DAY 168

The surf conditions were epic. The weather was hot, as only “Mexican hot” can be. The walk from the shade, across the beach to enter the ocean, was so dehydrating that I actually brought a little water bottle with me out to the line up. I tied the bottle to my bikini strings and stuffed it inside the back of my bottoms. Cute.

The wind blew straight from the shore into the faces of the waves, causing them to stay open and hollow. When the wind blows in the wrong direction, it causes the waves to collapse too soon, ending the ride and often smashing the rider. But that day, the wind was perfect. The swell size was not too big that I was terrified, but just big enough to push me out of my comfort zone. I had left Puerto Escondido for a few days to surf one of the point breaks a couple of hours south. I wanted to put in more wave time, in less crowded and less challenging conditions, trying to improve my technique as my coach suggested.

That day, the vibe in the water was amazing. We hooted each other into waves and cheered as we watched each other get pitted inside barrels. The swell direction hit a finger of land that jutted into the ocean just perfectly. The waves wrapped around the pointed landmass to create rides of up to a third of a mile. By the time I finished a wave, my legs would be burning. By the time I paddled my board all the way back to the place I had started, my arms would be burning. I never wanted to sit up on my board and wait too long for my next wave, because my skin would be burning. When the wind and the swell and the tide and the sand bar and the crowd vibe all come together to create optimal conditions, surfers anoint the day with the word “epic”.  When all the conditions align to form an Epic Day, you have to surf. These are the days for which you call in sick to work. Surfers spend hours, weeks on end, logging time in crappy, sloppy, stormy, way-too-small and way-too-huge days, rehearsing for a day of perfect peaks and barrels.

I surfed as much as my body could take that day. Then I forced myself to surf some more. I was there to improve my technique, and with each ride I could feel something clicking into place. Each time I caught a wave, I would say “One more!”. One more lasted for hours. I came in to take a break to eat, power nap in a hammock and hydrate.Then I went right back out. My body begged for a break, but I had to take advantage of the conditions. I did this three times: surf, eat, nap, repeat. I surfed 8 hours that day.

The next day, the waves were equally good, but many people were tired from the day before. That meant even more waves to myself. Others listened to their tired bodies and slept in. I was equally tired, but I had a goal; they were just surfing for fun. I repeated the entire day: Surf, eat, nap, repeat. I surfed 7 hours that day.

I took a couple of heavy falls and landed hard on my board after kicking out of a couple of waves. But it wasn’t difficult to ignore the pain when I was making so much progress. In addition, a photographer whom I knew was patrolling the beach, and he promised to give me photos after the session. After each ride, I fought the current, paddling back out with a huge grin on my face. The “stoke” (the surf term for excitement/love/passion/vibrance/aliveness) filled my heart. By the evening of the second day, I could feel a couple of those falls in my rib cage. Once or twice, I had sailed ten feet above the surface of the ocean–as high as my leash would let me–and landed hard on the board beneath me. Taking to my bed that night, I noticed that it hurt to take a deep breath. Too exhausted to care, I slept hard despite the pain.

The day after my two-day, perfect-wave whirlwind, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. My entire body felt compressed. I woke up convinced I was suffocating. I tried breathing deeply, but sharp pain shot through my rib cage. I tried rolling to my side, but the same hot pain stabbed my lungs. I managed to get myself to a seated position on the edge of my bed. I perched there for a moment, allowing the pain to subside, taking short shallow breaths. I made my way to the mirror and lifted my shirt. Something was poking out of my lower left rib cage. You’ve got to be kidding me! I twisted my torso slowly, the pain causing hot tears to pool in my eyes as I tried to pop the bone back in. It felt like a sharp knife was slicing my flesh when I twisted. But I’m here to improve…I have to surf!

Slowly and gingerly, I gathered my board and my beach bag. With slow steady, breaths, I hoisted myself into my car. When I pulled up to the beach, I saw that the waves were still pumping. I dragged my board down to the water. The moment I laid on my board, pain shot through my entire body. I thought if I just warmed up and worked through it, the pain might correct itself. I thought I was just being lazy. I thought that surrendering to pain meant I wasn’t committed to my goal.

As I tried a pop-up, my body rebelled completely, crumpling under its own weight. The wave swallowed me and spit me out the other side. I paddled back to shore, dragged my board back to the car, drove back up the hill, got back in bed, and cried–more out of despair than pain. My goal had just taken a major setback. More than two months would pass before I would surf again.

