Session 7034: Shedding Beginner Equipment

I have gotten confident that I am not going to wear the helmet, except when there are some element of danger like the crowd, rock reef, bigger waves, and riding a long board. And this morning, I did also not wear the gloves either though the water was in low 50's. Turned out that it was a bit painful at the start but soon my hands got used to it, body started to pump more blood and stayed warm for the rest of the session. I also surfed without helmet, gloves and wetsuits for a week on my trip and it did not cause a problem either.

While I cannot brag about these sort of things, and whenever I do, I usually get into some sort of a problem, I think that I have some basis to say that it is OK to do so.

One area of the confidence I have started to get is how to "wipe out" and in most wipe outs, I am either aware of where the board is, or still handling the board, such as hanging on to it. I am also now capable of avoiding things like going over the falls, and when and if that happens, I know better what to do, like pushing the board away from me if holding on to it cannot be an option. Also surfing short boards tend to be much safer.

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Change of a subject back to my technical goal of the moment, getting to the break. This morning, I have already started to see some results. One of the thing was that I was actually getting "hot" under my chest while I was paddling out. This means that I am generating considerably more heat just from paddling. I have previously felt the general warmth increase during a hard session, but today was the first time when I felt something is "hot" in a specific part of the body.

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Changing of the subject again. But I had unusually vivid memory of a surf dream when I woke up this morning. The dream went like this,

I had to check into the hotel, I followed this man with a long board going to surf, who disappeared behind a bush, but if I followed this guy, go past the bush and go down the steep cliff hill, I ended up on a busy concrete street... bunch of cars, street trains, office buildings. But this is far away from a hotel, and I had to take a train ride to get back to the hotel. I returned to the hotel, and the same man is walking across the hotel garden with his board and disappears into the bush. As soon as I follow this guy, I'd end up in the same street.

Many of my surf dreams do not involve surfing at all. It usually are like this when I try to find the water and wave, I cannot find them.

However, when I am taking a nap after a surf session sometimes, I get to ride some big nice clean waves, and feeling are almost as real.

LOC:MT