“Yeah, I’ve seen this water before.”
The end of summer can be a letdown.
The weather starts to change, the wind picks up. Clouds blow in off the ocean with more frequency, and the vast blue skies of the start of the summer are sorely missed. The clouds don’t yet have the sharpness of fall, winter and spring. They’re a dull white and gray.
There is a grayness about the end of summer. It is a time when you realize that another of the free-to-do-as-you-please seasons has come and gone, and that so many of the savored plans dreamt up at the start of summer remain undone, some not even started.
I wrote a few weeks ago about living to the full as a child and as a parent. I sill believe in this fully and heartedly.
But now as the summer ends things don’t seem to be coming together. The city beckons but I don’t want to leave my summer abode in a pine forest on the coast of Argentina. [continue reading…]
“Yeah, I got to say that this is alright but, let me tell you, surfing is sublime.”
I took my eldest daughter surfing on her own board for the first time. I was no longer pushing her onto the waves like over the previous two summers when she was learning but still not ready to do it on her own.
I jumped on my board and started paddling, and the 10-year-old followed me.
I turned around and she smiled and we paddled through the high tide-filled trench on a hot summer morning with the wind blowing offshore under deep blue skies at a beach break in Pinamar on the coast of Argentina. We paddled through the trench separating the shore break from the surf and we came to a sandbar where we could stand and wade, and we pushed on, wading and jumping over the waves, and then we paddled through the section where the waves break. [continue reading…]
“Yeah, I can get pretty vicious at times!”
I went bodysurfing in the shore break with my eight-year-old son, and he wanted to do what I was doing.
He wanted to catch the waves and ride along the face as it tubes over him within inches of the beach.
It is a ride of all but a few seconds and then bam! You hit the sand and roll up the beach, taking out unwary bathers with a beam on your face, a quick apology and then back out for another ride that is all for the thrill of a quick shot of adrenaline.
“Let’s go!” I said.
But first I gave him a few pointers. You’ve got to wait for those waves that break in at least a bit of water, not the sickly ones that crash right on the sand. If and when you hit the sand, keep your arms and legs in a crouched position like a cat. That way you’ll land safe and unscathed. [continue reading…]
