Surfing in Hawaii

I just had to share a few highlight days from my vacation last summer. I was really proud of myself for going out and surfing. Even though it killed me. Metaphorically speaking. And I still have the accompanying journal entry I gave along with it. If it looks like I'm concentrating really hard on a relatively gentle wave, it's just because I am concentrating really hard on a relatively gentle wave.

Saturday, 8-2-08

I do believe now that age is not just in the mind. There’s something about adulthood that eventually makes you have to own up to things. Work becomes a lot more necessary than it was when you were a kid. In childhood, work was something adults made you do and your goal was to do it until the adults were satisfied that the work had been adequately done and then you were able to stop. After that, everything else was play.
But now work is necessary to survive. And the muscles in my body forget how to perform the way they once did- or possibly the way they never did.
This was how I felt as I was getting surf lessons the other day. The wave would be coming and the instructor would be telling me to paddle but my arms were not cooperating. Somewhere, over the course of the 2-hour lesson, those little guys were not able to perform the commands that my teacher or myself were giving them.
He would say, “Paddle hard. Paddle! Paddle harder! Harder!!!”
And I would be saying the same things to my arms in my head, but my brain had the disadvantage of knowing exactly what my arms were feeling at that moment. Those poor lanky white poles sticking out of the sides of my body had spent every ounce of energy they could muster just in the first few pushes into shore.
I’ve had enough experience with exercise to know that burning feeling means red zone for muscles- that they’re reaching capacity.
I explained to my surfing instructor that I just wasn’t in good enough shape for catching the wave that quickly every time, but what I was really thinking was that I had an hour and a half left to my lesson and all I really wanted to do was to lie motionless on the long board like a life raft and float gently out to sea.
I felt like Keanu Reeves after his body had just been pulled out of The Matrix.
“Why do my arms hurt?”
“Because you’ve never used them before.”
The instructor just looked at me expressionless and nodded. Surfers don’t really understand this kind of mindset, I don’t think. I realized how “in shape” their upper bodies must be. Not that I couldn’t have gleaned that information from simply looking at their upper bodies. But it helps to learn it firsthand.
Somehow, I was able to survive the 2 hours and stand up several times. And the real elation began after the lesson was over. I felt like I’d really conquered the dragon that had always been hiding in the cave somewhere. Or the dragon who sent me hiding in the cave.
Either way, I have finally and officially surfed. If the phone rings endlessly, it’s because I’m going to be too sore to pick it up.