One Perfect Ride

Three weeks ago I had surgery on my shoulder. Doc cleaned off bone spurs and cleaned up the area around the various tendons, rotator cuff, and labrum. There are tears that will heal with time and nothing else he let me know. No sports (surfing) for 6 weeks! But I am doing Physical Therapy and they are pretty aggressive with the shoulder. I do pull downs and reverse flys until it really burns. So, if my arm can handle that, it couldn't hurt to throw a longboard in the water and just paddle around a little, right?

I have not been following the swell. Normally, I check bouys, tides, winds, etc daily and often several times a day. A week and a half after the surgery I checked the swell, saw that a nice South was coming in and got depressed. So I was surprised to find hurricane swell pumping in. It was clean, good sized, and short period from a nice 190 degrees. With over 3 feet of tide and rising I headed for one of the most beautiful surf spots I know. It is a secret spot (yeah, right!) with a large rock marking the peak cleverly hidden just off the PCH, North of Malibu.

Paddling didn't hurt my shoulder any worse than PT, so out I went. I was on my 10' longboard because I did not want to get too tempted. I figured that I would be OK as long as I didn't get after anything too hard, forget about my shoulder, and tear something up in there. There was a good sized pack sitting on the main rock. Some of the guys were getting really nice rides. Shortboarders also scattered through the inside. I paddled out to second rock. The first reason was to get that saltwater therapy while staying out of the way. But there was another reason. As I was walking down I saw a set break well outside the main rock. Most everybody was out of position, but it looked like sitting to the left of second rock just might work for one of those.

As my shoulder loosened up I poked at a few. Not quite steep enough to catch sitting just left of second rock. So I slid 20yds farther left, a third of the way to the main rock with the kelp bed keeping me quite seperate from the crowd. My wave came and I stood up as a farmer would walk out into a drought ending rain storm. I let my feet come to a narrow stance and put my hands behind my arched back as I weaved up and down the green face and through the other surfers. The wave kept going for longer than I expected, and when it started to double up, I stepped to the nose to race the section. I easily got out in front of the section and perched on the cresting lip all the way in. With the beach and rocks approaching I bailed out the back.

That's it. Drought is over. One perfect little ride goes a long way. I can't wait until I can surf again!