Zoom ahhhh....

No pic today unfortunately, however I am hoping to make up for it with very descriptive vernacular! I gotta get a waterproof digital camera for sure. Every single moment of every single day that I am NOT paddle boarding, I think about paddle boarding. The only time I do NOT think about paddle boarding is when I am actually paddle boarding. Drugs? Don't need them. So anyway, after making a few phone calls to my normal SUP crew and realizing that I could not get anyone to play hooky for an hour on a beautiful afternoon, I went at it by my self today. My girlfriend and I have been taking some great walks at lunch over at Westward Beach and the waves have been pretty solid for the short borders. Given I rarely paddle Zuma and I was looking for a challenge, I decided to give it a go. I figured high tide was at 1030am, which would allow me some time to actually ride waves that don't close out. I put in at Tower 14 up by Trancas around 12noon. Man was the water COLD!

After waiting for the shore break to die down a little, I threw my board in the water and barely made it over a couple sets. One thing you don't want to do in the winter before you have had a chance to warm up is fall in the freezing water right away. All your muscles tighten up which is not good for balancing on your board. It's not good for back spasms or a number of other sports related injuries that can happen by not being loose. So I headed down the coast towards Westward beach and got a good 30min work out paddle in. Turned around and started heading back around 1230-1245 and decided that just paddling wasn't going to be good enough for me today. I saw some pretty nice sets rolling in so decided to give them a ride. Well, seemed like a great idea until I realized I am in shore break with a 10'6 paddle board that is 30' wide and 4' thick! Yupper...nose down, dug right in and mr. wave man threw me for a good one. Good thing I'm not a quitter, becuase I attempted to ride waves for another 30-40min all the way back up the coast. Mostly unsuccessful, but had fun non the less. I wasn't around any surfers when I was dropping in but they looked at me like, "dude are you dumb or something"? I looked back at them like, "or something".

I caught the last wave in...stood all the way at the back of my board so I didn't get throttled and rode the whitewater to shore.

sweet!

until next time...