Artificial Wave Pool Surfing

Artificial Wave Pool Surfing

TGIF! That’s what surfer wanna-be peeps in or near Austin Texas are saying this morning!  Artificial wave pool surfing has opened at 4836 E Hwy 71, Del Valle, TX 78617 today! And here’s the map!

artificial wave surf pool

History Of The Artificial Wave Surf Pool

1912 Palisades Amusement Park in Bergen County, New Jersey had a salt water pool. The water was drawn from the Hudson River’s saline waters. Rotating pontoons created an ongoing one foot wave. Were they surfing? No, but hey, it’s still 1912!

The huge and popular amusement park remained opened until 1971.

1927 Budapest, Hungaryhistorical surf wave pool Budapest

“Gellért Spa is famous for its main hall with gallery and glass roof, built in Art-Nouveau style.

The current bath complex and hotel was opened in 1918 and was expanded in 1927 and 1934 with artificial wave pool and with bubble bath.” – wikipedia

Photo from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Budapest_Gell%C3%A9rtbad_Wellenbad_1.JPG/320px-Budapest_Gell%C3%A9rtbad_Wellenbad_1.JPG

This early wave pool might not be interesting to a California surfer girl, but, they were getting at an exciting idea!

1969 Big Surf opened in Tempe, AZ, USA. The video below is from when it reopened in 2010 after some refurbishing.

 

So, fast forward to the 21st C, here’s a list of surf wave companies from the Surfer Today website:

Wavegarden
Kelly Slater Wave Company
Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon
Malaysia Theme Park’s Sunway Lagoon
Siam Park (Murphys Waves)
FlowRider (Wave Loch)
Surfstream (American Wave Machines)
Webber Wave Pools (Liquid Time)

2001FlowrRider started a chain of Wave House waterparks opening first in San Diego. While the wave pool was central, these include restaurants, bars, performance stages and basically, a lifestyle or kind of hyper-lifestyle. Fun!

In Santiago Chile a Wave House opened in a huge mall complex. You can ride some waves and then get some pizza! Following that, you can peruse the retail establishments stocking board sports items.

Wave House Sentosa (an island) south of Singapore ramps up the fun on the isle of “peace in tranquility” (a Malay phrase).

2012 – in Mallorca Spain the 180 room Wave House hotel quintissentializes – or quintilescalates? – the surf pool lifestyle. Two wave pools on the beach front.  What’s not to celebrate?

2016-2017 . Twenty eight million peeps will get to surf at the new Wave House in the southwest Chinese city of Chongqing.

Changchun, the Detroit of China in the northeast will get their Wave House fun in 2017. There’s more coming too, and you can read about it on the Wave House site.

Here’s a video of Kelly Slater’s wave pool. He’s definitely having fun!

American Wave Machines John Luff – “Surf Parks are the key to making surfing a mainstream, commercially sustainable sport and to promoting surfing as an iconic lifestyle that transcends all nationalities and cultures.”

2013 – Virginia Beach, Virginia  at Juice Box Surf Center  “Riders will have the ability to surf indoors in winter and outside in summer. The guest experience includes surfing, shopping, spectating, food, and live music.”  Surfing championship, board making, et al!

2015at Dolgarrog in the Conway Valley, north Wales, Surf Kelly Slater

 

 

Snowdonia opened. With eighteen waves an hour, surfers can practice in the middle of the pool and beginners and children can learn near the edge. The water is clean, from natural reservoirs. The wave pools may never present the size of the wave you see immediately above – but the popularity of these pools is growing!

source.

Surfing In Wave Pools

Have you tried artificial wave pool surfing? Or, will you? What do you think? I’d love to hear about your experience,with,  or plans to try an artificial surf wave pool.

 

 

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Dream Interpretations And Symbolism

Dream Interpretations And Symbolism

Dreams can be most fascinating. Dream interpretations and symbolism is a many thousands of years old topic!

Shamans, mystics and priests have done their best to monopolize dream interpretation. But what if you could figure out your own?

(The heroine Sedona struggles with this issue throughout her adventures…which surely must be medical-induced coma dreams after the shark attack she experienced. She thinks so.)medically induced coma dreams

Such visions these can be – from predictive, to bizarre, with no regards for the laws of our every day reality, and with no thought given to time, sequence, or gravity.

Do You Control Your Dreams

Everything is up for grabs, from fearful and horrible, to pleasant and comfortable, to exotica and the magnificent. There are lucid dreams, where one awakens in the dream.

