"Surfing"

My first potential surf day back home, and the waves were nice in the morning: small, but good and lots of people out.

The first rule of surfing (or one of them) should be: Never leave good waves to try to find better waves.

I broke that rule today.

I had planned to go pick up my Robert August board (remember that one? Promised for September 12, but not ready until September 29, and I have been out of town so it's a total of two months I've been without it) today, and to surf the break nearest that surf shop, which is an hour from home. I didn't want to drive all that way and not surf at that break, which I've never surfed but which is an unspoiled, beautiful beach, one of the great beach loves of my life.
And today was such a beautiful day---if I didn 't go today the weather was predicted to turn, and I might not get such a beautiful day again so late in the season.

But I wasn't sure what the waves were going to be like there today. There are no cams. All I knew was, it was good at home. Should I stick at home and have a good (presumably) session, a sure thing, or miss that session for waves that might be good but might not?

It was a gamble. I told myself that good waves here presaged good waves there. I took the gamble.

I was wrong.

An objective onlooker, surveying that beach once I got to it, would have concluded there were no waves. But because I had driven so far, and given up good waves for these, I convinced myself those waves were rideable. Amazing, the way humans delude themselves, no? Amazing the way we let what we want to believe determine what we believe.

So I went out. And it turned out that what looked (optimistically) like small, but rideable, waves from shore were just an illusion. They weren't waves at all; they were just things that looked that waves, but weren't. Once you were out in them, you could see they weren't really breaking at all.

I knew all this before I went in the water, and certainly within fifteen minutes of being out. So then, the question is, knowing this: Why did I spend an hour and twenty minutes in the water? It was hopeless. I did not ride any waves, not even close. I caught two waves, a major accomplishment, and could only try to stand up on one---I failed. Nothing remotely resembling "fun" was had. Nothing resembling surfing was done. What the hell was I doing?

And yet...being out in the water on a sunny warm day is not an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon. It reminded me of my first year of trying to surf, before the blog even, when I never rode one wave despite hundreds of tries, and yet often felt I was having fun even so. What was that about? Certainly it had, has, nothing in common with surfing. The rush or fun that you're supposed to get from real surfing (and I'm not sure, even yet, that I've ever had it) is a completely different thing from whatever I experienced that year or today. What is it that I was enjoying? Just being outdoors; jumping around like a dolphin; having some uninterrupted time to think; being alone (well, today I was, at least); the sun on my face and in my hair; the beauty of the water; the satisfaction of trying one's best even at a hopeless task. None of this is surfing but it is "surfing" as I experienced it for my first year and for the majority of my second and third years as well. Only in my fourth year did I get to the point where I'd say thirty percent of my time in the water is actually surfing rather than "surfing".

It's not that "surfing" can't be fun---if it wasn't I'd have given up long ago. It's just that it's such a different thing it should have a different name.