If I had it do do all over again...

It's easy to play the "what if" game.  I regret not marrying young and having a large family of my own.  But neither I nor my wife are the same people as we were in back when we were in our early 20's.  We wouldn't have met, and we probably wouldn't have even liked each other if we had met back then.  It was better that we became what we eventually would become, before we met.  Otherwise, we would have divorced before we got very far.

I regret not finishing my PhD.  I was working on my dissertation while on loan to a branch of my company, living out of hotel rooms in the mid-west, working 60+ hours every week for years on end.   Eventually I had to choose between burning out irreparably, or burning out in a way that I might eventually recover from.  So when push came to shove, I gave up the PhD work.  I would have loved teaching college in retirement instead of just doing a few guest lectures, like I do now. Plus my wife is an EU citizen and I could have taught in Europe.

Marrying late meant that I didn't have the large family I would have liked to have fathered.  Instead, I married the perfect person for the rest of my life, with two young kids who I couldn't have loved any more than if I had fathered them myself.

But let's be honest.  I made lifelong friends, learned more than I could ever have otherwise, and advanced my career in a way that set me up for the rest of my life because I worked those long hours and spent years away from home.  I didn't have the burden of time and money having a family when I was young, so I traveled extensively, disappearing for weeks on end deep into the mountains with my back pack and gear.  Plus, I had a head start on saving and investing that made it a lot easier to help us, and the kids, later in life.  Starting early has set us up well for retirement sometime in the near future.  Something everyone young person should think about.

The luxury of time and independence in my early 20's allowed my to explore my naturist tendencies.  I visited nude beaches and nudist venues in several countries, and I became active in a local club my politically connected future wife would never have allowed me to be active in. No, I didn't get to hike the Pacific Coast Trail or the full length of the Appalachian trail.  And I didn't get to raise my kids as nudists.  But I did confide in them my background and I expressed my hope that they'd at least be at peace with their own bodies, very early in their lives.  I hope they consider that option with their kids.

I'm happy with how my life turned out.  I love my wife, my kids (they are, to me, my kids), and our two grand kids (and counting).  And I look forward to a wonderful rest of my life with them.  My wife enjoys the freedom of not having to wear clothes around me.  And she's OK with coming with me to nude beaches and nudist clubs every now and again.  I've had a few discussions with the kids, and they understand their options.  I just hope they raise their kids to be as least as accepting as my parents raised me.  Sometimes, that's the most you can ask.

Tweaking the Blog

Bare with me as I tweak the look and feel of this blog a bit.  The avatar I've been using since my Geocities days (you can still find the old posts if you Google "rick407") was too low res in the way it's presented in G+ and here.  I was attached to it because it reminds me of myself when I got started with naturism.  Thin, fit, brown hair, stubble, just hanging out at the beach. Today, I have less hair and aren't as young, but I'm still sporting a closely cropped beard that I haven't shaved since before I visited my first nude beach in my early 20's.

The new profile photo is that of the warning sign at Haulover Beach, near Miami.  That may change.  If you haven't guessed, the last name isn't mine, but rather the name of a person who a nearby town is named after.  And for trivia's sake, 407 is the area code there.  Yeah, not very original.  The "b" at the end of my yahoo username came from somehow locking myself out from the original rick407 account about the time Geocities collapsed.  So much for history.

I intended this blog to be not about my thoughts in general, but just about my thoughts about nudism, naturism, nudity, or whatever you prefer calling what humans look like.  I'm likewise juggling around another blog that isn't linked with this username.  That one is purely technical and is likely completely lost in the noise.  I have personal Facebook and Google accounts, but those I just use between family and personal friends.  Really boring stuff which you'd have no interest in.

I keep them separate because they have different audiences, not because I'd be all that devastated if people put two and two together and they linked them to me.  There aren't that many people who don't know the opinions I express under any of those usernames.

Sunsport Gardens and the Florida Young Naturists "End of Summer" bash.

I don't get out on weekends to nude beaches and nudist resorts nearly as often as I used to, but I found myself "home alone" this weekend with my wife away visiting our daughter (out of state grad school).  I haven't been to Sunsport Gardens near West Palm Beach for ages, so I thought I'd give it a try.  Bad news number one was a 50 percent chance of rain (it was sunny until after dinner), and bad news (maybe) number two was that while checking their web site to see if there was anything going on this weekend, I noticed that a group called the Florida Young Naturists was having an "End of Summer" bash there.

Sunsport has a soft spot in my heart.  Two other resorts (Cypress Cove and Sunnier Palms) are closer and I  usually go to one of them if I don't have a lot of time.  But 30 years ago in my early 20's (do the math), I had visited several nude beaches, loved it, and I decided to try a nudist resort or club environment.  The problem was I was at the time young, single, and male.  This was "pre-Internet" so I called several places and I was told by most that I wasn't welcome.

