Surfing's better with no waves

Little kid on the beach: "You know that pointy black part on the surfboard? Is that supposed to go up or down?"
Me: "Down."
Kid to other kid: "See! I told you!"
Other kid: "There's no waves today."
Me: "See, kid, that's when you want to surf. It's better when there's no waves."

After those miserable last days/posts, I had about decided to quit. I would write about how I was not so much giving up as permanently stuck, unable to find the answers to surfing's eternal questions (though bless those of you who've tried to help). I was simply unable to go on. Signing off.

I may still write that post, but not today. With all those thoughts in my head, I somehow found myself on the train heading to the beach. The impetus for this was Surfline's afternoon forecast: Flat. No waves. That, I thought, I might be able to handle.

I get there and it's warm as summer, sunny, gorgeous. The tiniest little lines, beautifully formed, are coming through. Wavelets! The water's actually blue, a rare occurrence here. I suit up in my 6/4 in 70 degrees. Tide's dead low. Believe it or not, there is one other guy out. He's getting rides on the ankle slappers. Lots of them.

As I'm getting into my suit I see someone waving to me from the boardwalk. It's C.! I'm mortified. I can't surf with him watching me! But I'll try.

Paddle out? Nonexistent. You can just stand in waist high water waiting for the tiny wavelets and they are coming reliably. Hard to catch? No, hard to miss.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's my complete lack of fear in the tiny waves. Maybe it's the utter lack of power of these waves. Maybe it's just that I have competely and uncharacteristically shut down the thinking part of my brain. It hurts from all the thinking about what to do with my knees, my hands, my feet, my back, so I have shut it down and am just doing without thinking. I don't know if what I'm trying is right or wrong. I don't want to know. The first few waves, I screw up. But then I start getting up somehow, and I am riding. I do this again and again. I stall out before reaching the beach, but I am up for five or six seconds. C. is cheering me on from the boardwalk. And for the first time in ages, I'm actually having fun.

After a while he comes down to the water and I get out (very casually) to talk to him. He tells me how great I'm doing. (Although his sober assessment of the waves is "less than knee high.")We have the longest talk we've ever had. Now that the hoods and jackets are off I can see that he no longer has his _________, alas, but he's still ________. He says, "You can't learn this all by yourself." That is a thought I've had about 3000 times but hearing someone else say it makes it true. (The topic of the execrable quality of "surf instruction", what little of it there purports to be---and there isn't any in this town---shall be the topic of a subsequent post one day.) I say I haven't had anyone to help me. He says he'll help me. I hope so!

Apparently his knees are just as bad as mine. He can't bend down more than halfway, not into a crouch like the surfer we're watching is doing. I've noticed when I watched C. surf that he gets up more slowly than most people. Yet he can still surf well, and is respected by the surf mafia out here.

Bad knees was going to be Reason #2 when I wrote my final post on why I have to give up trying to surf.

Since we've got that in common, seems like he'd be the perfect instructor. So then he offers again, and I say "I don't have your number," and he gives it to me right there and tells me to call him.

Then I go back into the water and catch more wavelets. I don't get up on all of them, and I don't ride all the ones I get up on, but I ride many.

I'm exhilarated. I think I have found the solution to my surfing problems: Only go out when there are no waves and success is guaranteed.