The Life of Pizza John

I never knew how poor of a country Nicaragua was until I got the chance to experience it.  It was a life changing experience.  These people have nothing, live in what might as well be cardboard boxes, but are so happy.  I didn't run into a single person who spoke any English so I got a chance to really work on my Spanish skills (or lack of). This was mainly a surf trip so Corey and I spend most of the time at a surf camp near the beach.  We got a  chance to meet some other cool surfers and also had a lot of time where we were the only people in the water.  That was amazing.  It doesn't get much better than surfing an awesome break without crowds. The house we stayed in was all screened in and had no AC or much of anything else.  It was run on Solar Panels so we really had to conserve energy.  We could use fans while we slept, but other than that we didn't use much power.  There was a pool table, so while taking breaks from the hot su...

March 13th rolled around again so it was time to head up to New Jersey to do a little surfing with Mike.  I met the new baby boy, spent some time with Georgie, surfed in freezing cold temps and went to work in the city for a day. When Mike and I left his house on Thursday, it was snowing.  I'm glad Mike had an extra 5mil wetsuit with gloves, booties and hood because my 4/3 wasn't going to cut it.  If I remember right, the water temp was around 38 and the air temp was around 33.  I never thought I would be surfing in freezing weather like that!  With the right gear, the first hour wasn't too bad.  My body never got cold, but my face and hands started to feel like they were going to fall off around 50 minutes into it.  We caught some small waves and had a fantastic time.  The coldest part was getting out of the wetsuit in the blistering wind!  I had a great time, but the next time I will be surfing in cold weather like this will probably be n...

A couple pictures I wanted to share... Daria and I at a Daddy-Daughter dance: Daria Kicking my butt at Go-Stop: Lanterns! Ice Skating in Florida! Disneyworld 2013: Daria's first Track Meet: A Wedding: Daria's art got selected for an art show: Daria's first 5k, she got 3rd place in her age group! My new (used) car! Cinco De Mayo with the coolest people in the world:

I finally got to spend some quality time in Hawaii!  I left the day after Thanksgiving and stayed through the first week of February.  It was a wonderful trip and I hope to do it again.  Corey got the chance to come out for the month of January.  We had our rough spots, but overall we made it work. I surfed almost everyday, but had to take a little time off for injury.  On a day when it was too big (at least triple overhead if not more), I paddled out to the point and watched.  I made the mistake of trying to catch a couple waves and getting caught on the inside.  When I should have ditched my board, I tried to duck dive and got smashed.  My board got ripped out of my hands and I hurt my shoulder pretty bad.  This is when I had to take some time off.  I learned a valuable lesson that day... Luckily, I have a great friend Adria who hung out with me and taught me the best two player game I have found to date. 'Go, Stop' a Korean Flower...