Wind and Waves

Greetings from Corpus Christi. Nancy has a conference here this week, so me and the boys tagged along. We're here until Friday and are having a wonderful time.

We have a hotel on Ocean Drive, right on the seafront. There are many miles of ocean front paths snaking along the coastline which I will explore on my morning run tomorrow.

It was very windy when we arrived this morning, but our room has sliding doors which overlook a huge indoor entertainment area in the hotel. There's an indoor pool, a hot tub, pool tables, air hockey, shuffleboard and table tennis, plus a huge kids climbing gym which includes a ball pit. Very handy.

Gav, Dylan and I explored Corpus this afternoon, and Dylan had his first experience of being dipped in the ocean - he was none too certain about the whole thing!!! We picked up some sandwiches, cookies and strawberry cheesecake for lunch and parked up by the seafront to eat them. We all enjoyed watching the surf hit the seawall, and we all tucked into the cheesecake with relish!!!

When Nancy finished with her conference for the day, I took Gavin swimming in the pool and we had a wonderful time playing "shark". The hotel is pretty busy, but we had the pool all to ourselves. Then this evening we went out to Longhorn Steak and Ale House for steak and margaritas. It's a local eatery that has a wonderful reputation, and it certainly lived up to it - both the steak and the margaritas were excellent.

We got back to the hotel around 9:30 and it had started raining, the wind had picked up and the surf was roaring. I stood on the seafront watching the waves, and it wasn't hard to imagine I was back in Wales - there to my left could have been Swansea bay, stretching all the way across to the Marina, with Mumbles and the lighthouse off to my right, lost somewhere in the night.

Ah, a nostalgic moment.

And then I realized that it's been many years since I'd been night swimming. I gazed at the waves and felt the wind blowing into my face and through my hair. I threw my head back, looked up at the night sky, breathed in the salt air, felt the pull of the ocean, and knew I was going to go in.

So I did.

Gavin came in with me. He'd never been in the ocean at night.

He loved it - of course he did, he's my boy.

It was wonderful.