Surfing

With my first free Saturday I decided to look into tackling this surfing thing again this summer. After all, I now live a mere two blocks from the beach, so it really seems like I should at least try. I actually had someone offer to take me out, who has an extra board, and we planned to go out early this morning. I have my own wetsuit, which I'm very fond of (although I haven't actually put it on again since the outing that resulted in 8 stitches in my forehead). I've mentioned this on here before, but I seem to have an inaccurate perception of my own size. I kept looking at the wetsuit thinking that "there's just no way that I'm small enough to squeeze into that thing. I know I haven't gotten any bigger, so it must have somehow shrunk up in the last year." I was actually feeling pretty anxious that it might not fit anymore, and I would get down to the beach and find out that I couldn't get it on. Those things take enough energy to get on, (and even more to get off once their wet), that the idea of fighting to put one on that doesn't fit sounds horrid. Apparently those were irrational concerns, the wetsuit fits just fine, which is very weird.

I should have spent less time fretting about the size of the wetsuit, and more time concerning myself with mentally preparing to be pummeled by waves, which is pretty much what surfing is in my world. Anyway, we went out to HB, and the waves looked sort of smallish so we started out. The problem is the farther out I got the bigger the waves got, and the more frequent they became. In fact, they finally go so big that they were freaking me out a little. So we came back in, which meant a lot of falling off the board and floundering around in the white wash, in a weak attempt to catch a wave in. We went to Bolsa Chica to check out the waves there, but by the time we got parked, and out to the beach I think we were both kind of over it. My instructor informed me that I made a good effort. I'm not sure I buy it, but I guess we're going to give this surfing thing another try again sometime. At least going forward I won't have to worry about the possibility of not being able to squish myself into the wetsuit.