Sayulita Christmas 2018

This year, above all others we have spent living in Mexico, is filled with a crazy amount of anticipation.  Why is this year any different?  2018 is the first year we will spend in our new house, Casa Pōno.  No doubt that there is STILL lots of work to be done but this year's holiday season will be spent under our own roof.  Something that has not happened since before we left Utah in 2011.  Ashley will be home for an extended time this year.  With our house in Park City selling in November she will not have to run off to pump more hours into the Delta Airlines machine during the holidays.  She will be able to just sit and enjoy her family, our new house and a glass(ok, a bottle) of Christmas cheer this year.  So much to be excited and thankful for this holiday season.

Trace chilling in front of the "fire" in a T-shirt and board shorts.

Christmas Eve we headed over to our friend's, the Cawrses, house for our traditional yearly get together and dinner.  Joined once again by the Kruegar family it is always a night filled with overeating and lots of "cheer".  If we have one holiday tradition it is the Christmas Eve dinner we spend with these two families and it is always a pleasure to just hang out with all these great folks each year.

So what is Santa bringing this year?  As always the grandparents and friends were generous with their gift giving.  For Ashley and myself just getting the house finished will be more than present enough. But with the Park City house bills a non-factor this year we admittedly have gone a bit overboard as far as the kids are concerned.  We have been super conservative over the years when it came to the kid's gift giving which has actually been a good thing.  With the kids continuing to dedicate themselves to their SUP Team, compete, getting good grades and getting great reports from their teachers we felt it was finally time to get them their own 12'6" race boards.

SICMaui RS boards for our racers.

But, of course, everything that is worth doing in Mexico has to have a story behind it right? Well, this one does too and I will try to make it short...but it won't be.

Friends of ours, Mia and Shane, who we have casually known for several years from surfing in Punta Mita made the move this year to live down here half the year.  They represent the sup/surf brands BIC Sport and SICMaui up north where they are from in Vail, Colorado.  With their seasonal move they were also starting a SUP tour business here called Performance Stand Up Paddle.  Ashley ran into them while visiting some other friends and asked them a little about the race boards they had with them.  We had recently considered getting the kids their own gear but the number of race specific SUP suppliers was fairly limited here and having something custom made locally would take months to get done.  They were now the area's company reps for these two brands and were going to try to bring SIC/BIC to the west coast of Mexico.  We were all to happy to work with them and be one of the few in this area to be on the SICMaui brand and so we ordered up two boards for the kids.

Virtually all the kid's entire SUP Elite Team have purchased or acquired their own boards to train on.  The trick is that to save time and a bunch of money in shipping, taxes etc Ashley needed to get two 12'6" boards and bags to the airport in the USA, persuade the ticket agent to ignore the fact that they both exceed the airlines' length limitation policies and get them through Mexican customs without getting hassled along the way.

The first step was to get the freight company to deliver the packages that were coming from Massachusetts, USA at a time when she just happened to be in Atlanta long enough to receive them.  This was not like waiting for a package from Amazon delivered by UPS.  The freight company ended up being very accommodating and coordinated with Ashley for delivery.  They even brought an 18 wheel freight truck to Ashley's crash pad during a window of time when she was sure to be there to hand off two super large boxes containing the kid's new boards.  Step one done!

The kid's new boards safe at Ashley's crash pad.

The boards sat for a bit in Atlanta .  As Ashley's return trip home approached the stress of actually getting the boards to the airport and down here to Mexico began to grow.  During that time she did manage to get the "ok" from a special services agent at the airport concerning the size of the packages.  She also scored a ride from one of her crashpad room mates to help get the boards to the airport.  Two potential bumps along the way figured out.

The day before Ashley's arrival in Mexico for the holiday the airplane she was working had a mechanical issue and was grounded in Rochester, New York.  Noooooo!  All this planning, anticipation, stress and mom may not even make it home with Santa's special packages!  The plan for the crew was to have them stay the night and hand over the flight to another crew then catch an early morning flight out of Rochester back to Atlanta.  That was just NOT going to work!  As soon as Ashley realized she might be stuck in Rochester for the night and miss her flight home to Mexico the next morning she started looking for a way to get back to Atlanta.  There was one last flight to Atlanta that day and she was able to get a seat on that last flight and was back in Atlanta later that night.  Disaster averted!

