Hanna Update

UPDATE: So far so good - the only excitement at my house has been a power surge that apparently "fried" one of my air-conditioning window units not withstanding a surge protector and temporarily knocked out my Internet access. Unlike 20,000+ customers, I at least still have power.

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As the metro radar image at left shows, the rains have arrived from Tropical Storm Hanna and the winds are likewise building. Looking at the Virginia Beach surf cams on Surfline (it takes the cam a few moments to go live), the ocean is a mass of white water and what surfers often describe as a "washing machine." Virginia Beach will receive the strongest winds at Oceanfront and Norfolk's main worry will be flooding as Hanna passes directly by later in the day around high tide.

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The worse rain should arrive in a few hours. Between high tide and the surge of water pushed into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads harbor (which backs up the city storm drains), the rain water will have nowhere to go. Parts of Ghent may look like a lake before the day is out. Given the predicted level of the storm surge, my boyfriend's beautiful home should be fine. He had very extensive damage when Hurricane Isabel pass through in September, 2003.

My Last Cure Attempt

My reader, Peter’s comments about religion reminded me of my last serious attempt to throw myself into religion and “cure” myself of my same sex attraction. With my son’s learning to surf getting me into the sport, and finding myself spending time on surf trips with him and some of his friends, I thought a good program for them (and me) would be Christian Surfers, a world wide organization originally founded in Australia with numerous US chapters (http://www.christiansurfers.com/). It seemed a good way to keep the boys out of mischief and to provide a counterweight to the spaced out surfer dude mentality sometimes found in the surfing community. Moreover, the chapter took surf trips and did a Saturday morning bible study followed by surfing in the summer. For me, I thought the Bible study and focus on faith would be helpful in achieving the enigmatic cure I sought.

Soon my son and were very involved in the Virginia Beach chapter, which was headed by a gorgeous young married guy (who has now moved up in the organization). Not only was he physically beautiful and charismatic, but he was also one of the nicest guys I have ever known. Eventually, I was even one of the assistant directors of the chapter. My "cure," however remained illusive. You guessed it – instead of curing my “secret affliction,” I was now utterly infatuated with the chapter leader. After one Christmas gathering, he hugged me and I absolutely thought I was going to faint.

My quest for a “cure” largely ceased after this – no matter what I did or how hard I tried, God simply would not allow me to be “cured” and seemed to just put one obstacle in front of me after another. The falsity of the promise that God can cure you of being gay and the cynical way that the Christianist far right plays upon the desire of so many of us to conform and/or be what our families want, is nothing less than a travesty. The simple fact is that God makes some of us gay for God’s unknowable purposes. To try to change God’s handiwork is, in my view, a form of blasphemy.

Surfing Can Be Scary

This weekend was another one of no decent waves and/or crappy weather. I seriously need to get back into surfing regularly, both for (1) the therapy aspect - when you are our in the line up, especially in larger waves, all focus is on the ocean and waves (and ocassional eye candy) - and (2) the good exercise aspect. The photo above - which I call "Huge Hatteras" - is deceiving unless you realize that the shore break was about 8 feet where it was hitting the beach.

The photo is from a surf trip to the North Carolina Outerbanks (Pea Island area) about five summers back that some of us from Christian Surfers (the story of my membership to be discussed in a future post) took when a hurricane was about 300 miles offshore and generating huge surf of at least 15+ feet. My son and two of his friends were along with me. I seriously thought I was going to drown that day when I was slammed by a rougue wave out at the farthest break zone and taken almost all the way down to the bottom.

I decided after that episode that I'd leave the really big waves to others.