Today I woke up a bit late, but had a pretty awesome day. I had a burrito and a coffee/milkshake at a local restaurant, chatted with the owner who is also a tech enthusiast (and fellow domain collector), and came back home around 2 PM.
As I was about to get dressed to walk by the ocean and see how the waves are, I saw a surfer staying in my complex and yelled at him “excuse me” first in Spanish and then in English. This dude was pretty chill. Didn’t look a day over 40 yet said he was in his mid 50s and had retired after teaching high school for a few decades.
The surfer dude informed me there are still some good waves, although small, and after we finished the awkward small talk I had initiated from my window and continued when he came back down the stairs, I went out inspired for a day of surf.
What really kicked it off was a local surfer / board rental worker who sent me some videos on Whatsapp about surfing. After finishing my Spanish lesson at 11 AM (which I totally had forgotten about until 5 minutes after it started), I watched those videos and got inspired.
Anyways, I went to plan my first lesson with him tomorrow and to rent a board. The cool thing is that he is from Argentina. Buenos Aires in fact (most people usually are since it has a massive amount of the population). I speak in a Rioplatense which is used by Porteños and Uruguayans. Between randomly seeing him walking down the beach a few days ago, or his texts today, I figure it’s a sign and I ought to get a lesson so I went to the surf rental place to plan that and get a board for today.
By the time I got to the ocean, it was probably around 2:45 PM. I figured I would surf an hour, take a break, and see where it goes from there. This was my first time going out into the deep end without my glasses (which I lost about 2 weeks ago if you may recall). It was a lot of fun.
At some point it started to rain, as a storm was coming in from inland. It was pretty cool, I love the freedom of surfing. And the crazy thing is it’s a lot like climbing… when you paddle out, your hands are doing the same movement of reaching up and pulling as when climbing (or virtually the same). Then, there’s the pulling yourself up on the board which is something we’re constantly doing in climbing. You could say that surfing is a form of climbing waves by climbing your board and then descending. In climbing we need balance in our feet otherwise we’d fall off (whether we are going up or down) and in surfing we can also fall down while riding a wave if not balanced enough.
So for me, it feels very natural. I’ve never been a strong swimmer nor someone who really enjoyed body boards and things like that. But surfing for me is a different beast altogether. Speaking of, I love how you can surf, knee board, and body board all in one ride down a wave. I’ve never seen that until coming here to Costa Rica.
Today while surfing through the torrential rain, it was pretty wild because there was thunder off in the distance inland, and even north of us where the bay ends. Then there was a lull in the rain. It came back even stronger. What had before been 50% storm clouds covering half of the bay was 80% enveloped in clouds and the rain came back like never before. Even before the rain had started, I was getting what I call ‘drowny energy’ from the ocean.
Although the waves were not as big as when I lost my glasses, my board was bigger than what I’ve been using the past times I surfed - since I figured I need to make it a little easier on myself. A bigger board has a bigger pull. It stretched my inner thigh in a way I’ve never stretched (or strained) in climbing. At some point I switched the chord from my left leg to my right leg. But it made me a little amused to remember that my right ankle is still a bit sensitive after a climbing injury I had a while back. Here I was, straining a thigh, then an already healing ankle, just so stay out in a storm with clouds, enveloping thunder, and pour torrential rain.
The thing is, I am not afraid of drowning. I’m not afraid of being strike by lightning either. I imagine the worst that could come out of it is ending up on the shoreline getting resuscitated in the event of drowning, or maybe in the hospital with some burn or brain damage if you get struck by lightning.
But, in the same way I love to climb and accept the real danger of a serious or fatal accident happening, I accept the same with surfing.
Climbing has helped me have way better reflexes, spacial coordination, and a better understanding of my body. For reflexes, I saw it within months of starting to climb where I was able to save something crazy, like a water glass falling mouth first towards a kitchen floor — by using my foot to cradle it and follow its downward trajectory to flow its velocity and also rotate its mouth away from the impact zone, all while doing the best I could to accomplish this in a way which would not kick it into the counter or possibly even make the situation worse and have the glass shatter around my fast moving foot.
Just a few days ago, I noticed when needing to get to some things around me, it was super easy. I knew exactly how much reach I had in front and behind me. And in swimming, yes, knowing your capabilities in climbing makes it fairly easy, at least for me, to know my limits in terms of swimming capacity.
There are various factors in surfing, like other surfers, currents, and your own board that you have to take into account. Things are more unpredictable, so you have to use more proactive measures to avoid an accident.
As much as I love climbing, I also love surfing. These are two sports that as I’ve said, I could die doing and I would be content. The only things that are scary about it is living to tell the tale, or, other people having to put themselves at risk to rescue you. I’ve seen helicopter rescue videos of climbers, and as skilled as those teams are, they have to take the risk that they won’t come back home in the process of saving you. That’s not a position I would want anyone to be in, on behalf of myself.
With all of that being said, I love climbing and surfing. To call them sports seems like calling running a sport for myself (during the time I ran a few half marathons and a full marathon), or to call yoga a sport. It’s a super cool way to get in the flow.