It's 7am and it is off to the airport with two SUPs stuffed into the back of a BMW.

The next day Ashley was to head to Puerto Vallarta.  At 7am, with help from her room mate, Ashley was off to the airport and checked in the two board bags.  She had to pay some oversized luggage fees but the bags were checked in!  All good right?  Well, not so fast.  It couldn't have been that easy right?  Ashley boarded the plane and used a baggage tracking app to double check the location of the boards while the plane sat at the gate loading passengers.  According to the app they were not loaded yet and not anywhere near the plane!  Noooo!  Boarding continued and the boards were not moving anywhere closer to the plane.  Shit!  Of course I am getting the play by play via Facebook Messenger unable to do anything about it...not that I could even do anything if I was there anyway.  Just as the plane was about to close the doors and leave the terminal the captain came on the intercom and announced that they would be leaving just a few minutes late to load some additional cargo.  To Ashley's relief this cargo included the kid's boards and she received word that they were being loaded into the front of the plane and would make it to Mexico!!  Another disaster narrowly avoided!

13 foot board bags on a 4 foot rack.

I arrived early at the Vallarta airport and hoped that Ashley would get through customs without triggering the dreaded "red light".  The "red light" is a way for Mexican customs to randomly select passengers for further inspection and questioning about what they had along with them entering the country.  It wasn't that we were hiding anything it was just that it was one more hassle along the way for items that we were going to use personally and not for resale or profit.  Fortunately, Ashley emerged from the international terminal on the other side of customs with the assistance of a baggage porter and she appeared to be in a good mood.  Always a good thing.

The porter handed off the bags to us and we made our way out to the parking lot to figure out how to even strap these large new boards to the small rack of our car.  Ashley had purchased some new surfboard straps and I had some old ones and I was able to double strap the boards to the roof.  With fingers crossed that the boards would not fly off the roof we headed to Sayulita for our next challenge.

We knew the kids would be waiting for their mother to arrive at the house and hoping to get a glimpse of anything that would give away any Christmas present secrets.  Friends of ours in town have a garage full of their family's surfboards and they were happy to let us store the boards there overnight so that was our first stop before heading home.  This allowed us to arrive at the house without obvious Christmas cargo strapped to the roof.  As expected, the kids were waiting for our arrival and as soon as we opened the car doors we could tell Trace was a bit deflated.  Happy to see his mom but deflated.  His last chance for the Christmas race board he had been hoping for was dashed when we arrived with only mom and her suitcase.  This reaction of course made the whole effort even sweeter because we knew what waited for the kids in just two more days.

Christmas boards, "wrapped up" with leashes, fins and T-shirts.

The next challenge was to get the boards from our friend's house and to our house to hide them in our bodega.  Once that was done we needed to figure out how we wanted the kids to find them come Christmas morning.  Christmas Eve day Ashley coaxed the kids into town for lunch and some shopping leaving me at the house to do some work.  This gave me a window to run back up to our friend's house and grab the boards to bring them back to our house unseen.  The plan worked perfectly.  Later that afternoon we were due to go to our friends house for Christmas Eve dinner and we sent the kids over just a little ahead of us.  This gave us the needed time to be able to bring the boards up from the bodega and unpack them so the kids could find them in the morning.  Again, our planning and efforts worked perfectly and the boards were in place for them to find them on Christmas morning.

Whew!  All the planning, stress and secrecy was well worth it to bring these awesome boards to the kids.  Now they will be on their own equipment as they continue to train each week and travel to their next competition.  Special thanks to their Sayulita JR SUP Team coaches for their input, The Kruegar Family for storage assistance and to Performance Stand Up Paddle for supporting the kids and to mom for coordinating everything on the USA side then lugging these two 12'6" monsters all the way from Atlanta for Christmas!

Trace is soooo stoked!