T-Minus 3 years

“Inhale, step or hop your feet to the front of your mat. Exhale as you surrender your strength in a forward fold. Inhale, engage your core on and lift halfway…”

I instructed my yoga class while physically demonstrating the proper positions. At 9:00 am, it was my second class of the day. It was my fifth class of the week, and it was only Tuesday. Coaching my class to use their cores to lift their backs, I lifted my own back. But I was too focused on the words I was saying, too tuckered out from the intense class schedule and my own workouts, and too distracted by a separate, full-time job and a messed up marriage. I forgot to use my muscles and, instead, simply relied on my flexible spine to do what it had always done. Suddenly, something felt hot.

I attempted to stand tall and something popped. Sharp pain shot through my lower back, into my hips and down my legs. Emitting a yelp, I collapsed to the floor. My students jumped from their mats to help. I was incredibly embarrassed and refused to stop the class. I caught my breath and gingerly made my way to my feet. Through gritted teeth, I taught for another forty minutes.

After class, when the last student had left, I laid down on the studio floor and cried. The movement while teaching had prevented the pain from setting in all the way, but it assailed me completely now. I remained still for a few minutes, after which my back locked up completely. I was unable to raise myself from the floor. I crawled to my phone to call Kurt. He was working and didn’t answer. I didn’t feel like bothering anyone else. On the floor, unable to move, I cried. My tears flowed more from facing the fact that I would have to slow down than than from the physical pain. It would be weeks before I would practise yoga again.

T minus 8 months

It was a beautiful, sunny day in Ocean Beach, San Diego. The waves were knee-to-waist high and perfect for longboarding. I finished teaching my two Saturday morning yoga classes, rushed everyone out the door and jetted home to grab my surfboard. All I wanted to do was surf. I was so burnt out on teaching, and my body craved the ocean. The water temperature was only in the upper 60s, but the sun was shining so I opted to “bareback”, or surf without a wetsuit. I put on my most colorful bikini–the one that matched my surfboard. I power-walked toward the ocean, strutting my stuff along the five blocks to the beach. I made sure to walk along Abbott Avenue, knowing it would be busy with lowriders, Harleys and muscle cars out for a Saturday afternoon beach cruise. I reveled in the honks, engine revs and head turns.

Once my feet hit the sand, I sprinted to the water, jumped on the board (landing on my knees) and stylishly knee paddled through breaking whitewater with the balance of a cat. Arriving at the deepest part of the line up, the spot where the best surfers sit, a set came instantly my way. I whipped around, caught the wave and danced to the nose of the board. A crowd of male surfers looked over their shoulders in unison to watch me. As a nice, sweet finish, I spun the nose of the board back toward the line up, delicately landed on my belly and began to paddle back out.

Right then, a bigger wave broke right in front of me. My instinct told me the wave was too big for paddling over the top, that I should roll myself under the board, completing a maneuver called a “turtle roll”. But my arrogance told me that if I pulled off the longboard version of the duck dive maneuver, sending my board flying above the whitewash, I would be pretty badass. And I would still have dry hair even after riding a wave–a badge of honor. So I charged straight ahead toward the crashing wave, shoved the front of the board down into the white wash with all my might, and hopped on the back of the board with my feet, forming a down dog shape with my body. But I misjudged the speed, power and strength of the wave. More accurately, I misjudged my own speed, power and strength. The nose of the board flew up to meet my face, the smack sending searing pain into my nose and mouth. Not wearing a leash that day (because I was too good to need one, only kooks wear leashes on small days, everyone knows that), my board was swept into the beach and I was forced to swim. As I came up from under the water, I put my hand over my face. My nose was flat…it felt like my nose wasn’t there at all. Blood, a lot of it, covered my hand, chest and belly, staining my favorite bikini.

I kept my hand over my face as I went hunting for my board. It had washed a hundred yards down the very well-attended, Saturday afternoon beach. I kept my hand over my face as I walked to the lifeguard station. I removed my hand only long enough for the lifeguard to say I would need “a stitch or two” and I should go to urgent care. I replaced my hand on my face as I walked five blocks home, avoiding eye contact with all the head-turners. I kept my hand on my face as I drove my 1971, cherry red convertible. I’d been planning to drive it around town that afternoon to make some heads turn, but instead of cruising the beach, I drove to the urgent care. I was turned away from urgent care and told to go to the ER, because I would need to see a plastic surgeon. I replaced my hand on my face and cried my way to the hospital.

