Do you guys....

on the flip side, ever have a sesh where YOU COULD DO NO WRONG?? (hee-hee)..they happen.
anybody can nail it set-wise; just takes a little luck. one of the more amusing takeaways from this sort
of occurence is that it can annoy established egos in the line-up...which, in the past, i have found delightful.

the pro-surfers have a mindset which can really be rattled...and its fun to do so.

 

Last Tuesday at Belmar, not even joking legitimately the DAY before they dredged it, I was a pro surfer for a say.

Best feeling ever. Sticking every turn, riding out of a few barrels.

But I have had days where it's the complete opposite and I want to throw in the towel. . .

BUT THAT'S WHY SURFING IS SO ADDICTING. Always another different wave to surf. Different swells, direction, winds, wave form, wave size, steep waves, hollow waves, mushy waves. I f*ckin livefor this ****.

 

It's ridiculous. I've been surfing/bodysurfing/bodyboarding for like a million years (15 actually). I've been to Indo, Japan, Africa, freaking inland Germany, and a bunch of spots I won't even mention the hemisphere of.

Yet the one day that sticks in my brain is a decade+ ago crappy high-tide session in Central Florida. Unsettled thundery weather, oil-slick glass, pitiful knee-to-waist swell rolling in and barely breaking on the sandbars. I had been hunting all up and down the coast from CCB to Sebastian, and I picked this little no-name beach park to paddle out. Didn't even look rideable. Yet when I got out there, the barely-big-enough-to-break waves kept coming and coming and coming. The interval was just perfect so that I would catch the one "set" wave that broke with a perfectly shaped shoulder (never a closeout) for maybe 70 yards down the line, then paddle right back into position and immediately do it again. I caught every single wave that broke over that stupid sandbar for 2 straight hours. I didn't even sit up on my board once. It was as if the Atlantic was my own private wave pool with an operator timing my arrival to each set wave.

It was tiny, crappy, laughable surf made even sadder by the fact I was sponging. Yet every wave was a perfect canvas of glass that I effing destroyed (as much as you can rip in waist+ surf). Lightning was flickering out on the horizon and there wasn't another soul in sight the entire time. It shut down, literally not another wave broke, after I took one in, totally sated. I finished off that day with a bigass burrito from Dakine Diegos and I think I stuck around to watch a surf movie in the vacant lot next door to that place.

Not my best session, certainly crap waves compared to thousands of sessions in hundreds of spots since then, but that day was a gift that I will never forget.

 

I am 54 and have stand up surfed since I was 15. It has been the same since day 1. Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you. The last couple of decades I have dialed the aggro crowd techniques way down, and find I have more fun on clean chest high days with a couple of friends out, than overhead days of inconsistent swell in a crowded lineup of talented surfers. Everyone sees the two wave set as it comes in from the horizon, and the feeding frenzy ensues. I have found lots of alternate, almost as good spots that offer a very good surf experience without the hassles. Another thing for me, since day 1, has been that the first few waves I catch are the best. I get into a zone right away, usually, and after a half hour of frenetic paddling and shredding, I start to think too much and lose the instinctual awareness required to surf like a rock star. Then the rest of the session is about refinding the zone, and going out on a high note, getting a good ride at the end of the session. I have cut a couple of sessions short after making some awesome critical wave, and surfing the crap out of it, just so I can have that feeling of bliss all the way home. It really sucks when your last wave of the day is a beat down, and you're too tired to get back out. That's what makes surfing so awesome. There are no guarantees. You might get eaten by a shark, you may get a 23 foot barrel, you may get cut off by a sponger, you may go out and flail like a kook. At least you got wet! Better than doing the lawn.