PM Surfing Wrap Up

This morning, there was a company all-hands meeting at 9 a.m. so this
pre-empted my usual morning session. Instead, I showed up early at work, set
up for web-casting.

The meeting went OK with a few glitches, and if you are on my private e-mail
list there will be a list of complaints but, hey, this is a public board, so
let's just say that the meeting did finish without a major issue.

This is a kind of a day, that I just look forward to the reasonable end so
that I can drive out to the ocean. Imagine this, as I drive out, I throw
each piece of cloth into the air, as I am by the beach, you see myself on
board shorts and a rash guard (note that this is a movie scene, so there is
no logic what-so-ever).

The water was sparkling in the sun that was low in the west, and almost
blinding to see the next set coming in. The set were in a good size from
chest to head, and the tide was low so they were coming down quickly. In the
water, I forget about all of the frustrating things at work and just keep
focusing on getting out, anticipating the next good set, and then try to
catch.

I was padding out through lots of soups and then a shoulder high wave was
just about to crash on me in a few seconds. I pushed the front of the board
down the water as I put my right toe on to the tail edge of the pad. The
wave started to crumble. Great! The nose is under the water, now I quickly
move my knee back to the toe, and as I felt like being pounded from the top
the board shot up into the sky! The board bounces back on the surface of
calm water.. My belly is still on the exact same spot as before the wave
started to crumble on me. Yeah! I did it, finally, my first perfect duck
dive!

Well, catching those fast closing curtain was another story. I did not catch
a wave this evening. I take off then as soon as I do it, I got eaten up by
the waves, instead I was falling down in front of the letter C, and the next
thing, I was tumbling several times in the water. I used to think that this
is the start of my death, but now I just relax. Richard Schmidt told me that
don't pop up right away, stay under until it is safe. Quite true, one
morning early in the spring, I did an immediate pop up to get a gasp of air,
and the next thing, a huge "thonk" sound on top of my head. Glad I had my
Gath helmet on.

So that's all for this evening. Hope you will all have fun day tomorrow.
Stay tuned, my StokeCAST for THU coming next!