlister. Did you miss me?

I write to you now from the 25th floor of a downtown Miami condominium. Who would have thought I’d end up here? 

There is a window beside my cherry-wood work desk that opens up to Biscayne Boulevard, a heavily trafficked street which traces the Biscayne Bay. I can’t sit here long without shifting my focus to the world outside, watching cars roll over the rainbow shaped bridges that lead east to the Atlatic. If I lean far enough back in my chair, I can see the splinter sliver of Miami Beach across the bay. But the groomed, white, man-made beaches are still hidden behind the buildings that line the shore like Secret Service Bodyguards.

It was hard leaving California. Leaving San Francisco. At first it stung. It stung like the first duck dive at Ocean Beach on a winter morning. Where the bone-numbing water searches for any crack in your armor to split you open. But that cold is quickly replaced by a deep heat that comes from holding your breath — even for just a few seconds — longer than you were ready for.  It’s that heat that boils inside you as your body begs for air, as if you have any control over when the ocean will let you up. 

It took me a while to pin down these feelings as I followed an endless strip of asphalt towards a rising sun. I was so surprised to feel them on land. I guess fear and loneliness can be as visceral as a cold water beatdown. 

For the next four days, I crossed the country in a packed car, counting the hours, driving further and further from the ocean that raised me. 

I floated through city after city with my ever-ambivalent beagle, Abby. We answered emails outside a Starbucks between LA and Phoenix in 117 degree heat, crossed a raging flash flood in El Paso, pulled over to watch a sunset in rural Louisiana, answered more emails in Mobile, Alabama, before ultimately arriving in our unfurnished Miami home.

While this transition, this big move from home, has been hard, I’ve since slipped into the gears of South Florida (it’s been three months after all).

Life here, even in this cramped metropolitan city, stuck between the everglades and a receding beach, is pretty beautiful. The wetness and the heat come together like a perfect potion and life absolutely oozes from every crack in concrete. But what I love here, more than anything, is that there is a tropical familiarity — with the similar foliage and the equatorial fragrance — that reminds me so much of my childhood on O’ahu. 

It took a bit of time, but I’ve actually made it in the water for a few surfs as well. I’d hoped to have surfed more, but thanks to the Bahamas, which surround South Florida and act like a ground swell forcefield, I’ve had to rely on a handful of encroaching tropical storms to power rideable windswell in an otherwise lake-like stretch of beach. 

But there was one day that I got it good (and by good, of course, I mean shoulder-high with 40mph onshore wind). Sitting at my desk, looking out of my window, I watched as heavy grey clouds — which looked just about ready to burst — came tumbling through the city from the east.

This almost immediately caught my attention. Not because of the capricious weather, I’m used to that, but because of the direction that the clouds were moving, and, and second glance, the speed in which they moved too. 

After performing a few quick calculations in my head, I ultimately derived a likely conclusion: It’s onshore as fuck. There might actually be some waves! 

After validating my findings on Surfline and was standing with my surfboard — in rush hour elevator traffic — in less than fifteen minutes. Your boy was going surfing!

Running down the beach (the opposite direction of fleeing tourists), I was absolutely sand blasted like some character from Mad Max. It didn’t help that my mid-length yanked me around with every gust it caught. Before long, I found myself literally laughing out loud at my sad struggle for mediocre waves.

Finally, at the shoreline, with my surfboard blowing like a kite connected to my ankle by my leash, I got my first good glimpse of the waves. 

“Well,” I thought. “I’m already here aren’t I?” 

Sitting outside of the relentless little sandbar (4 feet at 5 seconds), the conditions only seemed to worsen. There was sideways rain, endless salt spray, a ripping south-bound current. But there were also waves. And along with waves came the overwhelming excitement of sitting on my surfboard and picking out the next one to ride. 

If anything, the poor conditions may have even added to my exhilaration, the same way that a rainy day might add another layer of silliness to an otherwise mundane elementary school recess. 

With a greyed out, tie-dye sky overhead, I spent the next hour navigating Gatorade Frost Artic Blitz (the real ones know this flavor (?)) colored wedges and doubleups. Wave after wave after wave. Back like I never left. But I did leave. Right? 

It’s hard to express, even now, how much I needed that session at South Beach.

The thing is, I don’t need to surf every week, or every month, for that matter, to live a meaningful life. There are other things, people, and hobbies that bring me joy on a daily basis.

But what that stormy evening did was ensure me that I didn’t lose a very specific part of me when I moved across the country. I didn’t lose that childish, wide-eyed infatuation with waves and wave riding. 

I’m every bit now the same kid that was packed into the backseat of a minivan with his friends, heading to the beach. I’m the same kid that would surf Ma’ili twice before 10am. I’m the same kid that spent weekends at Half Moon Bay camped out in the back of his truck, still salty from the sunset surf. I’m the same kid who blocked out his calendar when Ocean Beach turned on.

I’m that same kid surfing through a tropical storm on a single-fin because some things just don’t change. 

There are so many different things that tie together the moments of a life. And I was afraid that moving from San Francisco to Miami would break some link that would set me adrift, untethered to the very thing that made me feel like me. The truth is, I’m not going to be able to surf much anymore. Not like I used to. But I’m not any less of myself because of it. 

---

It’s been a long time since I last posted to BambooBlister. So thank you everyone for being patient with me. But I’m back! Back like I never left.  But I did leave. Right?