Except at Sunsport.  The owner and founder, Hugo, answered my call and told me to come and that I'd be welcome.  And I was.  The place had, and has, a lot of character with friendly people in a natural south Florida setting.  I went on to become affiliated with several groups and eventually visited many other clubs.  But from time to time, I continued to visit Sunsport.

Fast forward...  I knew that Sunsport hosted the mid-winter festival, various conventions, youth camps, and the like.  And I had seen a reference to the Florida Young Naturists before, but I really didn't know anything about them.  I figured I'd go to Sunsport anyway, figuring that there was room enough for everyone.   There often was often a good mix of ages, races, and professions at Sunsport, which always made it special.

Oh my God, did those kids know how to have a good time!  Friday was free for everyone.  They set up camp and sat around the drum circle.  Some apparently drank a bit much, and they probably got a bit loud well into the wee hours.  But isn't that what you called a good time when you where their age?  I arrived early on Saturday.  Even so, many of them were already out and about by then.

FYN members ages 18-30 had free camping over the entire weekend and the weekend ground fees (wristband) was only $11!  Plus there was reasonable cost food available breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  And on Sunday, they were going to visit Haulover (the excellent nude beach run by Dade County north of Miami Beach).

They had live music from different bands.  Which was interesting talking to the band members in the pool with them naked for the first time about what they expected.  And they had this huge blow up water slide.  And I mean HUGE.  So fast that when you hit the end, you end up flying up and flipping around.  Yes, I did it several times, with a smile on my face each time afterwards.  Fortunately, I didn't break anything.

They played volleyball and body painted each other all afternoon.  They did Yoga.  They even talked with the old people (including me).  They were from several states, not just Florida, just for this event.  They had a Spring event at Sunsport which most of them had attended, so this was a natural follow-up.

When I asked how they knew of the organization(FYN) and the event, the answer was friends and Facebook.  Many came on their own, not knowing anyone.  We've come a long way from ordering books and making embarrassing phone calls.

I had a wonderful time just being around them.  There must have been 50+ attending.  If you're in the 18 to 30 range or close to it...  Join this group!  They had so much fun and were so much fun to be around.  I didn't see anyone who was drunk and disorderly.  Many were first timers and might not have know better.  Even so, there was nothing sexual about it and there was no such tension in the air.  There were many families attending.  Lots of kids enjoying themselves with happy parents.

Would I want my kids, a son and daughter both in that age group, to associate with that group?  Hell yes!  Yeah, my kids aren't into it even though they know that I am.  I can only hope that someday, they'll at least consider it.

Introduction - How it started

I grew up in a family of 4 kids who were taught that just because something is done a certain way, that it doesn't make it right.  My mother grew up in a family from a northern European background, and it became obvious to me early on that her attitude about nudity was different.  If we walked in on her when she was changing, whether naked or in any state of undress, if we tried to shy away we'd get a lecture about the human body not being anything to be ashamed or embarrassed about.  She enjoyed skinny-dipping with my father late at night, and she made it clear that us kids were always welcome to join them.  But, of course, we didn't.

When we were young, siblings and cousins weren't chastised for running around naked in private among family members, and the elders pretty much accepted that letting them enjoy themselves that way every now and again was a good thing.  They knew that at some point as we grew older, that we wouldn't be able to get away with it.

Having acquired the Dilbert gene from my mother's father (socially awkward future engineer), the disconnect between how our family handled nudity and how other people did, interested me.  In my teenage years, an older cousin married, had a son, and it became obvious that they were taking it to a new level.  Simply put, the boy never had a stitch on him anytime he was home, and it was difficult to keep clothes on him in public, well beyond the years we could get away with it.  We'd go visit them every Sunday after church, and we ignored the fact that the boy heading into his teens was almost always naked.  I overheard my mother mention that they were nudists, and that my cousin and his wife dressed before we came over.  Otherwise, they were naked too.  She said that not in a disapproving way, just that it was a little different.  It never affected how close we were to them.

Always questioning, but painfully shy, I resolved to face my feelings on this subject.  I managed to sun myself and swim naked in a remote location a few times, but the fear of getting "caught" deterred me.

It wasn't until I was out of college and on a business trip which had stuck by myself over the weekend in San Diego that I had my chance.  I heard others talking about the nude beach nearby (Black's Beach), and I decided to give it a try.  No one knew me there, and at least at the time there was no legal issues with people going there and enjoying the beach that way.

Yipes!  It seemed that almost everyone there was naked, except me.  It took an hour before I finally got up the nerve to remove my suit and go down to the water.  I absolutely loved it.  I've lived near beaches my entire life, but it had never felt so wonderful.  The sun, wind, and water evenly across me.  No wet sandy nasty fabric wrapped around me.  Sand magically just flies off as you hit the water.

I wondered up and down the beaches, met people, played a lot of volleyball, and body surfed all day, free from carrying around all that grit in my shorts.  Then it hit me...  I was angry, very angry, that I had been fed such a huge lie and that I had wasted 20+ years buying into it.