beach bound
Due to the ongoing saga of Isaac's completely disorganized AAU basketball team and their trip to Miami this weekend, we ended up having to drive him to Cocoa Beach to catch a ride one of his teammates at 7:30 this morning. Of course, the platinum lining to that dark cloud was that we were going to be near the beach. And it would be a shame to go all the way out there (especially with 4-dollar-a-gallon gas) and not have some fun.
The water was cooler, saltier and choppier than our last visit to the same beach, probably due to Hurricane Bertha far out in the Atlantic. The surfers were taking full advantage of the 5 to 6 foot swells, but Kai seemed to prefer to stay on the sand this time. We had a great time nonetheless. He could not stop talking about the ocean and the waves. It's so cute how once he gets excited about something he cannot stop talking about it.
Back to four-dollar gasoline... while it definitely hurts to pay so much for gas, especially with my new driving-centric career, I think that ultimately expensive gas will be good for us as a nation.
For far too long, I think we have been in a position of excess, not just in gas, and the proliferation of gas-guzzling behemoths is proof-positive of that. Our family is very conscious of our resources, and wasting any of them is not acceptable to us. For years gasoline was so cheap that it didn't matter that people's rolling living rooms only got 10 miles per gallon and were horribly inefficient. With the price of energy (gas) now skyrocketing, it will force people to conserve our natural resources, and begin to think about how efficient and effective we are being.
It definitely factored into our trip today. We could not afford to just drive Isaac an hour out to the beach and then drive back. We had to maximize our utilization of the energy we were about to burn.
And that's where the magic of staying present to our resources and how we use them lies. The oncoming recession combined with expensive energy may eventually force all of us to fully experience and maximize each and every situation, to "suck the marrow" out of each moment. No more wasted trips running mindless errands or driving around aimlessly. When both time AND energy are limited and valuable commodities, we will all be forced to shine a spotlight on the dark and dirty secrets of the wasteful ways of our past, and bring a new paradigm of consciousness, presence and conservation to our daily lives.
How's that for a platinum lining?
The water was cooler, saltier and choppier than our last visit to the same beach, probably due to Hurricane Bertha far out in the Atlantic. The surfers were taking full advantage of the 5 to 6 foot swells, but Kai seemed to prefer to stay on the sand this time. We had a great time nonetheless. He could not stop talking about the ocean and the waves. It's so cute how once he gets excited about something he cannot stop talking about it.
Back to four-dollar gasoline... while it definitely hurts to pay so much for gas, especially with my new driving-centric career, I think that ultimately expensive gas will be good for us as a nation.
For far too long, I think we have been in a position of excess, not just in gas, and the proliferation of gas-guzzling behemoths is proof-positive of that. Our family is very conscious of our resources, and wasting any of them is not acceptable to us. For years gasoline was so cheap that it didn't matter that people's rolling living rooms only got 10 miles per gallon and were horribly inefficient. With the price of energy (gas) now skyrocketing, it will force people to conserve our natural resources, and begin to think about how efficient and effective we are being.
It definitely factored into our trip today. We could not afford to just drive Isaac an hour out to the beach and then drive back. We had to maximize our utilization of the energy we were about to burn.
And that's where the magic of staying present to our resources and how we use them lies. The oncoming recession combined with expensive energy may eventually force all of us to fully experience and maximize each and every situation, to "suck the marrow" out of each moment. No more wasted trips running mindless errands or driving around aimlessly. When both time AND energy are limited and valuable commodities, we will all be forced to shine a spotlight on the dark and dirty secrets of the wasteful ways of our past, and bring a new paradigm of consciousness, presence and conservation to our daily lives.
How's that for a platinum lining?
Labels: cocoa beach, conservation, efficiency, energy
posted by wine daddy at
11:43 PM
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