Since nothing seriously exciting happened yesterday, I decided to combine blog entries. Yesterday followed the same routine as the day before. Surf, sleep, surf again with the added bonus of a press conference for the event in the middle of the day. The meeting was all done in Portugese so unless I caught my name or they asked me a question in English, I was completely lost. I just put on a big smile and did my best to pretend to follow along.

The first day of competition took place at Arpoador beach. It started off pretty hectic. All the competitors as well as ourselves are staying two beaches away and had to battle traffic this morning to get to the contest site. We left at 6, didn’t arrive till 640 and had barely twenty minutes to warm-up before the crazy brazilian water man chased us out with his whistle. It’s okay tomorrow we are planning on waking up at 5 and leaving the house at 530 to hopefully beat the bumper to bumper traffic. I surfed round 1, heat 5 against Coco Ho and Jacqueline Silva this afternoon. The waves were really inconsistent with the high tide and we had a restart after ten minutes. Luckily I found a bit of a rhythm and a few waves to perform on, advancing on to round 3 tomorrow. Looks like tomorrow will be a long day as the rest of the week swell forecast looks pretty lackluster.

Neat fact of the day: One of the things that I love about the Billabong Pro in Rio is that they make jerseys with our names on it. I think that is so cool. Today I wore a pink jersey with “MOORE” loud and proud across my back. Looking forward to MOORE waves tomorrow and a great day of competition. Posivibes;) XO

Carissa

The sun sets on my first day in Brazil. It was a pretty simple and fairly uneventful day just trying to get adjusted and acclimated to the new time zone and place. Dad and I woke up around seven and drove to Arpoador, one of the three event sites about a forty minute drive with traffic. This wave is a left point break/ beach break. Beautiful set up. The wave breaks at the left point of this big bay. White sand stretches for miles and breathtaking mountains peak to the far right. Gorgeous. The waves were really tiny today and the lineup was super crowded. It didn’t help that about 95% of the crowd were people taking surf lessons so I was getting frustrated trying to warm up and avoid collision. Took a nice long nap in the middle of the day. Catching up with all the sleep we didn’t get in the past two days. We are staying in a penthouse suite with Lakey and Laura as well as their families. Nike hooked us up as they did last year. Shuttles to and from the surf, food to die for, sickest pad, massages every afternoon, and great hospitality. Pretty darn lucky. Surfed just a few blocks down from our house this evening at another venue. Caught a couple fun ones and that’s about it for today. I am so thankful for the gift I was given yesterday and the opportunity to be in Brazil, experience the place and people and compete. Should be an amazing week. It can only get better from here on out. XO
Carissa

I’m madly in love with this guy. He is absolutely amazing. Smart, funny, adventurous, kind hearted, a spontaneous lame-o, crazy jungle man, sweet, gentle guy and he is all mine. Coming home in fourteen days. The countdown begins:)

Have you ever heard the saying, “when it rains, it pours”? Well it is POURING right now. I feel like a little dark cloud has been hovering over my head for the past 24 hours. Shall I start from the very beginning? I shall. So two days ago… I recieved a phone call from American Airlines at 3 am in the morning informing us that our direct flight to Dallas was cancelled and that we were now re-routed to Kaui-LA-Dallas. That was alright, a little bit of a hassle but overall pretty minor. We packed our bags and headed to the airport. #1: When we got to the airport the attendents couldn’t find our reservations. It took them almost an hour to recover our tickets but luckily we just made our flight in time. #2: In Kauai, we found out that our next flight to LA was delayed two hours! Uh oh… that didn’t leave us much time to catch our next flight. #3: Somehow we made it. Walked right off one plane and right on to another. Phew!! #4: About twenty minutes into the air a poor old lady went unconscious. Supposedly some sort of diabetic acoma and we had to divert to Las Vegas. The two and a half hour flight turned into five hours but it was worth it. I’m just glad the old lady was okay. #5: Dallas layover for five hours and then a ten hour flight to Brazil. Thought we were finally home free this morning when we arrived in Rio… but I was wrong. The ten year Visa that my dad and I paid and applied for last year was mistaken on my passport and I was only given 180 days in the country. Today was 180 days over the expiration date of my Visa! My dad has a ten year Visa but I somehow do not. So… I am writing this from within airport captivity. I was semi losing it but now I am just accepting the circumstances and trying to not waste my energy fretting over stuff that I cannot help. At the moment I find myself standing before three doors. Door A: Fly back to the US tonight. Another ten hour flight to attempt to get a Visa that might take five days to approve. By then, the contest most likely will be over. Door B: Fly to Argentina and try to seek counsel at the Brazilian embassy. They might be able to give me a Visa in a few days. Still cutting it close to the comp. Door C: Become a ninja and sneak out of this airport. I like door C;)

What is the positive of this situation? There is always a silver lining? Well I have two ideas. One, it’s a good lesson in patience and perseverence. I am not giving up and I am not freaking out. At this point all I can do is go along for the ride and hope for the best. No use in freaking out and wasting my energy on negative thoughts. Tho I already had a mini breakdown but I’m trying to forget about it. Two, pay attention to detail!! My dad and I both thought we were good to go with our Visas and didn’t care to double or triple check. The flight attendents in the US need to work on this too since they didn’t catch it either.

Anyway, wish us luck. Hoping that somehow things start to fall into place and I will get to enjoy the beautiful country of Brazil for the next ten days. So close yet so far. Good bye for now from inside the airport in Rio….

Carissa