Session 7035: On Crowds

This morning, with the prevailing sunny and calm wind condition, and also the past several days of poor surf brought a lot of people to local breaks. Yes, I was part of the crowd so I should not be saying much, but while I was surfing I had some thoughts about it, especially I just came back from a week of just totally non-crowded surfing where I could own the whole break to myself for all day if I wanted to (but fortunately, or unfortunately I had to give them up because the session had to be terminated in 2-3 hours because I was so darn exhausted from catching so many waves.)

Now, however, this bring to the next thing. Whenever I come back from a surf trip where I caught a lot of waves, I feel like I have really improved a lot. In fact, I'd even say that having had to surf different breaks for a while had a profound effect on me.

So, if you feel like you are slumped, it might be a time for you to think about going somewhere other than where you surf all the time. I don 't know many surfers personally, but I know the faces and I see more than a fair share of people that hardly ever venture out to even just to the next break south or north of us. I know this because I can be at one spot one day and the next day, just a few miles down up or down the coast. I think that there is so much even within the confine of 30-60 miles from home that can be easily covered as a morning or an afternoon session.

~ ~ ~

Now, also, I am starting to sound a bit arrogant, but I saw there were some chance of collisions this morning, and also people taking off without regard to anybody or anything. The reason why I bring this up is that in most cases people are just oblivious to their surroundings. Whether they are taking off or whether they are on the wave, they are just looking only 1 or 2 seconds just ahead of the line. In all of the cases, if they were looking at the waves and much further in the direction they are going, they could have avoided problems. Luckily today, the waves were not big so you could easily stop.

Like anything from business planning, slalom skiing, motorcycle racing to surfing, looking ahead, getting the big picture is not only safer but also provides much better results. I think that it is one of the skill sets that all surfers need to acquire.