Surf class

It is rather difficult to justify my original interest in surfing.  After all it is a sport where, without proper protection, a person could freeze to death in a matter of minutes.  There are huge carnivores in the ocean that have eyesight terrible enough to mistake a surfboard with something delicious, like a baby seal.  And the entire point of the sport is to ride a force of nature that easily, and routinely, destroys entire cities.  On the plus side for surfing, it looks really really freakin cool. So I decided that I would not endanger my physical well being and instead would better myself by studying a variety of subjects and considering the meaning of life itself while meditating in an attempt to reach a state of Zen, and that lasted all of about five minutes.  Then I grabbed a surf board and jumped drunken backflop style into the ocean.

My biggest concern going into surf school was not the danger inherent in the sport, but rather the people I would be hanging out with when on the waves.  Surfing looks so BA (BadAss) that I assumed that all manner of faux-cool-person-douche would be there.  As it turns out people who surf are similar to people who rock climb, meaning they are buff studs who can't stop listening to Bob Marley or talking about world peace.  They're all super-hippies, which means, more or less, I fit in almost perfectly.  Instead of just grabbing a surf board, running into the water, and promptly drowning, I decided to enroll in a surf school, where we had lessons like: how to stand up, how to look BA while standing up, how to not drown, and if need be how to look BA while drowning.  At first I had trouble trying to schedule the lessons considering I have this pesky education thing to deal with, but eventually I settled on Sundays at around noon.  I say around noon because like everything else in Spain the time frame for the lessons works on a give or take half an hour basis.  Sometimes I arrive right on time to find out I'm already late, but this is rare.  Much more often our surf teacher walks out of a backroom with a slightly dazed look on his face about fifteen minutes after the start of the lesson and appears surprised that the constraints of the space time continuum still applied to his life.

There are five people in this particular Sunday class and after struggling to wrap ourselves in skin-tight wet suits we head out to the beach with surfboards in hand, having no idea what to expect.  Like a good instructor our teacher wants to show us what to do on land so we don't kill ourselves in the water.  We practice lying on the board, we practice standing up on the board, we do it again, okay, that should be about good enough, let's get out into the water.  Our instructor thought that we probably had enough practice to stand up on a goddamn force of nature, and as it turns out... he was right.  After about fifteen minutes in the water I'm riding waves all the way into shore like freakin aquaman.  Turns out snowboarding is directly linked to surfing in terms of how it feels and muscles used.
After seven classes I have decided that I've had enough education on how to ride waves, I just need to get out there and practice on my own.  The problem is I still have not mastered  the sport, after seven whole classes I was expecting to be winning national surfing championships, but as it turns out I still get flipped over by about a quarter of the waves while children of about 11 ride by my flailing body feeling ashamed to be associated with me in any way.  Now that I've started surfing without supervision I've taken the leap from 'Weenie American trying to learn how to surf by taking classes,' to 'Look at that idiot, he should really still be taking classes. Oh oh hes trying to stand up, oh look look hes, oh no, oh god that looked painful, oh god.  Should we go and check on him?  Oh god, is he all right, oh my... oh wait, wait hes washing up on the beach, hes trying to stand oh hes stumbling hes going down oh man, face first.  Stupid Americans.'  So needless to say I've made progress while functioning as an ambassador to spread good will about the United States.  See Rotary, I remembered.

I do believe that I want to continue with surfing when I get back to the states although I may only be able to do it for special vacations.  Surfing is great fun, but for some reason I thought that when I got better I would slowly start becoming more badass, this has not happened.  After breakdancing, snowboarding, surfing, and scubadiving I'm still just Andrew, what a gyp.  Maybe if I dedicate time to meditation and understanding myself I'll become more comfortable with who I am.  But who has ever impressed a girl by saying, 'I'm comfortable with who I am and where my life is at this point and time.'  I think I need to start skydiving.