The Story of How We Lost Our Surfboard

The following blog contains two stories recounting two different views of the way that we lost our surfboard.

Tara’s Version

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Thanks, Tara, for that lovely version…although it really just sounded to me like an odd mix between Life of Pi, Blue Crush, and some Nicaragua names and events…. But anyway…moving forward with the second version.
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Jana’s Version

A few months into my time here in Nicaragua I discovered that we have a surfboard in our house. Even though I hadn’t seen the actual surfboard, I knew of her presence by the large, surfboard-shaped case half shoved into our “attic” (aka a hole in between our ceiling and roof where some rats and a few dust bunnies have made their homes) and also through the telling of a few stories about some JVs riding her in past years. Apparently she (the surfboard) had come to reside in our house a few years back when some German guy left her here, saying that he would come back later. Well, he never came back.
She was ours.

Apart from Thomas and Sean using her a couple years ago, really the surfboard just stayed there in her bag collecting dust and not calling any attention to herself. She had been forgotten, neglected, uncared for. (In our defense, trying to get a surfboard on a bus to go anywhere in Nicaragua wouldn’t be exactly the easiest task…)

But then suddenly her opportunity came!...in the form of a US delegation from Kentucky that was here for a week doing work with Hand in Hand Ministries. We were invited to go along with them in their large bus to the beach for a day.

 That morning before being picked up, we were all hurrying around trying to get ready.
 Sunscreen. Check. Hat. Check. Towel. Check. Dry clothes to change into. Check.
I was standing there ready—or so I thought. As I stood there, I started thinking, “Now if only I had something to float on…” I knew we didn’t have a boogie board…and our air mattress has a hole in it so that wouldn’t work either... Then suddenly I remembered the surf board! My middle-of-Texas-born-and-raised self had never ridden (much less touched) a surf board before, but ni modo. I was sure I could learn. I skipped back to the half-showing, half-forgotten surfboard and pulled her down…and along with her, at least 2 years-worth of dust. After I brushed the case off with a broom and could finally breathe again, I opened it up. And there she was, a bright yellow color with quite a lot of wax and sand still left on from her last usage.

Everyone else in our house looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re really going to take that!?” Chelsea questioned. “You should call first to make sure there is enough room,” Eva stated. “You do you,” Tara chimed.  “Awesome!!”  Cynthia exclaimed.  So following their advice, I called to make sure it was fine. Ed said they’d see what they could do, and when the moment of truth came, she easily slid between the rows of seats. And we were off. 

When we arrived at the beach, I was eager to try out this surfing thing. I had already enlisted Tara with her infinite surfing experience (1.5 surf lessons in New Jersey) to teach me all I needed to know. I unzipped the bag, pulled out our yellow surfboard, and we walked her out to the beach (Tara showing me the correct way to walk with a surfboard). Once out there, Tara said we needed to clean off a lot of the old sand and wax that had basically melted in the heat of Managua days into a thick coat covering the top of the board. We had nothing with which to scrape it away so we tried our best with pieces of seashells. Then Tara told me what mas o menos I needed to know in order to move myself from the laying down to standing up positions. I tried a couple times, already realizing that this was going to be way harder than I had expected.  We then screwed the fins in (again, something I didn’t know about surfboards), and started to head out to the water. But right then there was a snap, and we realized that her poor old and brittle leash had broken. Lame….But I was determined. 

This determination lasted for about 20 more minutes… Tara and I got into the water and she tried to teach me how to duck under the unwanted waves…although according to her none of them were really ideal that day. I tried what she said and mostly just ended up getting a lot of water up my nose and having my contacts swish around on my eyeballs. Also, en general I was having a hard time balancing on top of the board, falling every which way even when there were no waves. A few times the board flew out of my hands, and since she was not connected to my body, she went sailing away from me, causing me to have to chase after her.  I decided to give it a rest for a while. Maybe the waves would be better later. Maybe I would suddenly find some inner source of balance later. Besides, Tara was getting out for now and she could take the board back to shore with her.

Chelsea, Eva, and I were frolicking in the water when we suddenly see Tara waving her arms at us as if we needed to get out. We move towards her thinking maybe there was a shark or something, but she instead informs us that there was a 6.6 level earthquake that had just happened a few miles down from where we were, and that now the whole beach was on a Tsunami watch. We packed up our things and got ready to evacuate. I slid the still wet and sandy board hurriedly back in her case and we walked to the parking lot. They told us that we only had to drive up to a hill a few miles away and wait 15 minutes to see if the offshore buoys detected tsunami activity. If no, we could return back to the beach. I assumed we would be back soon enough. This was the reason (along with the fact that we had to fit a few extra beach-goers into our bus) that I left our priceless, antique surfboard near the bathrooms on the beach.  We would be right back…no big deal. 

Well, I was wrong. We got up to the safe point and we let off our extra passengers, and the leader of the delegation decided that we should just go ahead and leave now. It wasn’t worth our time sitting around for who knows how long until someone decided it was potentially safe.  So in the overly concerned delegation fashion we continued driving…away from the water…away from the beach…away from the 13 inch “Tsunami” wave that we later found out was the final result of the earthquake…and finally away from our surfboard.

So in the end…. I never learned to surf,
                              we now have no surfboard,
and we are left with a gaping empty hole in our “attic” for even more rats and dust bunnies to fill.

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So, which story do you prefer to believe?

You are free to decide. We like both….and so it is with God.