Hey friends, it's been a while. May has been, well, it's been quite the month. Illness, allergies, helping the kids and the wife get to the end of the school year, some house stuff...honestly, I'd get to the end of the day and I'd just want to read and chill on the couch.
Even my exercise routine was falling by the wayside. But I am on track to read 100 books this year!
Whinging aside, I've been craving that peace that comes with being at the coast or in the ocean. It's one part wanting that escape and one part looking to confirm that feeling I found in Cayucos last month.
See, I still struggle at times with what I defined surfing was for myself decades ago. It was getting up and standing on a traditional surfboard. Anything else was something else, something other. My brain is kind of inflexible at times.
Perhaps it's just slow to flex, really. Because I've been hearing the universe directing me, little by little lately, and the brain is beginning to flex.
First, I've been watching a collection of bodyboarding films lately and oftentimes the guys in these videos refer to what they're doing as surfing. I know, seems like a silly thing to fixate on, but it tells my brain that I'm not the only one thinking that way.
Second, Kai Lenny (the man who could probably take a closet door into the water, ride it successfully, and do sick airs) unveiled a family of stand up paddle boards recently. Really? I thought those were just one small step below foils as to how hated they are in the lineup! I haven't ridden a SUP but it sure would go a long way toward feeding that desire to stand on a board and ride waves.
Third, there's been more news recently about differently abled folks out in the water. People coming back from life changing injuries to get out and surf. Like, I'm not in that category, but can anyone look at what they're doing (riding waves in whatever way best fits their current situation) and say "Naw, dude, sorry...that's not surfing." Are you kidding me?! No, they're totally surfing!
And fourth, I'm going to come back to bodyboarding because on more than one episode of shows on the Surf Splendor podcast network (forgive me, I didn't actually note which ones, though this point came up again in one from just a few days ago) the hosts David Lee Scales and Chas Smith pondered if maybe bodyboarding is superior in some ways to traditional surfing.
I'm not going to make a judgement one way or the other, but DLS and Chas brought up an old quote from bodyboarding legend Mike Stewart (who was the only bodyboarder I knew of, thanks to the surf film O'Zone) in which he waxes about having his whole body engaged with the wave while surfing on a bodyboard.
There are probably more things that have come across my awareness recently that are helping me flex my brain about my own surfing journey, but these are ones that really stand out.