Where you, the dreamer, are aware and in control of the scenario as it occurs.

This happened to me briefly once. I was having a very intense dream, quite stressful, and I became aware that I was dreaming, and looking on the scene, rather than being in the scene.

I thought to myself that “it is only a dream“, and continued with it, face in stressful sepia dreamback in the dream. Drama and all.

This one was a strange dream. I normally dream in color, but this particular dream was in sepia, much like the early photographs one can see from the later eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Most interesting for a bit of variety!

Symbology In Dreams

The subject of symbology in dreams interests many, and there are as many different interpretations, as there are interpreters.

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung did extensive research into the subject, and came up with most interesting theories. Another subject altogether.

There is a more personal approach which I prefer. Many years ago, I practiced Gestalt, a branch of psycho-analysis, developed by Fritz Perls. I shall over-simplify it for sake of this short article.

A Gestalt Therapy Technique – The Empty Chair

The gist of Gestalt therapy is that the patient gets into  into dialogue with that which is bothering him or her.

Reversing roles, the patient imagines that they are the subject which is troubling them, and this imagined personified subject responds back to the patient.

This procedure continues back and forth, until a resolution occurs. I had good success with this.

This technique can be applied with dreams. It doesn’t have to entail dialogue with something that is disturbing, It can be with any item of interest in the dream.

It could be a tree or a dragon. You could choose an item, or symbol from the background, or foreground.

Let me give you an example of the procedure.

  • You sit in a chair with an empty chair across from you.boy
  • Select an item from the dream, shall we say, the dragon.
  • Imagine the dragon sitting or perching opposite you
  • This is entirely your creation,  however you picture the dragon
  • You ask it a question, or make a statement to it, whatever is relevant
  • Role reversal – you become the dragon
  • You,  the dragon, respond to the patientdragon in role reversal
  • Or, you are spoken to by the dragon. Whatever works
  • This continues, backwards and forwards, until resolution, or understanding takes place.

That’s it in a nutshell. I love the simplicity of it.

This a good way of accessing the subconscious mind. I hope that my explanation is adequate, and perhaps of service to you. Happy hunting with your dream interpretations and symbolism!

By J. Windsor Cox, a guest blogger.

This is a kind of healing dream power, using a technique to reveal to yourself something that your unconscious mind is focused on.

Other healing power dreams are here.

Do you control or interpret your dreams? How? Please share!

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Darkness Turns To Light

Healing Power Dreams

Hmmm. Healing dreams. Yeah. Lotsa those…And so many dreams that have come in full stories, like they downloaded into my brain, chapter by chapter. I would wake up and record them for later use.

I still have “dream books” sequestered in my studio somewhere. Must track them down! I used to record my dreams nightly, something I stuck to for a few years. Since then I have experienced lucid dreaming, where I become aware in the dream of what is occurring and how it relates to me in my conscious life. Then I make efforts to change things if I don’t like how the dream is playing out.

Sometimes I can – like how it happened in Healing Power Dreams #1  and in #2 dream with the lucid invocation of “Jesus” – and sometimes I can’t, like when the invocation didn’t get the desired results. But I’m aware that I’m trying. I awaken with a sense of righteous accomplishment whenever I’ve succeeded!

Dreaming Of The House You Grew Up In – Er – Which One!

And as for dreaming of the house I grew up in… Since my father worked for a large construction firm – the Foundation Company of Canada – which, as the name implies, was in charge of all the initial pouring of concrete for dams, airports, mines and such other large concerns, we moved almost yearly (once three times in a year!)

Our travels took us to towns or cities all over Canada, but mostly from Canada’s Midwest through to Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces. I lived in a myriad of houses and/or apartments as I was growing up. Then I continued to move about, what with college and other endeavors necessitating changes of residence.

At last count I had attended twenty-two schools since startingdream world kindergarten! A lot of dream fodder, right? Right! A few different dream venues keep repeating.

Every time I revisit one of them, I always end up finding hidden doors that lead to unexpected and fascinating rooms filled with jewels or mountains of beautifully bound first edition books, or passages to remarkable places, like unexpected underground Xanadu lands!

Little School House In The Old Church

When I was just four we lived in a tiny town in Manitoba where my dad was in charge of building the forms into which the concrete would be poured for a dam being erected locally. My playmates, all at least a year older than I was, suddenly were nowhere to be found on one September morning.

