A little water never hurt

James and I had big plans to surf while we were in Bali.  Then James got in an accident and hurt his foot in a wild and crazy Ultimate Frisbee game and we thought it might not happen. 

But it did.

After we left Ubud and headed down to Seminyak, we decided to contact my old friends at Rip Curl Surf School and sign up for an intermediate class.  We were super excited to go and I prepared for a walk down memory lane and a surf on Legian Beach.

The Rip Curl van picked us up at 10 am and we jumped in with a bunch of Austrians.  No yodeling.  I thought we'd drive about 5-10 minutes and end up at Legian.  But...we kept driving, and driving and driving and turns out we went to Sanur.  About 30 minutes away from our beach.  We discovered that they thought the surf break was better in Sanur today, and that they were going to take us out to a reef break.

For those of you who aren't pro surfers, what this means is that they were going to put us in a boat and drive us out to the middle of the ocean, drop us off and let us catch (what looked like) huge waves and then paddle back around the break to surf again.  No shore in swimming distance.

This wasn't what I had in mind and it looked a heck of a lot scarier than the nice medium size, white waves I was used to catching and riding gently in to shore.  So, I agreed to wear the helmet this time.

We paddled until I felt like my arms would break off (about two minutes - no, seriously, five) and occasionally my surf instructor, Sonny, would pull my board.  Yes, I have no upper body strength.  I've never hid that fact.  James paddled like the swimming rock star he is, and occasionally gloated by just sitting up on his board and admiring the beauty around him.  I panted and tried to hold my head up.
                              (Here's James catching a sweet wave)

At any rate, the point of this story is that I caught two waves.  I did the first one and got pounded, and eventually made my way back to the line.  We paddled again for like, FOREVER, and then Sonny told me to catch the next wave.  It looked pretty huge, but honestly I didn't have the strength to really turn around and look at it, It just seemed high when I was standing at the top of it looking down.

(the close up doesn't do its size justice- see James' above for size perspective.)

I got up and caught it like a champ and even turned.  I hit the bottom, jumped off the board and got thrown all over by the power of the wave.  Praying the board wouldn't hit me in the face and break my teeth like this other guy's friend from our group.  I did get hit on my leg.

I came up for air and realized that my board was tangled up with someone else who was cursing out the instructor.  I think there were way too many of us (class and non-class) going together and accidents were happening.

     (this is me jumping off and you can see how close that other guy is)

                    (and from this shot you can see how we got tangled up)

He saw how panicked I looked and then started focusing on untangling us.  Of course we could only work for a few seconds before the next huge wave in the set came and pounded us.  I had no idea how to get over or through the wave with the board + it was tangled, so i just tried to duck under it, hold my breath and pray that no one's board including my own would hit me.  These were big waves and a couple times I felt like I was under long enough that I needed air and I couldn't see which way was up.

All this to say I was tired, slowly growing more and more panicky about getting smacked or drowned, and then the tears began to flow.

At that point Sonny came over the wave to find me and helped me untangle and pulled me back to the line.  This is the conversation that followed:

Me:  I want (gulp) to go (sob) back to the boat.
Sonny:  You just caught big wave.
Me:  I (gulp)(sob) boat.
Sonny:  You even turn.
Me:  I can't (sob) do it.
Sonny:  OK.  But you catch wave good.
Me: help.

Poor Sonny.  He probably never saw anyone sob in the middle of surfing.  He pushed me in the right direction and I finally got to the boat.  One of the Indonesian surf guys was running it and he helped pull my sobbing body in to the boat.  I had a headache, thought I was going to lose my lunch and was crying in heaving gasps.  He stared at me for a long time and I could see he had no idea what to do.

However.  I think he felt he had to do something.

All of a sudden I felt something trickling down my face and when I opened my eyes between sobs I realized that this guy had gotten a water drink box, punctured it and was slowly dripping it on my head.  I looked at him, he smiled encouragingly, and I just sat there resigned as a steady flow of water was poured on my head.

Just another day in paradise.

p.s.  I still love surfing.