Sunday, May 07, 2006

Big


Yesterday I rode a pretty big wave. The drop was super late so that it felt like my board was stuck in the side of a vertical wall. When I hit the bottom, I was going so fast that I was afraid to cut back. "Hang on for dear life," was all I could think as the board skipped along over the chop. It felt like the time my friends played a joke on me at Pyramid Lake, pulling me on waterskis behind a 1970s jet boat, when they pushed the speed to full-throttle and made a hard turn. But that time I couldn't hold on. Yesterday I did. Without any effort (besides absorbing the chatter with my legs) I stayed in the wave as it keep building, watching a big green shoulder rise ahead of me. On the inside, some 100 yards later, the wave got incredibly steep again as it began to pitch over all at once. I straightened out in the nick of time while the whitewater exploded behind me, threatening to knock me off. Then I ejected, kicking the board away from me. I was so blown away by the ride that I almost paddled in and ended my session after only a half-hour. But I didn't.

Black Flag "Rise Above"
Drawing by Pettibon

4 comments:

Diane said...

Sounds amazing and I am sure it was.

Anonymous said...

Just surfing (the kind one does online rather than at the beach) and found your blog. Love the powerful illustration and how appropos it is of your post. I surf in L.A. and am the director of a new Web site that'll be live later this summer... so I see a lot of blogs. Like that you used such a cool illustration.

Anonymous said...

I love Pettibon

Slim said...

You're like, Greg Noll, or something!