I have not touched on the subject on the skill side of things lately, but honestly, I have not had a good feel of making progress. There were some set backs, such as the face injury, generally poor weather and conditions, bad luck in spot selections etc.
But today, I finally had some challenging but fun day out. This morning, the waves were mixed with noticeable amount of wind waves plus 10 ft+ swells coming from N to about 10 seconds. From the last year, the Jetty area starts to "happen" around this time of the year, and also there has been tips lately from my message board, so I stopped by on the way to work. The waves look clean but not quite breaking, so I went up North to the LM as usual.
When I got there, the waves look really closed out, and I could not see many people out (but there were fair share of cars parked). I was looking at it for a while but starting to be discouraged about the situation. But the guy next to me started to change so that kind of tilted my decision to go in. But I was not expecting much. Also I kind of decided to keep surfing on the long board until I gain the full confidence back.
After a few push backs, I managed to get to the outside, and there were a few overhead stuff coming. I tried to take off several times. I took off on all of them but shortly after the take off I could not get a hold the control, and cannot stand. I was starting to become very frustrated and also getting mad. I thought that the fear is taking over more than the stokes lately. Then a bit bigger one came along, and started to break. I just waited for it to completely crumble and started to paddle into it. I tried really hard to get ahead of the white stuff paddling really hard, at the same time shifting the weight back, then I was up and ahead of the waves a bit. Then with some luck, the waves started to rebuild under. I was looking behind a bit to see where it is going, and I was adjusting the course left and right and kept riding. At one point I almost lost it but I pushed the knee really hard, the board started to turn and I could bounce right back.
This really got me stoked and I had a couple of other rides like that. Felt like a lot of things I forgot had sprung back to my consciousness.
So this morning was pretty stoky starting from the Stoke 4 to Stoke 8 rides. In addition, there was really nobody out this morning and that allowed me to feel free to experiment.
Another surfer got really good long right ride too, and he was also so smiling and stoked. He said that he had the best ride of his life!
A day like this is what really keep me going.
Overall Stoke: 7
LC:LMS:NW:HT:12F:13S:NNW:20K:V9
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