Warm water, bare feet, sloppy joes

We’re back in business people. The beaches are open, as I mentioned in my previous post and it’s ON.

The two months the beaches were closed, I swore I’d be out there as often as possible and I haven’t let myself down. In FACT, June 1, I started a challenge to yoga, meditate and paddle every day. I haven’t been 3/3 every day but I’ve been nearly there and it feels really good.

Enforcing this challenge for surfing has been the strangest and most surprising part. I’m going to be honest—sometimes it makes going surfing feel like a chore. That’s typically just the feeling while I’m driving up to the beach, and by the time I’m paddling out, that feeling has dissipated but it’s interesting. My theory is that so much of our lives feel controlled or forced in some way and surfing, for me, has always been a portal to absolute freedom, that adding it to the list of “things I have to do today” robs it of some glitter. Having it constrained in some more rigid way has felt awkward and strange to me and, quite frankly, not great but the moment I’m in the water, that grouchiness is gone.

The big win this week was jumping into what felt like bath water yesterday. I don’t know which generous water god sent currents of warm aqueous bliss up the New England coast but I bow to you and light a candle in your honor. I jumped in gloveless for the second time this year and couldn’t even believe it. I quite literally stayed out longer because it was so goddamn warm and just putting my hands into the water that typically numbs them within seconds was amazing. Today was a bit colder but I said fuck it, and went booty-less anyway. It was cold at first but I was used to it after five minutes or so.

The waves once more were chunky as they’ve been this wk, with short periods, but they had some power to them. Some great sets rolled through that I just wasn’t in the right spot for but I had a sweet drop on one wave that left me marveling at the distance between where I was a couple years ago and now. There’s just this confidence and faith that I’ve got this when I’m standing at the top of a wave that could only come with so much time on the water.

Happy place. (C) Sara Dyer

Never Trust a Convenience Store Umbrella

I have few steadfast beliefs but I'll share one with you: Convenience store umbrellas are a farce. You know the ones I'm talking about. It's raining, and you find yourself without an umbrella, so you dash into CVS, Tedeschis, 7-Eleven, and there they are--a bunch of brightly colored umbrellas perched innocently by the door, handles out, ready to be taken. They're always in the price range of $5.99-11.99, but pay no mind to the price--no matter which one you buy, it won't work.

Time and time again, I've purchased one of these umbrellas during a rainstorm. I take the thing out of its plastic case that it will never fit into again, and I walk outside, open it up and prepare for salvation. Approximately ten seconds later, with the first phoosh of air, the thing is flipped inside out, one of the Edward Scissorhands metal bits is poking through the fabric and my self is soaked.

I don't know if, for the last decade, we've gotten the wrong shipment or what. These convenience store umbrellas seem fit only for a pattering of rain on a completely calm day, where not even one leaf is dancing in the wind. A rainy day in New England is completely uncivilized. It rains sideways. In fact, sometimes it feels like the raindrops are boomeranging back up from the ground. On a rainy day here in New England, there is wind and it is strong. When it's raining, people walking down the street holding an umbrella look like a mess of Harry Potters fighting with fiesty wands. When you walk by a public trash barrel on a rainy day, it's stuffed with broken umbrellas, the air of rage from its previous owner still floating around it.

I had an umbrella that worked once, and for one rainy season in Boston, it was glorious. I bought it for $15 from H&M and it was worth every penny. It was transparent, and the shape was more of a U so it was not given to being flipped inside out. Then I left it in a cab one day when I was apartment hunting. I didn't even go with the apartment--it was horribly sketchy. I still long for that umbrella. I realize it would take ten minutes of Googling to find myself an umbrella just like it but it's more fun complaining about this one than finding a solution. 

For now, I'm just going to walk down the street, let the rain fall on me and fancy myself a thirsty flower.