Surf City

I know you’re all just dying to know how my little surfing adventure went on Friday so here it is. I survived! It was a close thing, but I lived, so YAY! Surfers are fucking nuts. I have always known this, but I guess somewhere along the way I forgot. I have known my friend, Zane since we were both kids. He and his buddies were a couple years older than me and took me under their wing when I was 6 or 7. I surfed with them for a couple of years and actually got to be pretty good. Then we moved away and I haven’t been on a surfboard since. Meanwhile, Zane is still surfing Huntington Beach and has been for the last 25 years. He was always better than me, but now he’s a legend on that beach. It was nice of him to even invite me out. It was even better that he didn’t laugh at me. Riding a surfboard is not like riding a bike. You can’t walk away from it and then just pick it up years later and expect to still be able to do it. So anyway, I met Zane at the beach at 6:30AM. You can’t be modest if you want to surf. Everyone just changes in cars and parking lots and there’s just a lot of nakedness going on… and if you’ve seen most surfers’ bodies, you know that’s not a bad thing at all. These guys look like Greek gods they are so cut. It’s a beautiful thing ;) Zane gave me a wetsuit to change into and a board I could borrow and off we went. I got a few refresher pointers and we plunged into the Pacific… the very fucking cold Pacific. The waves were good. Nice rolling breaks and it wasn’t too windy. It took me about a ½ an hour to finally catch one and get up on my board. I then promptly fell off it. Things improved and I rode a few decent waves. I then got fucking hammered. I caught a wave that was much too big for me and I got rolled. It was not pretty. I scraped my leg on a coral bed and got a nasty cut. It missed one of my tattoos by less than an inch. That would have sucked. This cut is going to leave a scar. I had a great time, but I need a safer hobby. I’m also tired and sore and bruised. So, am I going to do it again? If you had asked me last night, I probably would have said, “no,” but today I’m having second thoughts. As the aches fade away I just remember how much fun it was. The crash of the surf. The pull of the water. The freedom you feel when you finally catch a wave. Surfers have always referred to it as a kind of “zen” experience, and it is that. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never done it. I’ve always been an adrenalin junkie at heart and this kind of rush might prove too alluring to give up…

"To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be." -- Rachel Carson