1999-2017, Oldsmar - Mobbly Bay, Florida

Mobbly Bay

Back in the ghetto of Pinellas County, Florida, where once a SWAT team used an abandoned house for a home breaching exercise, is a town that has been celebrating it’s founding for 102 years now, Oldsmar (not actually a ghetto). Eighteen of those years were filled with painful airsoft wars, competitive baseball games, and yearly neighborhood Olympic games hosted by the Schultz family. As the years tip toed by, the friends were exchanged for new ones, the baseball games switched to street hockey, and the airsoft guns hurt more every year. An eerie gloom might have started to create an overcast over you, but fear not, because not everything was lost or forgotten. Though not always clean and possibly had too many dead fish to be considered safe to swim in, Mobbly Bay was just a short walk or sprint depending on my mood from my house. More so in my latter teenage years, it provided a place of escape for me.

For 30 minutes to an hour, I would sit on some old bench or hang off a crab infested tree and listen to the waves crash against the shore. God’s Word refers to His voice as the sound of mighty waterfall crashing down. In that sound there is power, but also a sense of peace that comes from the consistency of the waves. I was continually caught in awe of how quickly the sun seemed to drop out of sight during a sunset. There one moment and gone the next. People will come and go in your life, but the love of Christ remains consistent like every gentle wave. It’s in that love that we can find rest.

Mobbly Bay had more use than just potential poetic inspiration, but was an easy access for challenging kayak adventures. With my homemade PVC pipe cart, I had the ability to haul up to two kayaks down to the bay on any free weekend, which also doubled as a great workout.

My go to kayak trip was straight across the bay to Philippe Park. My record time kayaking across the bay was about 30 minutes, a time I would try to beat on each new expedition. The waves occasionally rose high enough to the point where you could catch one at its peak and dive straight through it, dosing yourself in a blast of water. Landing on the shores of Philippe was an accomplishment that would never grow old and for a moment it would renew your old childhood spirit of being an explorer who had just dared to travel across the world’s mighty oceans. Once reality set back in the true reward was given, a nicely earned sandwich.

My two other choices were to kayak down crossing underneath the Mobbly bridge or to go the opposite direction to a couple wire towers that were in the deepest part of the bay.

The last time I chose the bridge option I brought my fishing pole that I put way too much money into for the amount of fish I ever caught. After 30-45 minutes of muscle burning paddling I crossed under the shadow of the bridge resembling a long-awaited finish line. I cast my line with high hopes for this new fishing spot only to find out the bay was going through another algae bloom eliminating any possibility of catching fish. That deep sense of letdown kept me from ever completing that trip again.

The kayak to the wire tires was a longer destination to reach and one I seldomly made alone, but in my case extreme boredom most often trumped loneliness. On my first solo trip to the wire towers, I found myself in the middle of the bay with no human being in sight and no idea where the bottom of the bay was. The sweet sandy beaches already began their call out to me. Before my decision to paddle towards safety, I spotted a small dot out in the distance that appeared to be something floating towards me. I was anchored down making another attempt at fishing the sewage loaded bay and chose to let the possible creature float towards me. The nearer it came the larger my fear began to cultivate of what this thing could be. Once it was a couple feet away, my darkest fears were realized. The most despicable creature on God’s green earth had by some chance in the middle of the entire bay bumped into my single kayak. It was none other than the dreaded horseshoe crab. I have had countless run-ins with this arthropod ocean insect and I can’t recall even one being a pleasant encounter. Once you have felt the spiny prickly legs of a creature that doesn’t even have a face crawl over your foot while you’re peacefully fishing, forgiveness becomes a far-fetched idea. I lifted it out of the water with my paddle and after observing that it was dead I chucked it as far as I could. With nerves on end, I speculated what else could be in this lifeless bay. My kayak was just keeping me a few inches from the never-ending depths of entangled seaweed, so the buffer zone was not a comfort. Not long after the crab incident the dorsal fin of what my mind jumped to thinking belonged to a shark popped out of the water just a few feet directly in front of my kayak causing me to be startled. I quickly realized that the fin was that of a dolphin. I immediately went to chasing it around the towers. After 10 minutes of an unending chase never regaining the initial proximity of what I had at first contact with the dolphin, I made my long lonesome journey back home.

Although I often felt alone at the bay whether out on the water or on a bench, I was always surprised with joyful encounters. Those encounters consisted of dolphins resting on the seashore and manatees ducking underneath my kayak. These are all treasures of my Florida upbringing, but the encounters that meant the most were the nights when life seemed heavier than I could take, and God whispered His grace to me with every crashing wave.