Friday, November 12, 2010

Here Fishy, Fishy

This is our neighbor Ian. He's a little fellow. We like it when he comes over. If we have our door propped open, he will stand at the threshold and says "Fish. Fish." It's his way of asking if he can come in and look at our fish.

We always say yes just so that we can hear him say "Fish. Food. Fish. Eat. Fish."

He loves our fish.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I Gotta Guy

Sometimes I think that teachers teach the grade at which their development arrested. This is Noah. He teaches high school two doors down from me. He is a brilliant mathematician but he is just a big overgrown kid which is what makes him such a highly effective teacher.

Every time Noah prays, he ends with ". . . and we pray and play in your name. Amen." Which is pretty apropos. Noah is a great mentor to his highschoolers. So if he isn't teaching them math, there is a pretty good chance he will be praying or playing with them. Noah loves to surf, camp, cycle, hike, bike, play soccer, and all kinds of outdoor activities.

A couple of weekends ago, we slipped in the last camping trip of the season with Noah and his new wife. Noah brought along his new skim board. He spent the better part of the day playing in the shallow surf on his new skim board.

He recently bought his skim board over the boarder in Shenzhen for not very much money. Noah didn't buy it retail. He bought it direct from the factory. Shenzhen is a huge sprawling metropolis that has no bounds. But Noah's surfboard factory is on the far outer edges of Shenzhen. It took him over and hour to get there and the factory was little more than a couple of guys in an old brick warehouse, but they were hand producing some of the finest surf and skim boards.

Noah kind of failed to mention he was a school teacher. He didn't exactly misrepresent himself, but somehow they got the impression he was a businessman and Noah didn't correct them.

Noah's got aspirations. He's got visions of buying boards by the dozens and shipping them to the States where he will resell them for a tidy profit.

So if you are in the market for a new, handcrafted skim board, I got a guy.

Or better yet, if you are interested in being a distributor of skim and surf boards, I got a guy.


-Jack