First Waves

A was off and running on one of her all day adventures last week so I decided to pack our boards into the car and take N to the beach and do some surfing... dude. It was a bit of a trek, probably about 2 hours, but not that much different than a drive up to Burlington. We left early in the morning on Sunday and headed to Hampton Beach. Since it was just the two of us I was able to put the back seats down and stuff the boards into the back of the Mighty Fit. What an amazing car.

We got to Hampton Beach around 9:00AM, and it took a few minutes to get our bearings. As usual Google Maps gave us some crazy circuitous route to the beach, but I shouldn't complain because it got us there. Actually, I should complain a little. The fog was amazingly thick, I couldn't see the water at first, and the surf was a bit choppy and sloppy. It was on the small size but big for someone who's never surfed and an old man (i.e., me) who has trouble just climbing out of bed. Consequently, as you can imagine, we didn't get too much surfing done, and we were out there for about 1.5 hours. There were several factors that made it challenging.

First off, we didn't want to be surrounded by a lot of other surfers, so we went off to the side where the surf wasn't so great. Second, the water was cold, though our wetsuits did their job. Third, we forgot to wax our boards, so we were slipping around out there. Fourth, I forgot my leash, but more on this later. And finally, since it was sloppy and little rough, I didn't want to bail out on N, so we just hung together and bobbed around a bit. We probably could have caught some waves (taken with a grain of salt) if we had paddled out farther beyond the sets, but I think it just wasn't meant to be.

There were many positive notes to the whole thing. We know our wetsuits keep us warm, and we finally just did it and went to the beach. We now know where to go and how it works (sort of) in terms of parking and where to paddle out. We learned what we needed to work on, which includes just paddling, sitting, and feeling comfortable on our boards. We got killer good vibes from a local surf shop, who leant me a leash, and finally, the sun finally came out and we got tans. How can you beat that?

No question we have a ways to go, but the most important thing is that I don't want the kids to be discouraged. Nobody said surfing would be easy, but once you get the hang of it, there's nothing else like it. It would help if the water was just a tad bit warmer, which I think will happen, and I came to the realization that before we go off and try to catch the waves, we need to just get a feel for the boards under our bodies. That can be accomplished in a lake or pond, if you get my drift. Oh yeah, a little wax would help, as well.

These are all things we can address near our house, so we'll get on it right away.

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Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to CW for the pic.