Excellent Friday

I am loving these summer Friday afternoons. The water seems more beautiful, the sky bluer, on Fridays. Mellow, mellow, mellow. Small crowds, small waves.

Today I just kept saying to myself: Relax, take your time. You don't have to try for every wave. Mellow out. And I did. I had a really good time.

When I got up and riding, I noticed that my stance was very wide. I have been concentrating on getting my front foot (in my case, my right) on the board and leaving the back foot where it just happens to be. I don't really move it from where it is when I'm taking off. Bending my knees helps me balance with that wide stance, but doesn't always work, so I started to realize it would be better to try to get my back foot further forward.
Once I'm up, I tend to freeze my feet in position, even if I'm precariously balanced, because I think I can't move my feet when I'm up or I'll fall. Of course, I see people move their feet to balance all the time! So I decided to try it. I moved my back foot forward while riding the wave, and immediately felt more balanced. That way, I could ride the wave all the way in instead of falling off.

Even though I'm angling my board and going the way I think the wave is going, these waves don't usually last very long before they wall up---that is, another section starts to break ahead of you, i.e. the wave closes out. From the beach, I watch how when that happens the person falls. There's really nothing you can do at that point except maybe try to go straight in.

I was riding a wave nicely and then I saw the wave closing out in front of me and the water surging up on my nose which caused me to fall, but in this case the board banged against my chest and arm when I fell. Ouch. Perhaps I am a wimp, but I'd rather not be black and blue tomorrow if I can help it so I got out and got some ice to put on it. It was OK because even though I was only in for an hour I was really satisfied with my performance.