A glorious balm.
Yesterday, January 6, found me somewhere over the Atlantic watching Guy Ritchie’s surprisingly enjoyable latest Wrath of Man, en route from Milan to San Diego via Munich, Chicago and Los Angeles. I was thinking a few thoughts, how good Snatch was, how neck pillows are a complete joke and anyone who has one a sucker etc. but not thinking about the events of January 6 exactly one year ago.
For on that date, a swarm of people in Washington D.C., and here’s where it gets fuzzy, either “stormed” the United States of America’s capital in order to spark an “insurrection” or merely “got a little too excited” after listening to a speech.
Division.
This country is bitterly divided with family members coming to blows over varying points of view.
It is sad but hope is rising over the frigid north where surfers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan etc. have grabbed the spotlight by being so undeniably charming that it is impossible to ignore.
This past week, a storm percolated over Lake Superior causing 15-foot waves to fire gloriously and national news was there to cover.
A sample:
So early Wednesday morning, after working a 12-hour overnight shift at a Twin Cities refinery, Tyler Ray hopped in his car at 6 a.m., drove three hours north to the shore of Lake Superior, pulled his surfboard out of his car, slipped on a thick wetsuit and hit the waves — on no sleep.
“So I don’t even know how tired I am right now,” he said during a break from the frigid water, warming up in his idling car. “Because the waves are pumping, dude!”
Ray was among dozens of surfers who congregated at a well-known surfing spot called Stoney Point, about 15 miles up the Lake Superior shore from Duluth.
They bobbed in the water clad in black wetsuits, waiting to catch waves that crested as high as 15 feet, curling gracefully before crashing to shore.
Serious surfers in Minnesota like Ray are also self-described amateur meteorologists. They have to be to know when to catch the best waves, which occur after big storms, when the wind blows hard out of the northeast, across 350 miles of open water over Lake Superior — what surfers call “fetch.”
“And when it lines up like this, this is what you look for,” Ray said. “We haven’t had a low pressure come across like this in quite a while. So you can see everyone’s here because we’re just fiending for waves!”
Even the most-hardened insurrectionist/burner would be moved by the pluck.
The piece goes on to describe how movie star handsome Ben Gravy also showed up and he, too, is impossibly charming and divisions healed.
But does the footage (watch here) tempt you to travel north for your own taste?
It should.
