Surf’s up!
So, we’re sitting in out hotel room and Marguerite is giving us some of the options of things that we can do while we’re in Honolulu before we go over to the big island and see what Hawaii is really like in its non-hypercommercialized form. I had been seeing “paddlers” (think of standing up on a surfboard and getting from A to B using a canoe paddle) and we started talking about surfing a bit. She mentions that I could take some surf lessons right here on Waikiki if I wanted to. I asked Crystal if she wanted to do surf lessons with me. Looking over at Isaac, she said “Mmmmmnno. But if you wanted to do it, I could…”
I don’t really know what all else she said. The phone number for the Hans Hedemann Surf School, which just HAPPENED to be located two blocks down and one block over from the hotel we were staying at just morphed itself into my hand.
“HELLO? YES, I’D LIKE TO SIGN UP FOR YOUR 9AM CLASS TOMORROW! ALL YOU HAVE IS THE 3PM OPEN? YES, YES, I LOVE AFTERNOONS. YES, I’LL BE THERE TO CHECK IN EARLY AT 2:30. THAT’S D-U-C-K-W-O-R-T-H. I’M CONFIRMED? YES, I THINK I LOVE YOU, TOO.”
DUDE! I’m going SURFING! COWABUNNNNGAAAAAAAA!!!
Now, I know full well that this surf school and its strategic location is a total tourist trap. Normally, I avoid such places like the bubonic plague, but this one I can’t WAIT to do! I don’t know why it never occurred to me to want to do this before this very moment, but now the seconds have turned to hours. It’s like Christmas Eve when you’re 8 and your bike is way to small. I make a quick status update and get some replies about not forgetting to stretch your arms really, really well beforehand. Yes, whatever. I’m going SURFING!
I can’t remember what we did this morning. Who cares? It was just drivel compared to the surfing that was going to go down later on. I think it rained a little. Well, a surfer is going to get wet no matter what, right? I mean, even Kelly Slater gets wet once in awhile, right? Hours slither by. But finally, after what seems like a month and a half, it’s now TIME for the SURFING!
I pull a Star Trek move and teleport on over to the school. My forms autofill themselves and I don’t know if I used a debit card or if I just winked at the sales girl and my Paypal account was somehow charged. It was something like that. My red rash guard surf shirt glistened like the uniform of a newly minted superhero. I was READY!
The instructor spent about 5 minutes of actual instructing, preferring to let experience be our guide. “When the board lifts up from the back, hop up and place your feet up by your hands, then stand up and keep your chin up. Whatever direction your head is pointed in is the direction that the board will go.” Some balance / center of gravity tips and we were in the water. “Okay, paddle out to those instructors out there and they’ll help you.”
Out where? Those little waving specks that were halfway to Okinawa? Those guys? Psssht. It’s not that far for a superhero, right? Coupla minutes max and I’ll be with them and then it’s on to shredding some waves.
About a thousand paddle strokes later, I was maybe 50 yards off shore. If the instructors were in “Okinawa,” then I hadn’t even made it to “Guam.” Didn’t someone say something about stretching beforehand? Dang. Is it too late for that? Apparently the angel and devil that sit on my shoulders were having a luau because there was definitely some fire going on and my muscles were starting to shake faster than a hula dancer’s hips. About 10 minutes later, after seeing some of my classmates go by me in the opposite direction for the second time, I finally made it out to the instructors.
“Heeeeey doood! You ready for this?” said a kid probably half my age. I could tell that he was Caucasian, but he was so tan, that his skin was the color of the native Hawaiians. *panting* “Hang on. Let me catch my breath.” “Yeah man, you’ll be catching one right now, here comes a good one! Start paddling!” and he gives me a push to help with my paddle speed. Things are actually going pretty good! My feet come up by my hands, I stand up, and I’M UP! I’M UP! I’M SURFFfff…no.
I asked the instructors later about what happened next. They said that I was standing way too far forward, which is what caused the tip of my board to dip so far into the water. It was almost the equivalent of running my ship aground. In reality, what had happened was that I was violently catapulted forward off my surfboard. Let me try to paint you a visual: imagine a skateboarder at full speed going along and never sees the curb. Right. You got it. The board suddenly stops and stays behind while the person riding it…well, they’re not riding it anymore. Even BETTER was that I was wearing an ankle tether, which prevented me from free falling because I got caught up in the tether and did this awkward one leg forward belly flop. It was the reasons that terms like “Epic Fail” were ever coined.
Over the next hour and a half, I will say that I got up a few times, though I had to cash in a reality check and accept that my hopes of “shredding a killer wave” had been reduced to “being pushed kind of hard by a stiff whitecap.” I think I left one of my deltoid muscles out there.
When it was over, I was exhausted, but felt pretty satisfied with all the effort and the few meager results that I had managed. Being the most strenuous cardio workout I had done since 2004ish, I suddenly knew why there were so few overweight surfers. That was some hard work! BUT, the fun outweighed the work and I would do it again in a heartbeat! If you get the chance, I highly recommend it.
Just make sure you stretch first. That’s what real surfers do.
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