It was May of 2018 in San Diego and the water was still chilly. My first time out would be in a 3/2 wetsuit on a 9 ft West Coast long board. I had no idea how to read a surf report, diagnose a wave or know where a good spot for a beginner surfer was. I relied on my neighbor who has been surfing for a good 10 years to help guide me in the right direction. He said I should head down to an area called Tourmaline. So off I went. As soon as I walked down the stairs next to the Pacific Beach pier I realized that my board was super heavy and already bothering my neck. No way could I walk the .7 miles down to Tourmaline.
I made the executive decision to just head right out a little North of the pier. Now for anyone who has surfed the pier I can feel you cridging and you rightfully should. I am still no expert on picking surf spots but I now know from observation that the pier is most often than not an area that short boarders like to go. Not that you will not see longboarders there but unless the waves are right, and I am still not sure when that is, you won’t see many longboarders hugging the pier.
So, I guess now is a good time to mention that at this point I still had not every watched a video or read an article on beginning surfing. I had an one hour lesson in which I finally popped up via a long pause on my knees and thought ¨good enough¨. I was on an emotional high thinking I didn’t need any more lessons and I could not wait until I got to surf again. But the world has itś own plans that doń´t always align with mine. After that lesson I went boogie boarding and got stung by a stingray. A hospital visit and 10 hours with my foot in hot water later, I didn’t think I would want to get back into the water. That was back in November of 2016.
So back to May 2018.. my first month/s have been spent learning to pop up in white water. Yes, months! I spent a few weeks getting to the point where I could pop up in white water pretty regularly and actually not fall over after about 5 seconds of standing up. This entire time my neighbor kept telling me to go down to Tourmaline but I did not have a car to get me there nor the ability to carry my board that far. I would later learn that sometimes, but not always, my neighbor is worth listening to.
In my first months, I didn’t meet too many surfers. No one but newbies hang out in the whitewater and a lot of those people are tourists, one and done locals or the onés I envy who are out in the lineup after an hour in the white water. Jerks!;-P My significant other was one of those jerks. I wanted to blame my inability to pop up without putting a knee down on my age but my husband, at age 53, shot that all to hell. I can not tell you how many times I wanted to quit in my first few weeks/months but I kept going. Despite all my setbacks I was getting hooked. I was determined to get good enough to be able to go out in the line up and catch a real wave. I was also realizing that I needed to take some time to evaluate everything I was currently doing to see why I was stuck doing a 10 minute pop up. Youtube here I come..