Sunday, October 30, 2005

Session 5208: Bak in Action!

I am back in action. Due to the HIPPA regulations, I will not be able to tell you a gory detail of what I had to go through, but I became rather ill shortly after Session 5207 on October 10th where I started to get some severe pain and the next day, it has gotten so bad to the point that that evening, I decided to go to an emergency room to see what the hell is going on, because I was actually ill already. To make a story short, it was nothing really major, but a kind of a thing that I needed to take it easy for a while, while the body repairs itself, and I am happy to say that I am now recovering from it quite nicely. So I have decided that today is the day to get back in the water, and I am really glad I did because three of my Stokemaster buddies showed up to share the waves, and it was warm and sunny and the waves were gentle and nice welcoming back in the water.

It was a bit powerless today but it was easy to get out and paddle around. I tried both 6'3 which was totally ineffective and my trusty 6'6 board, and I decided to stay way inside and just catch many small inside waves, which, of course is my favorite way to surf, and I was glad that my paddling arms and lungs held up without a sign of gotten weak.

The first wave, I blinked and held back a bit, but after that I was starting to get back into my surfing self. Now I was wishing that the waves were a bit bigger and not closing so fast. One area that I have gotten a bit weaker is the flick up part and I caught a lot of waves but I was not popping up fast enough missing good rides.

If you have been following my StokeMaster.COM StokeForum posts, you know that I have been taking advantage of this downtime I had and do some on-the-desk learning, and I've learned quite a bit about the fins and drives that they generate. So I was actually consciously thinking about that and while I was surfing I have really realized today that I am still very poor at using the tail section of the board well. I was also watching some surf videos too during this time and if I look at professional short boarders, basically I saw that their front half of the board is almost always out of the water, one of the few exceptions to this seems to be the bottom turn. When a surfer does a bottom turn, the entire rail, one side, would bury in the water and the more front part of the board contacts the water, but once the board is back on the face, I'd say that they are getting most of the forward thrust from the back part of the board (if you can help me out on this, please use the Comment feature of the Blogger or respond to my WavLOG post in the StokeFORUMs).

So I was really happy, received back the good energy from the water and ready for a DP tomorrow Monday!

Before I conclude this WavLOG tonight, I should say a couple of more things.

What I've learned is that one would only appreciate so much about having a good health when you have not gotten one. It can chew your stoke away and almost make the suffering worse as I'd try to deal with it more.

And towards the end of the session, a surfer asked me if I am the "WavLOG" and also asked me if I was OK. It always a pleasant surprise to see someone I've not met recognized me and also asked me if I was OK. And thank you for being an avid reader of my BLOGs. Today I really felt blessed with many great surfing friends not just in this area but from San Diego to O'ahu!

Extra Feature Today!

While I waited for other Stokemasters to arrive, I took a video camera along and took a Video (Microsoft Media Format, 150 Kbps Bandwidth) of my long time surf buddy from StokeMaster, so hope you enjoy it.

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