I Often Suffer in Silence

See, this is why I can easily switch between the mat and the surfboards. I was all about the mat last week, wasn't I? Mat this. Mat that. My mat sessions were providing more stoke than I'd experienced in a long time. But, as we all know, all good things must come to an end. And all of that good matting came to an end on Friday. The break was crowded. The waves were backing off. The mat was petulant. And I couldn't catch #$!@. Yet I stayed, waiting for things to come together. Well, they didn't and I got out of the water totally frustrated and silently cursing that session. What does that mean?

It means I'm ready to switch back to a surfboard. The mats can stay dry for a bit while I get my surf on . . . until my boards piss me off, sending me right back to the mats.

I also suffer for my skating. You know what I realize about myself? Here I am, 48 years old with a prosthetic knee and no health insurance . . . but I still have little fear of falling. I say I don't want to fall. I do my best not to fall. I cannot knee slide (as the new knee lacks the range of motion for a knee slide). Still, I'm willing to give certain things a try. And, well, that resulted in me hitting the deck twice yesterday when I was hanging with my group of female skaters. One slam probably would have seen some bodily injury had Micke Alba not been spotting me (as I was learning to drop in). As it was, I fell on my butt. Since I have a good amount of padding back there, the only thing I bruised was a tiny bit of my ego—which made me go back to the top of that ramp and try it again. I have no idea what I did on the other fall. I was up. Then I was down. On my butt. Again. The natural padding did its job. Again.

In a couple of hours, I will grab a pig and look for surf. I've enjoyed the points of late. I actually prefer the beach breaks during the summer though. They're wide open and spacious. There's room for all of us at the beach breaks. When it's only the points and reefs working, it gets a bit crowded. Okay, it gets damn crowded. In fact, this last burst of good surf had the points so crowded that those of us who regularly surf RPB went elsewhere. Even though we know that break and love that break, there were just too many bodies in the water for us to enjoy that break. So, I headed up north to surf that mat. Others headed north as well. We ended up all over the top part of L.A. County. Thankfully, we're back to normal summer weather and waves. The beach breaks are plentiful. There's now room to just spread out and surf. That's the way I like it.