the illustrious Bojon Conundrum - the notion that the more free time i have, the less free time i have - hounded me big time the last few days.
coming off of President's Day, i was dealing with a short week and a lot to do. i put together a tight To Do list, knowing that if i stuck to plan, i could get a fair amount done and still squeeze in a few quality surf sessions.
however, things started to go awry on wednesday when i dropped my cell in the parking lot while down at the beach checking the surf. now, of course, i had done this a million times before, but this time the phone went blank. totally dead. wouldn't boot up no matter what i did.
as anyone with a cell phone knows, the phone itself is a minor concern compared to the phone numbers programmed into the dumbass thing.
the irony here is that i'd lost this very phone no less than three times, but always managed to get it back, each time vowing to copy down all of the numbers. in fact, one late night i started MARCHING through this project. i got to the letter "J" before i got distracted.
anyway, after catching a few waves i cruised back to my house, tried a fresh battery and prayed to the cell phone gods, but came up empty. i then proceeded to go on a mini crusade to see if some service shop could work a little magic. four shops and three hours later, it became clear that all numbers from "K" on were gone.
so at this point, my weekly schedule was slipping badly. i decided to get an early start on things for thursday to try to restore some order. my plan was to hit the surf first thing and then get to work.
i drive a beater Subaru that strictly gets me to the beach and back.
thursday morning i decided i'd put in a little power steering fluid to address one of the humming noises the car was making. i released the latch on the hood and grabbed the car manual. however, the directions for the power steering fluid recommended driving the car first so the engine would be warm.
i figured i'd drive to the beach and put the fluid in there. ocean beach was no good so i rolled south along the great highway, and then merged onto the 1 to drop into pacifica. the road opens up a bit there, and i got the 'Bru going its max speed of about 60 down hill.
just as the road was about to level off an updraft caught the hood and opened it flush in front of the windshield. holy calamity, 60 mpg and no visibility. the very second the hood came up, it occurred to me that i had released the latch earlier and then never secured it.
shit.
somehow i managed to pull the car over to the side of the road without incident. fortunately the hood did not go flying over the top endangering other drivers. unfortunately, what probably kept the hood from doing so was that it crushed the end of my surfboard on the roof.
bummer.
went home to deal.
let's see, my normal surf repair guy's name is Lance. but with "K" on gone from my numbers, i had no digits for him. was referred to Lance by my friend McQ. no number for him either. finally found someone in the "A" through "J" range that had McQ's number. but McQ no longer had Lance's contact info. he suggested i call one of the local surf shops that had originally come up with Lance. did so, and they said Lance was no longer repairing boards, but they gave me the number to this guy mark down in none other than pacifica.
well geez, i'm not driving all the way back down to pacifica without getting in a surf, so i grabbed one of my other boards.
everything went relatively smooth from here, but i did not get back to my house 'til mid afternoon. at this point, the week's schedule was totally cooked. looks like i'll have to play catch up all weekend.
dawned on me that none of this would ever have happened if i had a traditional office job.
again the Bojon Conundrum makes its presence felt.
looks like i may have to grab a job one of these days just to get my schedule back on track.
on second thought, nahhhh!
Posted by bojon at February 21, 2003 08:19 PM