We'll All Float On

Imagine getting to spend every summer meeting different people. Scratch that, every weekend. Travelling, doing what you love and being surrounded by likeminded people who share the same interests and passions that you do. Now imagine those people are a bunch of perfectly sunkissed, beachy-haired attractive people all close to your age. You grow up with these people from other teams, seeing them every weekend, competing against them, partying with them after racing - and before we were all legal to drink, partying meant playing man hunt together in the dark or going to see a movie.

But once you age out, or money becomes too tight to maintain that lifestyle, you either become a coach or leave the secret world and everyone you’ve come to love behind. The choice was easy enough for me, even if I do hate children, coaching was something I had to do because it meant that I was given the opportunity to keep doing what I love and actually get paid for it. It meant that I got to live in the big city for the summer instead of my small town, and it meant working with the guys who’d been my best friends at competitions for the last six years.

Now my sport is irrelevant, I’ll leave that to you to guess. All I can say is that our biggest stereotypes are drinking and swearing - and they’re both things we do a lot.

It’s my second summer in this amazing city, with people I love despite how we treat each other half the time and the things we’ve done to each other. But now most of us are legal drinking age finally, and we got rid of the deadweight coaches that we all hated from last summer. The only thing different this year is that I’ve brought my best friend from college into it, into my world. It’s going to be a test on our friendship for sure because these co-workers, these guys who I’ve known since I was thirteen years old, they’ve always been just mine. My friends that meant my summer. My secret life that none of my non-sport related friends knew.

It’s also going to be hectic because James, one of the guys that I may or may not have been secretly in love with for the past four years, is single for the first time. It would just be too easy and simple for that to work out. Of course there’s the attractive new guy and not to mention all the other boys I’ve met from going out to bars already. To say things are complicated would be an understatement, but as things unravel for me this summer you’re more than welcome to come along for the ride.