One good ride

Here is why you should always go in after you get one good ride:

Because you will spend the next 20 minutes trying to get out again, and 20 minutes once you get out waiting for a wave, and once you get it although you will try you be will too tired to even try to get up. You will have wasted 45 minutes, your stoke from the ride will have evaporated, and you will have accomplished nothing but getting yourself overtired, feeling like shit the rest of the day until you fall into bed at eight o'clock.

Today I stayed out an hour longer than usual, in the hope that I could duplicate that ride, but all I did was waste that hour.

I actually set a record today for earliest session ever; I was getting into my suit by 7:15 a.m., a miracle.

If I didn't have this blog I'm not sure I could tell you how many straight days I've been getting up early in the morning to go in the water. Let's see, Friday, Saturday, I skipped Sunday because it wasn't any good, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That's six of the past seven days. No wonder I am so incredibly pooped. My back hurts, my shoulders ache. It's a hell of a lot easier to ski six days than try to surf. And it's out of sheer cussedness; every day's been a struggle.

Today probably had the best waves of the week. And I got two rides in the three hours. That's the best I did all week. One of them was shaky, unbalanced; the other was balanced and long, and I'm fairly sure I popped up on it, though how the hell would I know? I caught a lot of waves. I wasn't counting but probably at least ten. I was making most of my takeoffs. I had the feeling, which I haven't had in a long time, of the buttah takeoff; smooth, perfect. But even so once the board got going I simply could not think quickly enough of what to do. And the autonomic response seems to be to put my knee on the board and stick my ass up.

I'm still doing the popups in my living room. But on the living room floor there's nothing to grab onto the way I seem to grab onto the rails while attempting to stand up!

What was particularly embarrassing about today was that four extremely good surfers were out with me. Lots of hooting and hollering and woo-hooing, lots of long rides and barrels. All I could do was stay out of their way and hope they weren't watching me do my doggy-style pose. I wonder if they think about what I experience. (Nah.) It's so different from what they do that the single word "surfing" can't be used for both. I also wonder what my experience might be like if instead of staying away from them I asked them for help. It's too late for that now, I've got a reputation as a hopeless retard and an obstacle, plus I'm way too old, you' ve got to be young and cute to get guys to pay attention to you, but I hear that that's how other women learned to surf.