New Years Resolution

How do I know I'm surfing better? There are impressions on the wax of my board of the pattern on the bottoms of my boots---my feet are on the board mostly, YAY! This is the first boot season where I've noticed that. And today I was working on getting up lower by keeping my knees bent (have to, when the waves are this small) and find I can do it, OK, not like a sixteen year old boy, but a lot better than I thought I could. Once I even got up with my knees already bent rather than getting up straight and then getting down. It felt wonderful, YAY for me!

Great first surf of 2008!

And since it's a new year, time for a resolution. I vow to try to make this blog less damn boring. I realize it's gotten into a rut. It's either whining about how I can't surf or more rarely, cheering because I can. Either way the pendulum swings I don't seem to be making progress very fast, to say the least. It's gotta be boring to read. Hell, it's boring even for me. Some possible solutions: 1) really learn to surf, and to talk about surfing at a higher level that other people can relate to; 2) go somewhere exotic with waves higher than one foot and write about it; 3) write about other things besides surfing in a way that relates them to surfing and is interesting to other people. The surfing as metaphor for life approach. Relate interesting anecdotes that get to the core experience of what surfing is and who surfers are.

Oh yeah, and try to do all the above without pissing anybody off.

Hmm.

Well, I don't know about the not pissing people off part.

After catching a bunch of rides on eight-inch waves today for about an hour, I had a very strange experience. I ran into C. on the beach. He seemed like a whole different person. At least he spoke to me for the first time since having a hissy fit a few months ago, something about me getting in the way of his putting the moves on a woman. (See blog of August 1st.) The conversation was off the wall and involved statements like "I love a good b-----j---." Also involved me happening to mention something about a stash of weed. (No, it's not mine, long story short, it belongs to a friend. Really.) The upshot was that C. offered to sell his body for about $30 worth of pot.

Was he serious? Who knows. Was I tempted? Would have been a while ago. Would this happen on any other beach? Doubt it.