Subject: A long day's journey into the wavesObject: Seeing through the eye of the tiger
Oh my god, I finally got out there today. Van brakes went out, so I had to search around all morning for the strap-on roof rack for the car. No finding. Anger feelings. Then drive clear across town to friend's house who has convertible, switch cars. Then go back home to van to get board and stuff. Then drive out to Tourmaline, but run out of gas on the way (all dashboard things broken, no way of knowing, except for repeated intuitional messages that I kept ignoring. (*note to self: why do you still do that?)
Roll the car into parking spot. More anger feelings. By now the mysterious, poetic, soft grey stillness of morning has burned off. The sun mocks me. A parade of choads and choadettes passes me by, carrying their coolers toward the beach. Sweating, cursing, trying to stay calm, I discover a small gas can in the back. With gas in it! Like a cup. But it is enough to start the little old VW Rabbit and get me to the gas station. Gratitude kicks in. I realize I'm shallow, in that when things go my way, I have happy feelings. Whatever, though. Miraculously, I find a spot in the parking lot really quickly. There are thousands of choads on the beach today, literally, yet this happened. More gratitude, more happy. Then the unthinkable happens.....there are not that many people in the water. How could this be, on a sunny 4th of July in San Diego, when the ocean is warm like bath water? Because they all seem to be flopped out on the beach, drunk. Tossing horse shoes. It's their day off. I can't blame them. I can only thank them for staying out of my way, thus enabling me to catch about 10 billion nice waves without having to fight for them or get cut off trying.
The only sad thing was that as I was sitting there, spacing out on my board between sets, I heard a voice in the distance calling what I thought was my name. I thought for a second that it sounded like Sea Monkey.
This Team ain't no Team without you, Sea Monkey.