Shortboard ride!

Finally, it's 90 degrees and feels like summer...finally. I am really trying to enjoy it. Long story short, this summer has just been unbearably stressful, full of dead ends, disappointment, and frustration (at least out of the water). To give you just one example, everything I own and rely on is now broken and nonfunctional: my computer, my printer, my backup computer, my stereo, my television, my DVD player, and my car. What are the odds of all these things breaking down at once? All needing replacement or major work and major $$$$? Oh yeah, and my shoulder. It needs major surgery to fix the pain I've had for nine months now.

What a difference from last summer, if you read a back a year. I can't imagine ever being that happy again. I can't see how I'll ever dig out of the current roadblock.

But enough of that. Because this is really a happy post. Yes.

Today I got my first ride on a shortboard!

It's not mine, I borrowed it. I think it's 6-2. The waves were choppy small crap. I haven't surfed for nearly two weeks. I was at the point of "just wanting to go in the water," really missing surfing, but also wondering (now that I know what's wrong with my shoulder) if it was worth paddling for virtually nothing.

I hadn't even brought my board to the beach, that's how flat it's been. My friend's board was there. I thought, what the hell. I expected nothing. I went in on a shortboard. It's only the second time I've ever tried one.

Well, it wasn't so hard to balance and paddle, and it wasn't so hard to catch the little sections of the knee high waves. I could catch a bunch. The problem, as I discovered the first time I tried a shortboard, is standing up. I already know it has to be fast, way faster than on a longboard. Today I also figured out that I need to catch the waves (at least these waves) way later than on a longboard.

There really is no time on a shortboard to think whether you have a stable platform for standing up; you just have to do it, I think, and take your chances.

Most of the times that I did that, I fell immediately. But at least I was getting to my feet, which exceeded my expectations for the session. I also realized that there really is great value and pleasure in "just getting in the water" on a board when you haven't been in for weeks, and it's 90 degrees and sunny. I was surprised at how much I was enjoying myself on shitty waves without getting rides.

Then somehow I got up and got one.

It didn't last long, but then no one was getting long rides today. I was on my feet, on a shortboard, and I went somewhere without falling.

My second time.

Wow, maybe some of the hardwon skills I've gotten on the longboard really do transfer. Wouldn't that be fun.

It's amazing how light the little board feels, how free I feel using it, how I am not afraid of getting clunked on the head with it (although of course I still could). It feels like nothing at all between me and the waves. I think I could really start to like it.