Changing Rules? Change Location

Bob Bitchin

How a Super Deluxe Taco Burrito at Momma Rosa’s Would Have Changed My Life!

I just had another birthday. Considering the alternatives I guess that’s a good thing. I am getting old, so I actually like birthdays. They are a time when I sit back each year and try to recall as many of them as I can. The more they pile up, the more memories I have to choose from. I am told at some point in my life that will change. I think they call it senility or something, but so far, so good. So anyway, I was kicking back reminiscing about the best birthdays I could recall. I feel it is a real waste of time trying to recall bad ones. I much prefer remembering what was fun or exciting. My alleged mind wandered back to a couple years ago, when I was anchored in Waheke Island off the Auckland Coast of New Zealand on one of our Share The Sail events. I think it

55

Starboard Attitude may have been my best birthday ever. Captain Woody and Dena were side-tied on one side of my boat, Eric Stone, Kyle Rife and Yellow Shoes were side-tied on the other side, and we had about 45-50 people who had sailed or flown in for the event on board. The weather was perfect, and it was a magical evening indeed. I try not to dwell on things as they might have been, but sitting here, I have to wonder: What if my life had been different? I mean, what if I’d never gone down to the marina for lunch on the day I ended up buying a small sailboat just as a spur of the moment thing? I wonder who I might be today. I gotta tell ya, it is pretty scary. I mean, looking back at all of the adventures I have lived while sailing the world, if I had opted for a Super Deluxe Taco Burrito down at Momma Rosa’s Cantina instead of deciding to ride my Harley down to Captain Ahab’s at the marina for fish that day, I would not be who I am. Scary! It makes me wonder just who the hell I would be? Who would be looking back at me in my mirror? I guess that is what birthdays are designed for. So you can take a moment in time and try to analyze exactly who you are, where you have been, how you got there, and to see just how uncertain life can be. When I think back to my earliest birthdays I see me as a different person. I can remember the birthday when my parents hired a man

56

Bob Bitchin with a pony to give me and my friends pony rides. The stupid pony stepped on my toe. If that hadn’t happened I might have ended up a cowboy. Who knows? I remember the birthday I bought myself a motorcycle. It was 1964 and my best friend Ron had a bike, and we decided it might be fun to ride to the Mardi Gras. Who knew it would change my life? I guess I was lucky. Maybe it was more than luck. Luck is when opportunity knocks and you open the door. But how many times did it knock and I didn’t hear it? They say opportunity only knocks once, but temptation leans on the doorbell. I often wonder if it was just luck, or if it is the way I judge what may be opportunity. I imagine there were other “opportunities” that presented themselves over my life, and I probably didn’t recognize them. That could well be. Maybe it is just the ones we listen to that count? Winston Churchill once said, “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” When I first got into sailing, the very first day changed my life. I went out with the guy who sold me my first boat. It was a little Cal 28 named Rogue. I thought it kind of fit me. But I also remember thinking, “This is a lot of work!” Where would I be if I had opted not to

57

Starboard Attitude take on such a task? I think a lot of opportunities are disguised as hard work, and that is where many people are separated from their dreams. You know, “Sailing’s too much work!” so you end up with a jet ski! Or, “Riding a Harley is wet and uncomfortable!” As the birthdays pile up, we can look back and take stock of our inventory of dreams that have come true. Follow the best events of your past life, and nine out of ten times you will end up looking at an opportunity that, if unanswered, would have erased a great adventure. I try and not waste any time on the ones that didn’t make a lot of difference, in fact, I don’t really know what they might have been. But I do know this. All of the adventures I have lived sailing the world are due to the fact that I decided I wanted a little fish instead of a Super Deluxe Taco Burrito at Mamma Rosa’s Cantina!

58