Surfer Dude, not surprisingly, is from California. It is not for that reason alone that I call him Surfer Dude: He actually does surf.
He’s also a talented photographer–and videographer–and happily makes his own video highlight reels of his surfing, something I’d love to be able to do for my football games.
I met him at one of The Veteran‘s parties and overheard them talking about playing football. He’s a very talented football player. He’s fast but deceptively so because he’s got a compact build, more of a running back than a wide reciever.
He moved from California where he worked at some Hollywood studios doing animation to Minnesota to set up his own animation shop with Pixel Grrrl. I’ve admitted to them both that I’ve got a serious case of professional envy because I love animation.
From Minnesota he moved to Chicago and from there he moved to Orlando where he now works at one of the leading video game companies.
Surfer Dude smartly uses organized city football leagues as a means of meeting new people in a new city.
But he didn’t have much of a chance to play football shortly after he moved to Orlando because about a week and a half after me moved there the first of four major hurricanes hit Florida; the eyes of two of them passed over Orlando.
One night while he was in Minnesota, we stood for about a half hour outside a bar so he could watch an oncoming violent thunderstorm, a phenomenon he didn’t get much of a chance to see in sunny California.
In Orlando, not only did Surfer Dude get plenty of opportunities to sate his hunger for inclement weather, he also got plenty of practice at hurricane preperation and he got to snap pictures of the resulting damage.