New Year’s Eve

2014-OBJ-12-31

Surf: 2.3 ft at 12.9 s from the W at 262°. Onshore.

As the year comes to an end, folks start talking about their year: surf stats, highlights, etc. It got me thinking a little bit about this past year. Uff. It was a tough one surfwise for sure. This nagging injury is now a year old and, while I have a much better range of motion, it still hurts every day.

I did a quick scan of how often I’ve surfed this year. I normally average 150-175 surf sessions, this year barely hit the upper 80’s.

It’s been hard being out of the water, being so far off from my usual morning routines, and I miss saying hi to folks, being at the beach, all the things that come along with surfing. It’s also been hard trying to find a balance. Maybe if I hadn’t been so insistent on still surfing when I first got hurt, I might not still be hurt now. But on the other hand, not being physically active also has it’s drawbacks. It’s frustrating to “take it easy” only to have nothing change. I think a few of these aches and pains are from not being mobile. I feel both lazy for not going, and guilty for going.

After wrapping work early, I thought I’d sneak out for a few more waves. The forecast looked small enough not to set off too much neck pain and man, it’s awesome to watch the sun set on NYE from the water.

The wind had sadly switched to onshore and the little waves were a lumpy mess, but ahh well, I’ve surfed worse. It was silly, sloppy wave fun and wow, so clear! What a sunset.

Happy New Year!

Before the OTHER winter storm

2014-LM-12-10

Surf: 11.2 ft at 17.4 s from the WNW at 293°

Yay for rain! These winter storms have been slowly chipping away at our drought. It’s great for the water table, not great for water quality. It was pretty lucky to have both my shoulder stamina and a window from the line to line up.

Pretty fun waves out there, too. Really, it was nice just to get up, get going, and catch a few waves. I had fun swooshing around, did a little shuffling up, and mostly avoided getting knocked around until the very last wave. I’d forgotten what it was like to sit in my favorite corner of the beach watching the huge mountains of water roll by out at sea. Wow.

You could see the clouds shifting out over the ocean too. The storm coming should be a pretty good one!