At the End of the Road…

And for a moment, life seemed simple…

There’s nothing like seeing a place for the first time…Imagination and reality collide, with fresh eyes soaking up the colors, sounds, smells, and details that make a place its own. Surprise lurks everywhere when the mind is untainted by familiarity! I’d spent a day and half resting and cleaning Swell; it was time to go ashore and stretch my legs… I lowered my rusty ol bike into the dinghy and headed ashore…

From a glance at the chart, this stretch of the atoll looked to be about 6 miles long…Perfect for an afternoon cruise, and good rehab for my knee. So off I peddled, the trades at my back, each new vision sparkling before me like a jewel. To my left, the afternoon sun lit a line of dancing palms, as if on stage, while to my right the same ocean I had braved to arrive there, tossed and frothed and heaved itself upon the fringe of bare coral. I peddled past an airstrip, some scuba diving clubs, the odd restaurant, a hotel, a school, and then found myself in the heart of a tiny town. Not a soul stirred. The few shops were locked and closed. Sundays are obviously taken quite seriously. But further on down the road, some families hung on the beaches. An older couple fished with handlines from their canoe in the lagoon, while naked kids pushed old tires back and forth across an old dock. In that moment life was simple…

I wound on through town, and then out toward the pass, stopping to chat with a group of curious teens looking like they were on their way back from a surf… “Right up there,” they pointed towards the point. I came around the corner and nearly fell off my bike…light offshores grooming a set wave as it peeled off across the reef. Unable to contain my excitement, I went to rap with some locals who looked to have already had their fill…

“What!?!? It’s going off?!” I said the equivalent of in French. They smiled and agreed. I eyed his board.

“You want to go?” He asked. “Yeah!?!” I said, literally jumping at the offer. “My board too big for you,” he said, nodding towards a young kid coming out of the water with something shorter under arm…