Surf is Always Up

There's something so poetic about surfing.  

It's such a perfect sport.  Ugh, I can't even really call it a sport with a straight face.  Professional surfers are amazing athletes, but it's so far away from a competitive activity as most people can get from.  It's a zen activity, right up there with yoga.  It's meditative and quiet and rhythmic and  really quite spiritual.  It's also incredibly hard.  I suck at it, but I love doing it.  I'll get out there and get spanked by waves for two hours before hobbling in looking like a prune with my sinuses as clear as they could get and some nice abrasion from the multiple sweeps of the ocean floor that I've felt necessary.   

I know of no other sport that requires so little:  a board.  Some wax.  A rash guard.  Sigh, if you must insist on cold-water surfing, then yes, you need a thick wetsuit and boots and gloves and a hood, but, ugh, who would want to do that.

And also....you need a perfect wave.  Which, the beaches in Costa Rica are full of.

Nosara, where all the lovely yoga retreats are, has some great beaches.  We went from Nosara to Playa Negra and never saw a bad break.  The roads were amusingly poor to get from one beach to the other...they are more like trails and impassible during the rainy season.  Still, we had to cross three or four streams that crossed the road.  As much as I hate the idea of an SUV, it's a good idea to have something with 4 wheel drive and probably one of the very few places on earth where an SUV is actually useful.  

Nosara is a little crowded, but mostly with ultra-wealthy people there for a yoga retreat and a cleanse.  We found places to do walk-in classes and spent an afternoon breathing and stretching in the sea breeze.    

Oddly...I ran up to a beach vendor at Nosara thinking he would have ices or Popsicles or something in his cooler.  Nope.   Ceviche.  As much as I love raw seafood, I just am not craving it while sitting in the hot sun.

The most consistently amazing breaks are at Tamarindo, aka Tamagringo.  While most of the beaches here are secluded with rustic, washed-out roads, the streets were paved over here, leading to a huge influx of tourism and condos and dance clubs and pizza joints, and a nice man on a bicycle offered to sell me pot while he was cruising the beach.  Surf school and adventure camps line the strip, and the crowds that flock there have taken inspiration from the sloth.   Ahem, included lovelies like these:

Ignore the trash on the beach.  Or better yet, throw it out.  Walk down to the far end of the beach where the estuary is, and the thumping bass of the DJ starts to fade and you once again get a perfectly surfable beach.   

It's truly a gorgeous place, but one of the few spots where you will have to fight for a wave.

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Oh~  I almost forgot.  I found the most perfect beach bar in the world, I swear- Lola's at tiny Playa Avellanas.  It was perfect- comfy solid wooden chairs, hammocks and loungers all angled to take in the sunset while sipping your margarita and eating your ceviche (which is pretty much sashimi!) under the shade of mangrove trees and giant umbrellas.  Aas soon as the first mosquito bites, the bar closes down for the night.  It's one of the most blissful spots I've found.  

People Watching

Boats on the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg...

On a windy day, there is a line in front of the toy sailboat renter. The American children (ahem, the boys anyway) generally grow bored with the game quickly and try to bash the boats into sinking or ram each other's ship head on.

Chasing pigeons away from their food source is a Herculean task, as shown by these two. The pigeons here don't scare easily, and just make way for the annoyance while eating as fast as they can.

I knew the kid was American before he opened his mouth because of his striped shirt and beret paired with crocs. Adorable, but not something you see Parisian children wear ever.

Afterwards, a rest in the Tulleries, where an athletic couple was practicing their yoga for two. I'm sure the downstairs neighbors would complain if you dropped your partner too many times, and they seemed to enjoy the audience they were getting.

NYC Summer

New York, in summertime, is not without its pleasures. While I prefer not to be here once the weather is nice, I do find little moments of bliss that adds up to make my time here good.



Despite having a brutal July here and pretty much everywhere on the East Coast, August has been much more pleasant. Less humid, more blue skies. Big late afternoon thunderstorms to entertain you and perhaps scare the crap out of you.



Plus, with all the earthquaking and hurricaining going on, you can't really feel disinterested in your surroundings.





I am lucky that my office is very close to Bryant Park. It's a very nicely manicured and managed bit of public green space. It's very popular with the lunchtime crowd, but they also have lots of events and concerts and movies going on every day after work as well.

It will be a cold day in hell when I decide to eat an out of season tomato. It's just so gratifying when they finally ripen into perfect fat globes of tart-sweet flavor. The Heirloom Tomato BLT from the 'Wichcraft kiosk is something I fantasize about all winter. It's just lovely.



They recently installed courts to play Boule or Bocci.



I know I talked about this last summer, but it's really fun to do yoga in the park.





Having a crowd around you of 500+ doing more or less the same thing is an interesting experience. It gets a lot of curious on-lookers and a few pervy photographers really intent on capturing you at your awkward worst, so I try to get a spot deep in the middle of the crowd. The class is free on Thursday evenings, with a rotating cast of instructors and styles, but it mostly seems like Vinyasa is being taught. If it's hot enough out, it's instant Bikram.



It feels like everyone there is taking a collective sigh of relief as they try to shake off their day at the office. Despite the city noise as a constant, you start to block out the sirens and jackhammers and just enjoy the sun and warmth and the grass under your mat.

Defying Gravity

I've been doing yoga for ages now. When I get a good groove on with the instructor and style that I'm comfortable with, I absolutely love it. I like Iyengar and Vinyasa the best, Ashtanga and Bikram the least. After being in the office all day it's really nice to relax and have a good stretch. After, I feel more calm and collected and an eerie optimism creeps into my thoughts.

I joined a studio near my office that has a nice schedule of daily lunchtime classes. I got really excited when I found out they offered "Anti-gravity" yoga. I would highly recommend watching This Video from The NY Times.



It's so much fun doing yoga suspended from the ceiling and upside down. Having the sling supporting some of your weight means you can be more experimental with your poses, and not having the floor in your way really expands the amount of stretching you can do. It's also a killer workout. Lots of work for the abs and arms and shoulders lifting yourself up and holding yourself steady. There will also be no moments of passive rest as you always have to be actively balancing. It's quite the workout.

I know this is just novelty yoga, but the element of playfulness is refreshing. Hanging upside down from my legs on a swing is something I haven't done since I was a kid. It used to come so naturally as part of play, but now I hesitate to let go. It takes a minute to trust yourself to not fall before you can let gravity take over.

Also, the hammocks are made from silk. Gorgeous, drapey, lustrous silk. How can I resist the silkworm's siren cry?

New York, Event Horizon

There is a public art exhibit going on in New York right now called "Event Horizon". It's a bunch of life-size naked-ish male human forms just standing around. Some are on rooftops (which have caused people to call 911 to report jumpers) but most of the statues are in and around Madison Square Park.

This kid was sitting at the foot of one of the statues, screaming his head off.





It cracked me up.

I've been doing this fun Thursday night yoga in Bryant Park for 3 years now. It's very chill and relaxed. I like the idea of doing yoga outside on a lawn, and because hundreds of people are doing it around you, it makes me less upset/distracted of the hundreds of people watching and taking pictures of everyone when they are in happy baby pose. Perverts.

That said, it would be cool to get good photos of hundreds of people doing yoga in the middle of New York. I'm too shy to start snapping away during, so here's some pre-yoga shots.







It's really amazing to see the city at a different angle as well....



...like upside down