Hello everybody, my name is Jacob David Barker and this is my first blog entry.
 |
| Silver Strand Beach, Oxnard, Ca. Sunrise. View from the ship. |
 |
My 8.0' Clyde/ Towers
Longboard |
Around six A.M. on the 15th of February, 1990 in Community Memorial Hospital, Ventura, California after a very strenuous, or so I'm told by my mother, twenty four hour ordeal I was born cesarean. To this day my mom is still mad at the doctor for not telling her I was stuck twenty hours earlier. I have lived in Oxnard ever since all the way at the end of Victoria Avenue near the ocean on Silver Strand Beach. I could swim and surf before I could walk and have spent a considerable portion of my existence in the sand or the cold and salty water of the Pacific. For elementary I attended Hollywood Beach School where I won first in both my fifth and sixth grade science fairs and excelled at kickball. From there I continued to E.O Green middle school where I was awarded student of the year in eighth grade; which to my dismay, does not look as cool on a college application as I thought it would at the time. I graduated from Oxnard High school in 2008 having swam, dove, played water polo, and soccer for four years. Around that time I was hired as an ocean lifeguard and junior lifeguard instructor by the city of Port Hueneme where I have worked every summer since saving lives and playing in the sun with junior lifeguards.
 |
City of Port Hueneme Ocean Lifeguards.
I'm the blonde one in front. |
These days around dawn you will find me driving a forklift on base where I have worked full time the past three and a half years as a receiving warehouseman and forklift operator for the Navy Exchange. I enjoy my dead end job; though not very fulfilling, fork lifting pallets in the early hours of the morning, imagining my warm bed and dealing with angry truck drivers. When not working I stay extremely active surfing, running soft sand, open ocean paddle boarding, or walking my two dogs Rosebud, a Boxer/Pitbull mix, and Punky, a miniature full breed Jack Russell. Also, I enjoy sailing to the various Channel Islands to dive, hike, and surf some more. As you probably already know I am attending Oxnard college where I am working on earniung my associates degree. I currently live with my younger brother Adam attempting to pay off our childhood home while taking care of my mother Sherri; as you already know, on Silver Strand Beach.
 |
| Rosebud & Punky |
In the near future I plan to have the mortgage to my family home and current residence totally paid off. After that is taken care of I hope to transfer to CSUCI to earn my bachelors degree. Once successful I will return to Oxnard College and enter the fire academy with aspirations of getting hired as a firefighter here in Oxnard after graduating like my dad and grandfather before me. In the distant future I hope to own a beach home, maybe get married and have kids to teach to surf and love the ocean like I've been taught to do. In conclusion I have lived an extremely happy life. Present financial problems and weird family issues have done their best to bring me down but I am a firm believer that there is no success without hardship.
Thank you for reading! I hope you have a great one.