US Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, and family goes surfing
Aside from slapping together stimulus packages or bailing out banks, the US Secretary of Treasury has another side to him. This past weekend, Timothy Geithner made a trip to the Montara State Beach in California, USA, to join his two kids for a surfing session.
According to the Half Moon Bay surf instructor, David Alexander, Geithner gave him a call to set up a surfing lesson for his son and daughter. At that time, the instructor was totally unaware of the fact that the concerned father that he was talking to was
in fact the U.S Treasury Secretary.
Geithner was accompanying President Barack Obama on a swing through California, but he still managed to take some time out for a trap to Montera, a beach-break located just south of Mavericks.
Geithner arrived at the beach with his kids. However, he was accompanied by another car. Six men, all dressed in suits, got out of the car and accompanied the Geithner family, Alexander did not think anything of it and simply assumed that these people were
some sort of business associates. He suggested the six men to wait in the nearby restaurant as they were evidently not here to surf. However, the men told him they want to watch the proceedings. There was no reason for the instructor to find this odd.
While the Half Moon Bay surf instructor taught Geithner’s daughter, Elise, how to surf, the US Treasury Secretary and his son, Ben, rode waves nearby.
Alexander says he came to know of his clients’ identity only after Elise mentioned what her father does for a living. That is when the reality dawned on him. He was currently offering his services to the Secretary of Treasury and that the suited guys that
were standing on the bluff were in actual Secret Service agents.
“At first I thought it was just laughable,” recounts Alexander. “And then I was like, oh, those guys up there on the bluff are Secret Service guys, of course ... this happens every day.”
Alexander admitted that he would have been extremely nervous had he known beforehand that the student that he was teaching was in actual daughter of the US Secretary of Treasury and the men keeping an eye on the group were actually Secret Service members.
However, by the time that he actually came to know the truth, he was already half-way through the lesson.
According to the surf instructor, the Geithner family is very nice and friendly. “They're a very mellow, nice family,” Alexander said. “I never would have thought anything other than he seemed like a businessman. It was fun; I had a great time.”
Alexander, Gartner admitted to playing basketball with President Obama. The surf instructor said that he had never seen any man of such level and in such position being a surfer and that it was pretty cool.
Before leaving, the US Secretary left the surf instructor a hefty tip, though Alexander feels that a tax break would have been a little nice. Alexander is still not sure how Geithner chose Open Ocean Surfing to get his kids surfing lessons. He assumes that
it was probably through his website. Now this is one client that the surfing school instructor will be boasting to his friends for a long time to come.
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