The Fear Topic. Again?

WavLOG

The Fear Topic. Again?

Well well well, my dear friend Ren has done an excellent article on on Surfing Injuries. As the mass media presents to us, the young surfers are continued to be depicted as "fearless" stupid people who are continuously under the "Darwinian Pressure" for the selection of our future generations (have we really gotten any smarter yet or are we still needing another 5 million years before we can laugh and say, we've leaned our lessons.) Then we also see bunch of old folks on Wall Street Journal ads about condos, retirement investments and such with photos of them clad in the black westuit with a shiny (short) boards. The picture here seems to me that "they've lived long enough, what the heck they can now be stupid." Do you agree with me or now?

But if we all look at this, it is all about the "fear within us." Isn't it? Here are some thoughts that evnoks me when looking at these situations.

The basic scenario seems to be that surfing is a "stupid" sport because we paddle out, risking shark attacks, hypothermia, drawning and (fill in the blank _____________).

Justifiablly, yes, these are something that we could be accused of being stuipd. "Stupid" because we tend to do something the "regular" people won't do, like sitting in the office all day, steal hour or two just surfing the wave for stupid YouTube videos of stupid surfers.

Why is it so "stupid?"

I think because you could possibly lead a safe life if you did not do these things. You could just sit in front of a computer, a satellite TV etc., and enjouy just watching us doing things that you don't do while you just wait for your final day to come. And that's what your parents told you to do. "Don't get hurt!"

Why?

Because we are all being afraid of the real world.

I totally agree with you too.

Just about every time I get out, I am actually quite scared of lots of things. Sharks? For sure. I always think about which angle I am going to shove my board to these suckers.

And even when the waves are just about head high, I always think about. "OK, if I screw this one up, am I going to head down into the sand or some rock?" 99% of the times that is unwarranted worries.

But the thing is this. I did go down head in to the bottom, and my neck hurt of a couple of weeks after that. Thank god I did not break my neck. I did break the nose of the board a few times. I did hit the rock or came really really close to it... like this morning.

So I am afraid of a lot of that stuff, like you do when you watch that surf video on Fuel chanell, but somehow that won't stop me going back to the water, and I will continue to be fearful.

The challenge to me is to be how relaxed I can be under these situations.

The Personal and Progress Report

WavLOG

The Personal and Progress Report

First, I must apologize for many WavLOG fans about my recent lack of posting. It is not that I was away from surfing but I had to allocate more time to other things that are happening. First, my real job has gotten really busy, but furthermore, I have been spending a considerably more time on my life long passion, which is music. I have been at music since as long as I remember. I will share that information a bit more later.

Back to surfing though. Have I been making a progress? Lately I am not so sure. It has been taking a lot more time to progress to what I consider to be the next step and this, I have also written a lot about in the past, and to some extent I do not want to repeat myself and bore all of you. I do think though the beginning stage of learning how to surf was much more interesting than I am going through today. There simply are more "drama" about bunch of failures, some successes and mostly mcuh struggle, and these stories are far more interesting than what I can write about these days. So if you are starting to learning how to surf now I highly recommend that you keep your journal or better yet, start a BLOG page like many of us have done.

If you have read this far though you might be curious how my progress has been.

First, if you have been following my progress, I have been focusing on the speed aspect of surfing. Although the speed is the key to surfing, this is also one of the ultimate goals to achieve by any surfer. After all these years I have finally come to understand, and to some extent, being able to execute this though on more consistent basis. Simply said, the key is to stay on the surface of the wave. This is very simple sounding but it has been so hard to do. First, I need to be able to take off on a wave that I can ride, and the more I need to get the speed, the more powerful wave I need to challenge talking off and then there are just a long process of getting ready for that moment.

I can take off on more types of waves than ever before, but typically I would go straight down and then stall. The reason I go straight down is because I still do not have the ability to negotiate the first turn higher up in the wave, and this is the area that I am very struggling at some of the latest sessions. There are a lot of parameters, like finding the right condition, finding the right spots in a session, and the strength and skill to negotiate the first critical moment.

So to a good extent, I continue to to be the beginner of the next big step to come and so the struggle continues.

Side Story: The Danger of Crowded Lineup

Yesterday, I was looking at the crowded lineup on the southern corner of a particular beach in our area. There was one long-boarder who was letting go of the board when the wave broke. It flew sky high. Glad I was not around there. Then later I heard from a buddy who happened to be at the same spot a bit later on that he collided with a surfer. No damages were done, but I was lined up at a spot breaking much bigger than there, and who is saying that bigger waves are dangerous. We should really be aware that more often than not, other surfers can pose more frequent and immediate danger than the waves.