Went surfing, escaped death
I went surfing for the first time last week, on vacation. Here’s how my 90 minute lesson broke down:
- tugged on uncomfortably tight wet suit, 10 minutes
- carried/dragged surf board down the street to the beach, 15 minutes
- paddled out through the waves to manuever myself into place, 10 minutes
- frantically rubbed my stinging eyes, which were suffering from a mixture of salt water and sun block, 5 minutes
And then, just when my eyes stopped stinging and I had gotten into position, I PROMPTLY GOT RUN OVER by another surfer. That’s right. He was standing up on his board, sailing along, and ran smack into me. (I was sitting on my board.) I fell off backwards and went underwater, and he surfed over the top of me. Fortunately, all were unharmed. However, this little episode got me out of position, and so we returned to…
- paddling into position, 10 minutes
- rubbing stinging eyes again, 3 minutes
and then… I caught a wave! What glory! I rode in towards the beach, full of heroism, inched into a kneeling position (no standing yet), and thought surfing a fine sport. An imaginary audience clapped. Sadly, I was out of position again. And so again…
- paddling back out, 10 minutes
And then, on the very next wave, I fell. The board slipped away from me and hit HARD against my middle right toe, which bent downward at an unnatural angle inside the wetsuit bootie. I started to think that escaping with no more than a broken toe was probably a fairly successful outcome for such a crazy sport. I paddled back to the beach to nurse my foot (27 minutes) and gave up my surfing dreams.
"How’d you do?" asked the surf store manager when I got back. I shrugged weakly. "Well, if surfing were easy, everyone would do it," he said.
