Bestest day ever

I know I've had other posts called Best Day Ever, but the Best Day keeps changing and getting better...which is why I call this one Bestest.

I haven't been out for a while so wasn't expecting much, but expectations never have anything to do with performance. I got up and riding on my very first wave, and just kept going. I didn't count how many rides I had, but I am pretty certain it was the most ever. I had more rides than not-rides for, I think, the first time.

I'm not really sure how or why. I should make it clear that this was a surf lesson. I was out with the same guy from last time. I mostly wanted his commentary on what I was doing on each wave.

Since my goal was to work on the standing up part, I pretty much let him choose and call the waves for me, substituting his wave judgment for mine. Normally I wouldn't do that, but I've gotten pretty confident lately on my wave judgment, so I didn't feel like I really needed to work on that so much.

Now, was it his superior wave judgment that resulted in so many rides? Well, perhaps, if timing is all that critical that a fraction of a section earlier or later makes that much difference; my judgment wouldn't have been off his more than that. And in fact, sometimes he made mistakes in judgment as well.

It was good to know, because he could see and call each wave, that sometimes the best timing in the world couldn't have saved it---sometimes what looked like an approaching wave just turned into "moosh" (his word) too late for you to see that this was what was happening. In those cases all the paddling power in the world wouldn't have worked.

He gave me compliments on my paddling---well, anyone can look at my arms and see I've been working on that.

Nevertheless, with him I definitely missed fewer waves than I would have on my own, but I still missed waves. And missing fewer waves was probably a big part of why I got so many rides (maybe eight or ten) today.

I was doing so well he started telling me how to work on turning, but that was kind of late in the session and we didn't get very far on that.

I was getting up earlier than I have been. He'd yell at me to stand up, and I'd go, Yeah, Right! but right after that I'd get up somehow. A couple of times I know I used my knee. The other times, I have no idea what happened, but somehow I was up. And unfortunately he couldn't always tell me whether I used my knee or what I did, because he was watching from behind me and not from the shore and couldn't see.

Oh, yeah, a few times I did the haul ass thing again, not bending my knees but from the waist. That doesn't work, he said, simply because when you're bent from the waist your head is hanging down, and it's too heavy and will cause you to fall over!

Other times, he said, I kind of froze in place, knees locked, and that's not good either.

He repeated this advice: Surf like you've just smoked a joint!

Haha, no good for me, I've never smoked in my life. (Well, I did, once or twice, but didn't inhale. And that is really true. That's not a Clintonism. I wasn't trying to be good, at that point in my life ---age 18---I just didn't know how to smoke.)

Other advice often repeated: Don't think; relax.

I'd practically have to become another person in order to do that. I like the person I am.

Do you know how much work there is to do on a book after you've finished the book? "Finished" is a relative term. After the exhilarating surf session, I got right back to work. Only about a month to deadline (I can get an extension but don't want to). This kind of work is not creative or fun. I spend hours just trying to track down how to get the rights to use the quote or the photograph I want to. Tonight I just spent four hours trying to figure out how to get permission for the photo I want to use on the cover. Somewhere someone is not telling me the right thing because no one seems to know who has the rights to the photo. But I am a master detective and don't give up easily. The more difficult a challenge, the more I like it.

Anyway, it's a long haul, and very tedious at times. But I'm getting there.