Hang Loose, Brah

Well, I haven't written anything Hawaiiany or self-deprecating in a while, so let's kill two birds with one stone.

Surfing.

The quintessential Hawaiian pastime. Hang 10, shoot the pipe, cut loose……my mastery of the lingo is about on par with my actual talent of the sport. In other words, I don’t know what the hell I'm doing.

This is reflected in my board of choice - as you can see, it is one of those blue beginner foam-top boards. You see tons of toddlers out there on them. I have yet to decide if I like my board bc it says 'Hey! I'm old and I suck. So watch out and don't expect much' or if I hate it because it says 'Hey I'm old and I suck. What a stupid loser haole'. It goes back and forth.

Actually, since I'm so tall, my board is a little short, which makes surfing even harder. I personally have a problem with this because to use it, my feet have to hang off the back, further enhancing the look of Tasty Seal Snack for all those sharks out there. I just know they're circling.
So after my bout of self-doubt, I effect the 'ainokea' (read: I no care) attitude of the islands, and try to seem at ease and cool, only to end up looking like an even bigger dork before I even get in the water. See below.

To seal the deal, my first time out was a bit hard - I got up, at least. Well, almost. It's kind of doggie-style boarding, to be exact. The waves were small that day, ok!?

In the end I gave up and headed back in. I always get irrationally angry at nature while I'm out there. I can take a wave in the face, pushing me back over and over, only so many times. Imagine me on my beginner board, my legs in the air so I won't be eaten by a shark, looking really pissed and cursing. I'm not sure when this is supposed to become enjoyable.

I can't really stay out that long, anyway. My noodle arms are still in full effect, and you won't believe what a workout all that paddling is. David likes to point out that the reason I suck is that even when I'm positioned well to catch a wave my 'paddling hard' to gain momentum with the incoming tide is less than effective. As in nothing happens. Whatever. I think this is his badly-disguised attempt at some 'hard love' (aka mildly degrading) encouragement to inspire me to work out more frequently. But more than likely I'll just continue to be skinny and bad at surfing.

Maybe I'll try to videotape me surfing next time we go out - that would be pretty hilarious to those of you at home. Of course, we would have to use 5 hours of tape to catch the one time I actually make a wave in all of the other false starts.

In the end, I decided to retire to the beach, and needing to feel superior to something, I buried my sister's dog in the sand. Bear was less than pleased, but a good sport.

In this pic, you can see David heading out on my board in the background - Lily is not amused. He couldn't get up very well either, but that is probably because my board is way too small for him.

At least our whole family isn't a disgrace - Court can get up.

Outside of the water, I'm a cool surfer. I got a surfing scar during an outing so now I'm 'boss'. Or whatever. I'm still working on the lingo.