Cold, schmold

Here's one of many reasons I love living at the beach: in the middle of a snowy 19 degree day in January, when surfing is the last thing on my mind and has been for some time because I have been so busy, I can be coming back from the grocery store with a huge bag of stuff and run into T., a local surfer, all suited up and with board in arm, who notifies me of the sighting of small waves, and all of a sudden my day can change from putting the groceries and laundry away to...something else.

It doesn't happen all at once, but little by little all excuses for not surfing melt away. Chores? Phone calls? Too much work? Nothing that can't wait.

The biggest excuse of all..too cold.

I seriously considered that one for a while.

I have never been out in 19 degrees before. I don't think I've ever been out when the air temperature was below 30. I had set that as my limit, the sanity stop-point on the "You surf in the winter? You're crazy"-o-meter.

But there was T., in the water when I looked out my window. And in short order he was joined by 4 others, all getting nice rides on the little waves. The wind was light and almost perfect.

So I caved, and set a new world record for the coldest surf ever.

What a good idea that turned out to be.

I wasn't cold at all. Not a whit. At first I thought I would be, and that got me off to a slow start where I missed lots of waves. But then I realized I was going to be OK, and relaxed, and the last other surfer left so I was all alone, and then the sun came out. If anything maybe the cold made me focus. You really hate missing waves more when it's 19 degrees. Fortunately there were lots of waves to paddle for and that kept me warm. I started nailing them. It wasn't so hard. I really like being alone with my thoughts, or non-thoughts, in the water, which today were along the lines of, "My publisher has arranged for me to give a lecture at Johns Hopkins, now that's hard, compared to that surfing is a piece of cake!"

That seemed to work well. I was getting up nicely and once I was up was able to work on adjusting my posture and balance to stay with the wave until the end. I ended up getting lots of long rides and had one of the better surfing days of my life.

In the end I had to go in more because I was getting hungry than because I was cold. Cold, schmold.