Feb 27, 2016

Saturday, Feb 27, 2016 -

Its been slightly over a year, and with the exception of a maybe 3 months I have gone surfing on the west side of the island at least enough that my misconceptions of how easy(read: difficult )surfing actually is, have been overly tested.  The Command (I've no clue what exactly that means, but I've always  taken it to mean "the Colonel") at some point last year said no more surfing on the east reef.  It looked even sketchier to me than the west reef, cause the winds come from the east (normally).  Surfing is one of the few non powered things they let you do out here still ocean side.  It makes sense.  The ocean is kind of big, the lagoon is too, however the idea is you could get blown into a reef or island before being lost at sea I guess.  It turns out they don't want you to die or get lost at sea out here, apparently its kind of expensive the whole search and rescue in an open ocean deal.  Spending money on defense justifiable items doesn't seem to have limits.  Spending money searching for some idiot who was lacking a bit of common sense seems to press buttons.  The point of all this is surfing is the hardest sport this guy has ever tried.  Its been a year, and finally things are coming together.  It is completely physical, it has been completely mental for me, and then there is the challenge of figuring out the waves.  Where to be, how to place yourself exactly where you need to be to catch the damn  things, where to be to avoid getting the crap crushed out of you when a big set comes in.  Recognizing when a big set is coming in and never forgetting to keep an eye on the ocean is a pretty big deal.  Having the brains (read: having the experience of looking at a 10ft wall of water coming at you knowing you've let yourself be where its going to crash on you) to realize your limitations has turned out to be a handy little skill learned thru a completely black and blue ass cheek that lasted a month.  Paddling back out after finally riding a wave is another completely brutal part of it.  Its just so easy to give up.  The white water (the wave crashing in front of you) pushes you back about (insert any number between 40 and 200) feet depending on several criteria.  One criteria being luck= how close to the breaking wave were you when it "broke".  Second would be your ability to divert the water...and depending on the size of the wave and the power, sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, you're going back to the place where you mentally can't believe you're going to start over from.

I've gotten stronger though, or more correctly "because of".  Tonight we paddled a quarter mile ..maybe a third just to get to the spot.  The more waves you catch the more you paddle back to get to the "breakers".  I'm catching a lot of waves lately, which leaves me paddlng a lot to get back.  It finally feels good, no great, to take the beating of getting back out.  I went to work at 3am yesterday, worked thru any meals that were served at the cafeteria, and then headed out to go surfing before the last meal would be served.  We surfed until dark.  5pm to dark.  This morning high tide is at 7am, the sun wakes up at 6:30, looks like another meal will have to go to the wayside.