You can learn a lot from a fever. Photo: Kellen Riggin
I paddled into a lonely stretch of jumbled waves, even as every cell in my sandy soul argued against it. Some strange force had invaded my body. Everyone kept saying “it’s going around” or “it’s just that time of year,” but I wasn’t buying it. My cloudy mind conjured twisted logic: I can’t really be sick, because I never get sick. Plus, a healthy pulse of swell had finally arrived and I’d already missed two days in a row that my young neighbor gleefully described as “dude, like, unbelievable!”
Besides, what’s a few germs surfing your bloodstream when your local beach turns on like Nintendo, anyway? Doesn’t anyone remember when a gasping Michael Jordan cranked through a playoff game while delirious with the food poisoning? The guy netted 38 points to beat the Jazz in Game 5. But I am (was) a good — decent — athlete, once. I’d conquer the onslaught of chest-high rollers the same way MJ blanked Malone and Stockton.
As I ran down the beach, board in hand, the swell looked bigger than expected. My excitement came in shaky waves. Or was that the chills? It doesn’t matter, I thought. The Pacific will bestow new energy and holy power unto my weakened limbs. I’ll jog home later grinning, telling anyone who’ll listen that all I needed was a little saltwater injected into my delusional veins.
Wrong. After a long paddle out and some ill-time duck dives, the headache that kept me up the night before returned. My muscle aches conspired to make my pop-up resemble a nasty case of upward dog. I was hot and cold and as I looked back at the empty beach, I began to see the words BAD CALL spelled out, à la SOS, in the sand. Or, I was simply hallucinating. This was a real possibility.
Still, I thought, floating there by my lonesome, all I need is one blissful right — since I currently can’t turn my neck to the left — to wipe the aches and pains away. Then I’ll paddle in and maybe curl up on the couch with some hot tea, a handful of Advil and the Celtics game. Game over. I still win.
The wind kicked up, ripping the waves apart like construction paper as the current yanked me back and forth. My wetsuit felt heavy, my brain mushy and my heart pounded sluggishly in my chest. Desperately I thrust myself in the path of another wave, but the face buckled beneath my fins. Or was that my legs?
More importantly, something happened to me that hadn’t happened in a while. I began to question myself. All the surf gains I’d made over the last few years, the fun rides, the plateaus I eventually hurdled, drained away. I wondered: do I even know how to surf at all? When a wave comes, what exactly am I even supposed to do?
My frustration ebbed and flowed with the tide. Calming my mind, breathing deeper, taking a break — none of it worked. I paddled around like a sad, dying fish under a muted sun as the wind tossed fistfuls of salty spray into my face.
Even worse, I grew angry. Angry at my board and my fraying wetsuit and my cold toes. Pissed at myself for sucking. My disillusion spread like a dark cloud of kelp and my hands formed fists under water, each raising one magic finger.
Yes, I put my head down and gave emphatic middle fingers to the fish. I flashed the bird to the bass and barracudas. In doing so, of course, I meant no harm to the lineup. I was flicking myself off.
Even more sadly, this was an unwelcome return to form for me. When I moved out West a few years back I was an out-of-shape, every-other-weekend warrior, yet I was also determined to surf as much as possible. I fell victim to hundreds of frustrating, hapless, unproductive sessions. I went to the wrong spots with the wrong boards at the wrong times and tides, and I paddled around like a nut with a sore neck, picking up injuries like beach shells. I got skunked, thrown around, held down. As a result, I constantly got pissed at myself. My trite frustration and pretentious anger quickly blotted out any chance for a fun session, like wiping a clean window with a rag dipped in sea scum.
To make matters worse, I didn’t deal with my emotions well. I’d come home after a few hours and my lovely, hardworking fiancé would ask how surfing was. “Eh,” I’d say gloomily. “Not great.’
“Hmm,” she’d say. “Doesn’t seem that fun to me.”
The woman was completely right, as she often is. Allowing those spiteful feelings to conquer my brainwaves and invade my system — much like a determined virus — nearly ruined my love for surfing.
Yet now, years later, these rage-laced sessions have ceased to exist. That’s why, as I floated out there, finally realizing I might be too sick to paddle around, I blindly crashed into a moment of clarity, as if I were on the court and the hoop was suddenly a mile wide. I realized that, at some point, I’d found a way around my own silly walls of cynicism and irritation. I’d stopped pointing fingers at my own neoprene chest. My unfound revelation saved my surfing in the same way that a good dose of antibiotics and vitamins would soon rescue me.
As I floated out there, a strange virus hovering inside my cells; I realized that I didn’t exactly know how I learned to deal better with the constant, albeit relatively insignificant, adversity that spending hours in the ocean throws at us. Sure, my fitness improved, and my surfing followed. But in more specific terms, I can’t say that there was any button I pushed, any one thing I read, any single lightbulb moment of inspiration that led me to not get so angry with myself.
All I can think of is that amid the closeouts and missed waves, good surfs began to enter the mix. As I stayed with it and suffered through unfulfilling sessions, I also had a couple super-fun breakout ones. A surprisingly epic ride would materialize at the end of a session, or an uncrowded morning would help take the pressure off and I’d find my rhythm. Sometimes I’d come home as (naturally) high as peak Cypress Hill, even if my body had been through the ringer. As the months passed, my surfing became defined by a growing sense of momentum, whether it moved by staggering across the sand or racing down the line.
So as I rode in on my belly last week, utterly drained, I couldn’t help but smile woozily — and it wasn’t just the Day-Quill burning in my blood. The realization I sought to identify is simple: I don’t give the finger to the fish anymore. Like many of us, I get frustrated with my surfing sometimes, but I know another wave is coming around the corner. And guess what? If my head’s down, I’ll miss it.
