mybestkungfu's Diaryland Diary

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surfs up

one, two, three, four.
one two three four.
that's all i had to remember.

at nipple level, place my hands - palms down on either side of me.
then butt in the air.
then left leg forward.
then right leg between my palms.

then all i had do is stand up. and ta da! then ride the wave to shore!
except all that was the easy part.

It started out as so:
We headed out Sunday morning to catch the 'Waves Surf School' pick up
downtown. We jump off the bus and hit the ground running 'cause hey, the scheduled pickup was for 9am and what's wrong with leaving the apartment at quarter to 'cause
you're deciding between packing the new beachtowels or the newly appointed bathroom towels which were the old beachtowels?

And after catching a late bus, find the YHA (hostel) and walk up to a group of people standing outside.
Ok, I don't know if it's ME or the AUSTRALIAN sense of humor - but either i'm always speaking before i think - or they're assholes. So i go up to the lot of them and ask
'Is this for the surf trip?' and main dude in the dredds goes 'no, we're going snowboarding!'. ?! uh? ok i saw the THOUSAND surfboards tied
up in the back of your truck - but dude, there's like a THOUSAND people in small groups standing around all the time. and probably a thousand SURF trips going out all the time!
no i am not exaggerating.

We introduce ourselves and wait around for another half hour 'cause
we were running on 'SURF TIME'. i got a chicken kebab for breakfast.
man, they love their kebabs out here.

an hour later we arrive in a private beach in Cronulla. nice! almost empty compared to Bondi! and driving in sand is a lot like driving in snow.

Our first lesson was pretty informative as dredded dude tells us how to 'read' the beach.
ie. how beaches in Australia are usually shaped, which areas are best to surf on, where the sandbars are, and that the water looks greenish blue when there are riptides under it.

the first objective was to walk out into the ocean with our boards (mini malibus which are about 8ft -
so like 7 ft taller than i am...).
at about waist deep, find a nice wave, turn the board around, slide lengthwise onto the board,
paddle, and when you feel the waves touching your feet, paddle 4 times and push yourself up snake pose yoga style.
(just lift your chest up till your arms are almost straight). then just ride the wave.

Yay! first time out on a surfboard! Crap! this water's freakin' FREEZING! ugh and it's salty!
Really REALLY salty.
At first i was doing the let the water drip out of my mouth - (re: dainty spit) but after a few minutes of getting all that salt on my taste buds('cause i'm gasping out loud due to
inhumane water temps) i'm just spitting like a sailor.

the thing that i never realized would be a problem was orienting myself with
the rythm of the ocean (ya like that? ah? ah?). anyway, waist deep when the water is constantly crashing around you is quite different from the still water at the local pool.
And when you're looking to surf - You kind of have to wait for the right one.
so most of the time, you're jumping up to avoid getting knocked over the ones you don't want.
and they're not all built the same - or arrive in the same time frames.
you have to jump to get on top of the wave - or else it'll crash on you but
sometimes you jump to avoid one wave and there's another one right behind it and by the time you get up to recover, you're almost back where you started. so you gotta walk
back out again.
it's like dating. a lot of dodging. and spitting. and getting hit
in the face by stray boards.
AND FINALLY! you're looking out into the horizon and you see THE ONE. the perfect wave.
and you turn your board to face the beach to get ready for it. and you slide your wetsuited butt up on there.
and you start paddling towards the beach. and you start to feel the ocean heave.
and you look back to see the wave cresting behind you. and you paddle more, more!
and yay! you get on it, and ride, ride, ride!
and maybe you slide too far up the board and the tip of it dips in the water, or maybe you start to turn sideways and you're riding on the freakin' rails. which in both cases
means you hit the water at a pretty good speed and while you're flailing under you hope that you're surfboard (which is velcroed to your ankle) isn't coming back to you
to you like an over eager partner.
(they like to say 'partner' out here too).

after about an hour of that we get called back on the beach for the next part of our lessons. we have to do all of the first part. then stand up at the end.
that's where the steps came in. step one. find your nipples folks. step two. get your butt in the air. step three. (did i mention how this was like dating?) get your back foot
forward. step four. front foot between your palms. now stand the hell up.

To make an already long story short(er) i did manage to stand up a few times. which was my only goal for the day. no, i wasn't going to catch non-white water. and i wasn't going to swim out past the breakers. and i was probably not going to try the eskimo roll. (when waves get too high instead of jumping over them, you jump headlong inside them -
upside down, holding on the board above you).
at one point, i was watching our instructors surf (dredded guy and a blonde guy from NZ).
and i thought about how boring these baby waves must be for them. and i saw dredded guy and he kinda fell on his knees on the board and i'm like 'is he falling? he can't be fa- '.
oh. he just went to do a headstand. bastard.

i saw a pod of dolphins.
i was a little apphrehensive getting into the water after their fins though. (i have seen jaws
many times).
i was thinking 'Are they really dolphins?'.
what if they're just tightly knit smaller sharks?

after a few hours of fighting waves and riding most of them on my knees,
i collapsed on my mini malibu and laid there till i was pushed ashore.
then as i was lying there being gently nudged by the water, thinking how relaxing it was, a wave washed up that's churning sand and gently deposits the contents up the legs of my (5 sizes too large) wet suit.

we stopped for lunch and had a buffet style spread. met other travellers. took some pics.

it was a good day. even though it was overcast it was still relatively warm.
and i'm sure the wetsuits made the introduction to the ocean less
traumatic than it would have been.
and we drove out to a private beach so there weren't that many people out that laughed at us.

miscellaneous things:
there were lots of blue bottle jelly fish strewn about the beach.
sand gets everywhere, don't bother wiping it off unless it's on your food.
apply sunscreen liberally AND evenly.
if you're wearing a string bikini under your wetsuit, when you're taking the suit off, do it BEHIND the truck.
once you get the feel of it, the sound of the wave crashing behind you as you're paddling to ride it - feels wicked.

2:43 p.m. - Nov. 26, 2004

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