We had just come back from a Winnipeg visit to family and I bawled like the child I was when I learned they had all gone to school, deserting me.

Now, since this was a little French-speaking Catholic town, the onlyreally old spooky church local school for kindergarten and elementary students was taught in a carbuncle annex of a gothic-looking old church.

Really old church! In retrospect, it looked like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story… You know – eerie! The enormous brooding edifice built with dark grey local stone that seemed to perspire, looked like the loveliest place in the world to me.

It was filled with my friends.

Well, a young novice found me crying on the steps of the carbuncle and inold school desks moments I was being led inside to a dilapidated “Little House On The Prairie” school desk, complete with nib pen and inkwell, and introduced me to an old nun with pince-nez perched on the bridge of her nose.

Wait. Old? Sister Anthony Agathe was ancient, all crooked and bent with skin folded almost into pleats like a human version of a Shar-Pei.

I gazed up at her, finding her beautiful, marveling at her crystalline blue eyes almost buried in smile lines, as she handed me a treasure-filled pencil case and lined newsprint pad.

A few of my friends wiggled fingers at me shyly, while the young novice warned them to be quiet with a shushing gesture, forefinger held upright over her pursed lips, and passed me a small box of crayons.

Okay! This I understood! Shut up and get to work.

“Work” that I loved!

Drawing and coloring were daily pastimes for me. Boy, those were thegood days Retro family days. Children were sent outside to play and told to be home in time for lunch, or for dinner, or before dark. As long as those rules were followed, no worries!

Thus, by the time the sweet, young novice walked me home after school, my mom had suffered no worries, trusting that I was fine and simply out playing.

And it was arranged that I could come and go from the classroom as I pleased with no official enrollment, since we knew that my dad’s part of the work at the dam would soon be done and we would be moving on to Gaspé, Québec, on the east coast of the country.

I mostly went to school and stayed. I mean, it was more fun to draw and color with a room full of other kids than at the kitchen or coffee tables at home. The other kids were okay with my loose schedule and of course the sisters had firm control over classroom behavior!

I learned the alphabet and to write some French words (I spoke a kind of pidgin Quebecois with my friends) but mostly that place and those nuns got imprinted into my dreamscape. And that’s what I was getting to, so please pardon the digression.

We are back to dreams.

Often I find myself in a dream where I am sitting at that little desk tracing a finger through names of children carved starting from sometime in the 1800s, when that church was built. The student’s backs are always to me, and the nuns waft around like big ravens, their robes billowing in ways I’m sure they never did in real life.

Their faces are always in shadow.

Ravens And Swans, Darkness Into Light

In one dream I raised my hand and asked “Puis-je aller aux toilettes, Sœur?” She said “oui”.

I headed down into the musty catacombs where only one bathroom waited atdank downstairs corrider the foot of the stairs, and dark passageways lead off in many directions. The bathroom sported a rust-stained old pull-chain toilet lit by one dim pull-chain light bulb.

That’s pretty much how I remember it from real life, so I had this strong sense of déjà-vu in the dream.

I put down the toilet seat, sat upon it, and pulled markers (which didn’t exist at the time) out of the pocket of my school tunic (which had also been provided by the nuns back in the real school) and began to draw symbols on the wall.

They were drippy symbols, though, because the stone inner walls were wet walls with symbolssweating as copiously as they had done when I was four. Ick! But those slick walls knocked me into lucidity and I recognized where I was.

I recalled that in other dreams of places once familiar I would often find doors or passages to curious and sometimes wondrous things, so I got up to check out the basement corridors rather than try to draw symbols on a wet wall. (And why would I be doing that, anyway!)

Noticing I was now in some kind of weird close-fitting jumpsuit, I realized my dream body had shifted into the adult me, and appreciated that I would be safer as a grownup exploring creepy corridors than as a four-year-old.

Turning toward the nearest, I was startled by a sharp whistle – the kind you achieve using a couple of fingers in your mouth. Not that I ever could.

But… Looking to the top of the stairs that normally led to a little lunch room, I saw a cluster of nuns with crow faces under their wimples peering down at me and making gestures that clearly urged me not to explore but to come back up the stairs.

They were pretty strange looking so I wasn’t eager to follow their advice. Then they started changing, turning pearly white, becoming swan-like, and growing large fluffy wings. Bright light shone down as though the sun were rising behindswan and rising lights them.

Halos sprouted around their crowns, looking like their heads had burst into silvery flames. Their eyes shone with golden light and they started moving their wings.

