Once a Reston resident

Not always smooth sailing

Anyone who travels the Toll Road, can relate to the phrase "not always smooth sailing."

It has been at least six months since I have been on the Toll Road at all and over three years since I used it regularly.  By now perhaps the Toll Road is almost never snag free.

Driving the Toll Road on a regular basis adds some stress to you life. There are plenty of other things that can do the same thing.

Yesterday someone was bitten by a shark near Atlantic Beach, NC.  I haven't read the local paper yet, but I think this was the first attack in over thirteen years.

The water picture above was not taken yesterday, but it was taken late in the evening the day before at the western Emerald Isle beach access which is probably about twelve miles from where the lady was bitten.

The experts are blaming the attack on the water that murky because of the waves.  I would say that is a pretty good guess based on the picture.

You can check the pictures in this post, The reason it is called the Crystal Coast, to see how clear the water normally is.

The shark event will add some stress to going to the beach.  It is interesting to wach how some people handle stress.

We have recently taken up boating.  My wife and I are in our late fifties.  I started preparing for this event by taking a boating course seven months before we bought the boat.  I also hired someone to teach me the basics and spent part of the winter reading boating books and studying charts.

Still there was plenty of stress when my wife and I first launched our 20 ft skiff by ourselves and headed down the river to the Intracoastal Waterway.  As we have become more familiar with the buoys and the boat, we have gotten to the point of where we can enjoy the boating a little more.

Still it is a lot of work.   However, based on my observations, I would have faced  lots more stress if  I had just hopped in the boat and assumed that I could figure out everything by trial and error.

Some people cannot handle stress outside of their comfort zone and are not willing to do the work to expand their comfort zone. 

When faced with stress which mostly could have been handled by better preparation, they shut down and leave the work for others. I guess it is a true American trait these days to hand as much as possible of the stress and challenge over to someone else.

When we were farming in the Canadian wilderness, that was not an option.  If something broke down, you had to fix it.  If a dangerous situation occurred, you had to figure out how to get out of it or suffer the consequences.

We survived mechanical failures in temperatures as low as minus 40 Fahrenheit.  In a case where there is no one else to turn to, you often call on inner reserves that you don't even know that you have.

While knowing those reserves are there isn't going to remove all the stress from your life, it is going to make handling it a lot easier.

In the end, calling on those inner reserves is a lot better than the typical modern day American response of throwing up your hands and letting someone else solve the problem.

A different perspective

One of the most valued skills is to turn a problem on its head and come up with a new way of looking at it.

When you stand on the beach, you look at the ocean.  When you are in the ocean, you see the beach.

Driving out to the ocean is a lot different than driving on the Toll Road.  The channels out to the ocean are marked with buoys.

The one rule that most of us remember is "Red, Right, Returning."  That means keep the red buoys to your right if you are returning from the ocean.

The speeds on the water aren't nearly as fast as they are on the Toll Road.

There are a lot of reasons for that, but often the most important is that people in a boat are trying to enjoy the scenery.  At least most of the time that is true.

There are fishermen hurrying to a special fishing hole or people trying to beat the weather, but the purpose of a boat running out to the point is often pleasure no matter what time of day.

There isn't much pleasure driving on the Toll Road.

I am not sure that the Toll Road can give you another perspective on anything.

Removing yourself from the world of roads and putting yourself in a boat which responds to winds, currents, and your piloting will give you a different perspective of getting from one place to another.

That break in your routine along with having to adapt to new challenges is one way to fire up the memory cells and come back to work with a new perspective that might help solve some old problems.

These are some coastal pictures that might give you a new outlook on life.