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Sunday, June 10, 2018

6.10.18 Healed and Hopeful at the Beachbreak

During my last session, I managed to exacerbate some skin irritation on my lower ribcage and it started looking infected.  I elected to not surf and not grind my board on it, so as not to make it worse.  Then about five days ago I was swimming in the pool with our eldest.  She was trying to catch me as I headed over to the edge of the pool.  She was almost to me and I pushed away.  I felt something yank on my toe.  I grimaced and looked back towards where I'd pushed off.  As I did so, I could feel the skin off my toe flapping around the water every time I kicked.  I'd somehow managed to get part of my toe pad wedged between the wall and the underwater light fixture.

I grabbed Lucia and limped upstairs, leaving a trail of blood as I did so.  It looked pretty grisly and at first glance it looked like I needed stitches.  I got in the shower and cleaned it up with soap, unsure if I was just adding to the pathogens by using the shower water.

Today was the first day I put it in the water after waffling yesterday.  The swell was building and tomorrow is projected to be the biggest day of the swell.  It could push double overhead and I wanted to make sure I didn't throw myself into that completely rusty.

The unrest in the country has diminished the crowd by easily 75%.  I counted thirteen of us spread out across the peaks at one point.  This number would likely have been in the fifties on this day last year.

Not many waves were ridden today.  Part of it, I imagine, is people can afford to be more choosy with less competition.  But the biggest part of it was likely how nasty these closeouts were on the building swell.

I paddled for a wave, decided to abort, then was caught inside as one of the biggest sets of the morning unloaded.  There was no question on this one.  The wave detonated and the whitewater shot up to twice the size of the wave at its peak.  My arms immediately initiated board-ditching sequence and I got hammered.

My first wave probably took me about a half-hour to catch, after the current had shuttled me to River Rights from Wyoming.  It was a decent-sized right and I stood up and immediately realized it was going to run on without me.  I watched in admiration as it threw over into a solid barrel and continued to do so at a breakneck pace.  I kicked my board out and took the next one in, then walked west past Playa Idaho.

I saw an older grom catch a left and get slotted as he pigdogged, then grimaced as he was helplessly slammed shut by a budding section.  Yep, with a camera and proper framing/timing one can make a lot of these waves look perfect.

I eventually got a look at a left.  I swooped down and it was pretty foamy.  I was a little off in my positioning but if I'd slammed my arm into the wave I might have been able to get covered up into a small one.  I didn't and kicked my board out as the wave rifled off without me.

The wave of the day wasn't all that great, but it was about head-high.  I caught, pivoted into pigdog stance, yanked hard but not hard enough on my outside rail.  The lip hit me in the head, I closed my eyes, continued in the barrel for a little over a half-second, then got obliterated.  I went into a fetal position while covering up my head and waited for trauma that thankfully never arrived.

Another big set came and I had to hustle to try to beat it.  I started smiling thinking it was going to be one of those by-the-skin-of-my-teeth escapes.  I duckdove and immediately was flipped over and destroyed.  It wasn't so hard that it left me stunned and overrode my brain's signals to my hands, but it did take the board away from me after a beat.  I got that panicky feeling after not knowing which way was up but thankfully surfaced before it got too bad.

The rest of the set had its way with me, playing the part of the pinball fans and I Jodie Foster in The Accused.  On the last one I came up a little too fast and the board happened to flip over onto my surfacing shoulder.  The result of the collision was painful but not so bad that it prevented me from paddling. 

Nothing of interest came in the twenty minutes after and in I went.

The pain has gotten worse but I should be ready to roll for tomorrow's beatings.

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