Not flapping, but lifting them gently up and up until they shrunk into the bright sky and disappeared.

The cramped basement stairway morphed into a fine gilded staircase that wound upward and into the light. I started climbing and woke up.

And as I wrote this all kinds of strange dreams I’ve had began tumbling through my consciousness, demanding attention. Perusing those memories now, maybe to write about later?

Do any of you keep online dream journals?  Or a book dream journal? I’d love to hear about them if you do!

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Healing Dream Power #2

This recent dream happened a week ago, about a year after Dream #1. You can go there if you didn’t read that one.

This dream starts at the end of the canyon where the river has run dry. The canyon walls have lowered and are maybe about four stories high.

The urban area – windows in the cliff faces – is not in sight because the canyon has curved.

As I walk along the dirt road towards work I pass nice looking older row housesstyle homes made of wood and brick. Around 1900 style. Three stories.

And I’m thinking I really should get a place closer to work. Maybe there’s an apartment for rent in one of these homey looking houses. Like t.h.a.t. one…

I come up to the one on my right. It is painted a light gray with white trim. As I come to the front of it I see that it’s really a store. An art gallery maybe? I see three stories with picture windows and sculptures in them.

Of an overblown Rococo style. Cherubs, angels, satyrs, all gilded. Yuk!

Not my taste in art. Then I see a face peering out at me. I look awaywoman face dark eyes quickly. Her eyes were dark and piercing. I hardly noticed the face.

O.K., maybe I don’t want to live around here! Just a passing thought.

The next part of the dream I don’t remember so well. At work, everything is almost the same but different. You know how work dreams go.

You’re looking for a file and the entire filing cabinet is gone.  Or the room with the filing cabinet is gone. Typical work dream.

I spend all day worrying how to tell my boss I can’t get him the file.

Cut to closing time. It’s summer so the sun is still bright. I walk toward the art gallery house and glance at it as I pass it. No dark eyes. Whew!

But wait! Suddenly I’m a mile up the road and I can see the bend where the canyon walls get higher. On this part of the road there are no more houses and while there are people down the road behind me there is no one within a quarter mile.

Don’t you wish that could happen in real life? You’re leaving the office and suddenly you’re half way home?

Anyway, the road is narrow and there are some trees and bushes bordering it. It’s a walking road, not a vehicle road. There are beautiful buttes and mountains in the distance.

Then this be-otch from the store/art gallery appears close to me! She’s very styled up and over made up but she’s skinny and ugly. The make up is more like a complete mask, or face paint because the eyes seem to be on a different plane.

Her glare emits some kind of electrical taser-like beam thingy. Like pain wracked digital designshe’s shooting nano-shards of glass into me. Pain wrack!

I go to the advice (noted in Dream 1) and start up the “Jesus loves you” mental projection and I’m s.c.r.e.a.m.i.n.g. it!

I still can’t explain the Jesus thing…but maybe I’m bi-spiritual or something, unbeknownst to myself.

She backs off and scowls but I feel terrible, weak, full of cut glass.

I stagger on. Another person – styled, garishly made up, approaches me. I get the taser attack again! I do the Jesus projection.

This happens a couple of more times. I decide I can’t make it home.

I better go back. If I can make it. If I have to I can sleep overnight there. Whatever.

I head back. The sun is still bright liken I’m in Alberta or Finland or somewhere. You known how dreams are.

Soon I’m collapsing, crawling. I’m full of cut glass in my joints, in my muscles. But now the dream doesn’t transport me a mile back. Uh-uh. I must crawl.

Hello Jesus? It’s me. Any help? And the Jesus I see is from my early red haired Jesus no tanchildhood. Long auburn hair, and he’s a white guy!

He doesn’t even have a tan!

Yup! There’s help! A young Hispanic woman in a police type uniform (I know because police men and women come to my place of employment and have to shed the 40 pound belt with gun and stick and Kevlar vest when they do) is lifting me up!

And ya know – she hugs me!

Some of the pain goes away. She points toward where I want to go back. I continue. Then one of those THINGS shows up. A snarling skull demon snarling smilesmile and I’m back down in the red dust!

Full of nano-shards I’m crawling again. But I keep on crawling! Back towards that nasty pretty house with the crazy cherubs in it!

I crawl around a curve and someone lifts me up. It’s a famous movie and television star and I’m not going to tell who. Uh-uh.

