Cowabunga Dudes!
'Scuse me whilst I park my stick and peel off my wettie.
I would have posted this sooner, but some snake of a sponger dropped in on my wave and I damn near wiped out running over the grom!
Ahem! Ok, enough of the incomprehensible surfer speak...
Well I'm now a master surfer (for certain values of master, anyway!) being able to not only catch waves but also stand up, but gods, was it hard work!
My first lesson was on the Monday, just as the remnants of, apparently, Hurricane Charlie, came across, which meant that the surf was absolutely pumping. This should have been great, but not for one's first try
In a triumph of enthusiasm over endurance, I'd booked to do two lessons on Monday, two on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, two on Thursday and one on Friday, but by the middle of the second one on Monday I was absolutely exhausted.
I'd thought that my swimming 40 lengths a week should have been ok, but I'd not realised that, when you start, you spend most of your time wading out in waist deep water, so my legs were knackered and that makes it rather difficult to "pop up" onto a board
After sitting out half of Tuesday's first lesson through sheer tiredness I realised that it was going to be pointless to try to do the afternoon one, so I cancelled it and the Thursday afternoon and got a "lesson credit" I could use later so, after a good rest, by Thursday I was getting things sorted.
I didn't have anything planned for the Saturday, but that's normally a busy day, fortunately they had a space on one class and I managed to use the credited lesson.
Things were going quite nicely, I'd got "out back" (ie on unbroken waves, rather than catching the broken ones as we did at first) and the instructor called over "last wave" because the lesson was almost over.
So I looked back and saw a rather promising wave ramping up and thought "Hello, this looks good", paddled like hell and caught it perfectly. I got a great run across the face, turned back and managed to ride it right the way to the beach with a lovely series of smooth linked turns
This made it all worthwhile and had me grinning all over my face for most of the next day
I'm definitely planning on going surfing again sometime, but preferably not in the "high season" because there's just too many bloody tourists getting in the way!
Anyway, stay cool, dudes...!
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