Saturday's Surf Sesh. Two words: AARon BrrrRRRR.

Newsflash: It wasn’t even that cold!

I met Maddie and her buddy Lou at LS at 9:30am yesterday. Absolutely NO wind and sun was shining. Temps read 20 something Fahrenheit and I’m not sure if it was the standing around a bit, the wet Wet Sox I’d put on at home or the fact that Google had lodged a nut in my head in the morning: The weather is 11 degrees but it feels like 2. Have nice day! that set me shivering early on.

I hadn’t been out in a couple weeks and so the already brutal paddle out felt heavier, and I felt slower. The currents were incredibly strong and sometimes I was paddling sideways. I did everything I could to avoid turtle rolling but that’s always a fools errand and lasted about five minutes. There was SO much water. We’d gotten a storm early this week and I think it just pushed a ton into the ocean.

After twenty minutes or so, I finally got through to the other side, not before I realized I’d been pulled a quarter mile down, toward Restaurants. Shit, I thought.

I made my way back to Maddie. The waves were big with surprisingly little push, meaning you had to commit to sitting right under the lip essentially to nab one. I was having trouble hanging with this and the waves were breaking inconsistently, and also often double waves, which was even more confusing.

Not going to lie.

It was a frustrating session for me.

I hate admitting that. I try to make surfing a place in my life that has no pressure to perform, to be anything other than what it is, but I really wanted to snag some waves yesterday and it just wasn’t my day. I was dropping too fast down the face when I caught them, I was NOT catching them because I was resisting how far in I had to be and then two hours in I was slipping from cold feet and just face planting right into the water.

It’s true that I was out with buds, the sun was shining, we were bobbing in the ocean. Overall, we were winning.

But I walked back out onto the shore thinking: I can’t go this long without being in the water again.

I thought about it as I drove home in my wetsuit (changing was not happening) and as I stood in the hot water of the shower and I recommitted to surfing. It quite literally is one of the sources of my power in my life and I need to be tapped in to it more. It’s my church.

YEW for silver linings.