I waited for the doctor to make thirteen stitches in my torn up lip. My teeth had ripped through. The doctor set my nose at straight as it would get. I wanted to call Kurt. I wanted him there with me. But we had separated months ago, and I knew that any communication would make matters worse. I cried, not from the pain in my face, but from the absurdity of being a starved-for-attention idiot, alone in an ER.

Day 235

After I injured my rib, I was forced to take a two month break from surfing to heal. During that time, I focused on maintaining my fitness. I did one hour of yoga, one hour at the gym and I ran. I began to challenge myself with the length of time I could run per day. By the end of the two months, I was running two hours per day on the beach. I was fitter than ever before. I had an additional fifteen pounds of muscle on my body, gained when I had first fired the food police, but an extra fifteen pounds of fat had mostly melted away.  After two months of training, photographing waves and working on my breath-holding, getting back in the water felt better than ever before. After a few days back, I had some success on some respectable sized waves.

The thing about surfing at the Mexican Pipeline is that it is completely dependent on the wind. Every morning, the wind descends the mountain and causes otherwise unreadable, closeout waves to stay open and hollow, forming tubes into which you can wedge yourself and hopefully emerge before they swallow you. By late morning, the winds switch and nearly all of the more than a hundred surfers clear out. The waves are so powerful that you don’t want to get caught by those monsters when they don’t have good form. There are always a few guys in their late teens and early twenties, machine-like humans in the prime of their physicality, who surf in these life-threatening conditions.  Occasionally we’d get a LAGO, a Late Afternoon Glass Off, in which the winds revert to offshore late in the day. When this happened, I could watch from my upstairs window as the streets flooded with people carrying surfboards, rushing toward the ocean. I had read some research showing that, in order to become an expert at anything, all ones needs to do is log about 10,000 hours of practice. I estimated that, if I surfed everyday for as long as the wind allowed, then I would be a pro by the time I was 45. I was desperate for faster progress.

One afternoon, a 23-year-old male friend of mine said he was going surfing and invited me to join. I asked if the wind was okay and he said yes, that it would be fun. Anxious for more wave time, I grabbed my board and walked to the beach. I saw him out in the water already, throwing airs and hacking turns. There were only a handful of other people out, not the normal afternoon crowds in good conditions. It felt like poor wind to me. But he was getting waves and so were the other guys; why shouldn’t I be able to as well? After all, I was in awesome shape and surfing really well…and I really did need to log as many hours as possible to improve as quickly as possible. So, I listened to The Voice that urged a rush to be successful, and I paddled out.

I struggled to make it out of the white water. There was no deep water channel to paddle through, so I had to duck dive my board over and over, each time getting pushed backward toward shore. It must have taken me twenty minutes to make it out. By the time I finally made it, I knew that I shouldn’t be out there. The Voice tricked me, sounding like it was on my side for once, But you need to learn to take beatings, that’s all part of it, you can handle whatever the ocean dishes out. You can do anything those boys can do. Or are you too weak and lazy?”

It didn’t take long for a set to line up. I put my head down and paddled hard, committing myself, feeling the fear and moving toward it. I dropped in left, on my back side, grabbed my outside rail, forcing the inside rail of the board deeper into the face of the wave so I could continue going left rather than straight. But the wave didn’t open up and let me into its cavern like the morning waves did. Insead it smacked me with its lip and plunged me so deep I hit the sand on the bottom. I bounced off the sand and started to come up when the force of the wave caught my leashed ankle and yanked my leg. I felt a pop in my knee, I swear I even heard it underwater. I knew instantly that I had torn my MCL.

When I came up, I rode the board on my belly. Hobbling back to my apartment a block away, I passed by a board repair shop. A bunch of guys I knew were standing out front, drinking afternoon beers. They saw me limping. When they realized that I was hurt–but not severely– they all started to laugh. Oscar, the local big wave surfer who originally gave me his stamp of approval to surf big, said, “Why you gunna surf when the waves is shitty? You need to learn to tranquila.”

Luckily, the tear was minor. Only two weeks of absolute boredom and depression were required before I could return to progressing toward my goal. When I got home, I closed all the blinds, turned on the fans, put ice on my knee, propped it up on a pillow, laid in my bed and cried. More from self-hatred than from pain.

_________

*some names have been changed to protect privacy

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