Rio's 9th "Beach" Birthday

My child, Rio James, is a freak. Ask him what he wants for his birthday, and he says genuinely, "I just want for my friends to all be together." I am sure he's balancing the planet for some other 9-year-old on the other side of somewhere that is consumed by consumerism.

So for his birthday we went to Big Surf today. His birthday is actually Wed, Aug 3rd, but today is Sunday and the friends were available to play. Big Surf is a water park that I made quite a bit of fun of when I moved here to Arizona from the coast of California. I had lived no more than 5 miles from the coast all my life, up and down CA. To find everyone in Phoenix excited about this "fake beach" was idiotic to me at the time. It had sand, it had wave. The plural form, "waves," can only be accurately used if you scientifically measure the evidence across the span of more than 3 minutes. You see, Big Surf's biggest attraction is a gigantic toilet bowl sort of contraption that releases every 3 minutes sending out one big wave. Everyone screams in delight and panic, jumps on their raft, and attempts to surf in to "shore." Upon either coasting in or being pummeled to the bottom of the pool by the luckier of the screaming masses, everyone shleps back to their staked-out spot in the proverbial porcelain bowl. The mural painted with a sunset ocean and palm trees at the back of the "beach" where the wave originates looks like just a wall. But it's not. It's a tank. Just like the one that fills and flushes on the back of your toilet. I'm seeing a little Wizard of B.S. (that's Big Surf) somewhere behind a wall pushing down a little silver handle every time his egg timer runs out of sand, enjoying the power of controlling the ocean...

Well the years of sun and heat and failure for the San Andreas "Big One" to yet delivere up our Arizona beachfront property has worn me down. They have removed the sand and put in cool decking, added dizzying-height water slides, lots of grass (but wisely kept the cheesy Beach Boys music), and I have to admit it's fun in a desert dry-heat sort of way. And 9-year-olds love it.

So we spent most of the day there today at Rio's request. A good time was had by all. We verified that in tandem raft sliding, the heavier the teammate going down the water slide, the faster the inner tube goes (we won't mention who turned out to be the fastest ride partner but at least it wasn't one of us girls). A fantastic Monsoon storm moved in just as we were ready to go at the end of the day, complete with black clouds, warm rain, the smell of wet creosote bushes, and a cooling breeze - the kind of storm that made me fall in love with Arizona years ago. It made it just a bit easier to settle back into AZ after prying myself from Hong Kong.