A New Surfboard

On this "yoga" blog that seems to be less each day about yoga and more about yummy food, chickens and honey bees, lets talk about one of my rarely mentioned passions, surfing!  I never write about surfing, there is something that happens in my mind when I am surfing that takes me out of language and memory and transforms me into pure instinct and existence.  I also find surfing to bring out all sorts of editorial in me due to the bizarre mix of deep connection to nature and deep disconnect with fellow man.  There is a lot of negative energy in the water from the other surfers.  A lot of egotistical, macho bullsh#t!  I guess instead of writing commentary on how annoyed I am about something I witnessed in the water I simply skip the subject. 

Sharing a Wave with my Best Friend

But surfing is also a deep source of love for me.  I met my husband many years ago while sitting on a bench, looking at the surf.  We surfed together that afternoon and many, many times since.  He has probably made me 15 surfboards or so and together we have surfed in many exotic and sometimes unusual places like Ireland, Italy and Peru.  In two weeks we leave for our third European surfing safari.  First we will have a city tour of London where Tim will be having a solo show at D*Face's gallery, Stolen Space.  The show will be an exposition of Tim's Andy Warhol Surfboards.  

He built the most amazing crate last week to ship the ten Warhol surfboards plus our own personal surfboards for the safari.  We have a system when we travel in response to the high expense of traveling with surfboards, at the end of the trip we sell out boards on location.  Sometimes this even generates a new foreign repeat customer!  This trip I have a problem, all my boards have such aesthetic and sentimental characteristics and value for me that I'm not willing to part with any of them!  Tim's solution, a new board for me to take to Europe and sell to the Portuguese market!  It's exciting to have a conversation with a shaper to determine the size and characteristics of your new board.   And even more exciting to watch the board come to life under his artisanal care.  And its even more exciting to surf great waves with all of that experience in tow!

It starts with a block of foam and some numbers

Creating the design

The asymmetrical tail design

Square noses are all the rage this season

Perfecting the design

 The finished product and the bag she'll be shipped in.

I'm ready!

Paraguay1994

I've created a new blog, Journey to Paraguay.  It is photographs of the pages from my journals during a six month study abroad program when I was 15.  It will be honest, naive, painful and inspiring.  I hope you enjoy a flip through the pages of my past.

Pizzelle Cookies

My husband and I love to go shopping at swap meets and second hand stores.  Wherever we travel, if we see a thrift store will stop and take a look.  At home we often check out Kobey's Swap Meet to wander the rows for treasures.  Last Saturday on a table marked all items $3 I spotted an interesting dessert iron, like a waffle iron, but for a this round cookie shaped like a lace doily.  Unfortunately it was missing a cord, hence the great price.  It would need a very specific cord, so I didn't see the point of purchasing an essentially useless item.  My husband though saw the potential and had cash out in seconds, telling me he had just "put me in business."  Sure enough, within just a few minutes of getting home he had somehow taped together a replacement and the iron was heating up!  I  cleaned her off, she had a name on top, "Pizzelle."  A quick google search and I had a recipe.  The first batch turned out great!

For the second batch I changed up the recipe adding cacao.  I rolled the cookies quickly when still hot.  Later when they cooled I dipped the ends in melted chocolate and served filled with vanilla bean whip cream and some fresh raspberries.  My family was all smiles and love that night!

Amazing things I've learned recently about Queen Bees

The Queen's body is twice the length of the worker bees and with a tapered point.

In a colony of bees, only the Queen can lay eggs that will become females, that is, future worker bees and future queens.  The worker bees can also lay eggs, but they are unfertilized and that makes them males, or drones, which have only a small function in the survival of the colony.  When the colony wishes to raise new queens, they form a special droplet shape form of honey comb and they feed the larvae there royal jelly, a substance worker bees secrete from a gland on their head.  The queen is fed this royal jelly directly to her mouth throughout her life, it is all that she eats.  Regular bee larvae are fed a diet of honey and pollen known as bee bread.  In Southern California wild bees are Africanzied, the so called killer bees.  They are more aggressive than european honey bees.  Capturing a wild hive, rescuing it from an undesirable place on someone's property, is a great way to support the bees in this time of crisis for bee populations.  But a rescued colony of bees should be re-queened to help calm there genetic disposition. If you replace an African Queen  with a European Queen, in about a month the genetics of the entire colony will be transformed!  You order a Queen from a bee breeder, in the Spring you can go ahead and order a whole colony of bees, thousands of bees and a queen, or you can just order a queen who is shipped in a tiny cage with a few attendant bees who feed her and keep her alive.  They are kept in their cage with a candy or sugar plug that they slowly eat.  Replacing the Queen isn't easy, you can't just drop her in the hive, they won't recognize her and they will kill her.  First you must find the existing Queen and execute her.  Finding the Queen is like playing a very complicated game of Where's Waldo, but in this game you have to wear lots of heavy clothes and all of the Waldo's can sting you!  It has recently taken me three hive inspections to finally discover my queen, pull her out, and give her the royal smoosh.  Once you have eliminated the queen, you leave the hive without a queen.  The bees will begin to detect her absence, they will know that there is no longer a Queen I they will try to raise a Queen by feeding royal jelly to some of the larvae.  After a few days you place the new queen in to the hive, but still in her cage.  The bees will begin to smell her pheromones and after a few days of eating at the sugar plug, it will open up and she will be released from her cage.  Hopefully they have grown accustom to her scent and will accept her as they know they are in need of a Queen.  You must manage there possible creation of new Queen cells, pinching them off and discarding them.  If new Africanized Queens emerge, they will probably kill the new queen.  In a half hour I will drop my queen into her new hive and say a prayer for her success and survival.  My Queen has been neglected, it has been so difficult for me to find the feral queen that my poor European Queen has been in her cage a week.  She is still alive with one attendant, but the other attendants are in a pile on the bottom of the cage, dead.

Work is made easier with new gloves and a frame gripping tool

A happy comb!

Placing the Queen cage in the comb, this work also made easier with new technology, a rack made of cinder blocks

The beeswax easily holds on to the plastic cage

Replacing the top bars, I numbered them so I won't make a mistake

Smoking the bees as I press the bars together so as not to squish any bees

Well I opened the hive, so much brood cell!  A drastic difference from what I have been seeing in my other hive.  I didn't see any queen cells forming yet.  I installed the Queen in the middle of the hive in comb with lots of brood cells.  I reunited with an old friend from high school and he got some photos as well as a video in which I am so excited by what I see I am basically at a loss for words.

In 2 or 3 days I'll open the hive again and see if the Queen has been released from her cage.

Blessings tos the Queen, may she be healthy and vital for many moons.