Let me tell you, if you've never witnessed four, 2 and 3 year old children fighting over 1 chair (in this instance, a highchair, they all wanted to be the "baby") you have thus far missed out on a "tiny hell" that parenthood can throw your way.
Congratufuckinglations.
The "playgroup" that descended on my house yesterday just after the close was, in short, my worst kind of nightmare. Normally, I can be jovial and have fun with the kids. But yesterday, my plan was to get the heck out of here and head down to the beach since we have a great 4-5 foot swell running. However, I knew I was in trouble when at 4:01 I heard a male voice downstairs... a "Dad" had brought a kid... what the? And that meant I was compelled to stay.
It's like, you can't leave another guy in a house full of mothers and screaming children. It's part of the code... you just don't do it or you'll end up living in a trailer park someday with 11 red-headed step children and an ex-stripper as a wife.
A poorly aging ex-stripper. With tattoos in bad places that aren't as "taut" as they once were.
Anyway, that was yesterday. And the complete chaos that whooshed into my quiet and humble home kept me from the surf and from blogging.
Thus, I woke an hour before the sun to make sure I'd get some waves in this morning.
It was worth the lost sleep.
The waves were beautiful. It was a cloudy and gray morning here and 4 and 5 foot sets were rolling in from the mist. There was one guy out when I got there, an old guy who rides a beautiful wooden board. He was way outside, but I quickly realized that that was where I had to be to avoid getting rolled by the larger sets that were occasionally running through.
I had the best ride of my life today. I was straddling my board, bobbing around when I saw a set forming out in the gray. The winds here are calm, so it's been hard to really pick out the waves with ease... you need the winds to be a little offshore to make spotting the waves easier, but there was no mistaking the lines I saw forming out there.
The first one came and I let it through, the old guy jumped on it and I watched as he disappeared on the other side of the wave, the only thing visible to me was the churning water behind the break. That's one of the cool visions of surfing... most often you have the perspective of the waves breaking before you. When you're outside, you can see the back of the waves and the way it looks after they break. It's hard to describe, but you see the wave crest and then once it breaks it turns white and then the whiteness grows and spreads out into the surrounding water.
Anyway, I had only a second to appreciate the beauty of that first wave when I was picked up by the second. I barely paddled and got right up on it, very high on the wave and caught a nice 5 foot drop into the belly of the wave. The funny thing is that normally the break is a left but here I took a hard right to ride down the face and then did a left bottom turn to ride the wave in. It was a powerful wave with a good push and I must have been on it for a couple hundred yards because it was powerful enough to reconnect me with the inside waves. It was an amazing ride.
When the wave died, I laid back down on my board and started to paddle back out. With that first paddle, I also did a slight turn, to move the nose of my board into the incoming waves. That's when I felt the pull. My upper back simply gave out.
So, as I type this, I have an icepack strapped to my chair. My back is sore. It's not spasming anymore (it was no easy feat to paddle back in, luckily because my ride was so huge, I was only 50 or so yards from the beach) but it's uncomfortable. And I have to say, that after a ride like that and knowing that this swell should continue for at least one more day, that I'm really hoping it's feeling better by tomorrow morning so I can get in there again.
In March and April when my back was out, it was a nuisance, but no huge deal because I wasn't doing anything active anyway... now however, I find this injury to be completely frustrating... I just want to get out and surf again.
Anyway, so I got back to the desk really late. I made some great short trades this morning, most notably in DSX (the shippers tanked) and UBB.
I'm up nicely. Now, I'm going to lay down with ice, continue reading "The Dogs of Winter" and try to heal as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, I hope my daughter is the only toddler I see all day.