Do you ever have one of those stars show up in a dream of yours?

I think that  happens because a character they play (nothing to do with them personally) represents a certain kind of strength.

In my dream, this actor represents an individual in law enforcement who is f***ed around with by a charismatic cult leader. And, yup, he hugged me. Some of my pain melted.

Then I walk back to the area where the overblown Rococo art gallery is and no Nasty/Stylized nano-particle beam-shooters show up.

day end sunny street
This pic is mine btw.

My BFF suddenly shows up and she hugs me too. In a block of thought I convey to her everything that happened. She nods. And we just start walking home as the day begins to end.

I feel protected and safe. Whew!

I’m starting to remember some more dreams that may be related to the Sedona canyon areas/weird stylized peeps and other stuff I mentioned in Dream 1.

Do you have dreams that tie in with others? Pray, do tell in the comments below.

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Roofies And Date Rape

Roofies Date Rape And Much More!

Watching the news this week I see reports about a bar in Silverlake, a district in Los Angeles known for its LGBTQ community.

The concern is that women are reporting feeling drugged after drinking in the establishment. The owner and staff were horrified when they found out and are doing their best to keep an eye out for unattended drinks.

Yet in a popular and crowded establishment how much can they do?

How will this turn out?  The topic caught my attention because the issue of drugs and date rape is a triggering event in Sedona.  The story is about a teen’s response to the humilation, betrayal and loss of control.

Suicides have been resorted to by teens who were drugged, date raped and even had the event videoed and put on line.

For info on date rape drugs go here.   They are also indexed as Club Drugs.

And I’m watching a Grimm Episode about rape in the military as I write this. Season Three, The Manticore. I’m happy to see the topic dealt with for such a large audience.

Likewise I was happy to see the issue of sex trafficking, in this case minors, in the Starz television series about a ballet dancer,  “Flesh And Bone”.  Women and girls are usually drugged and addicted and consequently raped over and over for as long as they live.

Shannon Farren, news reporter, did a radio show series on the sex trafficking of suburban teens in California in 2014. Their rescue and rehabilitationwas/is dangerous and not always successful. Drugs may or may not been involved, but violent rape always is.

 

Related Issues

Legal inequalities as described by rape reports in the US military, both of men and women

DoD studies consistently find that most survivors who report sexual violence to military authorities suffer retaliation.

I remember reading about this years ago, an article about female soldiers dying of dehydration in Iraq. They would stop drinking water hours before bed time so they wouldn’t have to go out to use the latrines at night and get raped by men lying in wait, as a result. To quote the response when this story broke:

“The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory.”

O.K., so they should expect to be raped by fellow soldiers who expect their victims to watch their backs in combat?

So don’t we live in a Rape Culture – whether minors, new adults – or seniors?  Seniors do get raped although I haven’t heard it’s ever been  as a result of drugged drinking.

Roofies Effects

Roofies put a person out cold. At the least, soften their resolve. Premeditated rape is a world away from teens or adults who just get drunk where the issue of consent gets fuzzy, and regrets can become a difficult situation afterwards.

Do Roofies Work

It is sad to see that the phrase is a well searched one on google, that is, many people are asking that question as they consult google or other search engines, possibly premeditating rapes.

Movies And Violence Against Women

Rape, gang rape, with or without violent beating, has been represented in the entertainment industry both as a non gratuitous revelation of such events, or as…entertainment.

movies and violence against women

 

What I find insidious is the premature sexualization of children in the fashion industry combined with the emphasis on popularity, good looks and sex appeal and bullying in schools.

Abstinence is still touted as a religious virtue as opposed to safety of one’s health and circumstances (not getting pregnant, not getting gossiped about or cyber bullied).

Or the emptiness of having sex but not being loved. How does a youth grow up and learn how to choose a life partner? It is impossible to imagine standing in the shoes of a younger person and thinking about these things.

Men get raped in movies by men, too. Rarely though. Unrelated to homosexuality, because rape isn’t about sex. It is about power.

More may be added to this as the world turns. It’s a weighty topic.

Sedona is the story of one girl’s response to date rape. A sci fi fantasy it’s said.

Yet some readers might think it’s about a girl gone mad with the post-traumatic mind mush. Is it just all her delusion as she battles

 

post-traumatic despair

 

with a strait jacket in a padded cell in a mental hospital?

Or simply stares into space numbed by the “chemical strait jacket”?

No spoilers!

 

 

 

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