For an anxious person like myself, the amount of stress and pressure that comes with the holidays can be overwhelming. With so much to prepare and what feels like a literal need to enjoy oneself, my favorite time during this season is often the day after the holiday itself, when I’m still on vacation but I can finally relax. There’s often more time for surfing, too.
Well, luckily for me, the day after Thanksgiving dawned with pumping surf right on my doorstep in San Francisco. The tide was a bit high and the lineup was pretty crowded, but the waves at Ocean Beach were some of the best we’ve seen this fall – clean, organized, and pushing into the double overhead range. I fueled up on Thanksgiving leftovers and surfed until my arms were like rubber noodles.
Thanksgiving leftovers. Photo: Will Sileo
Well, kinda. What really happened is I surfed until, inexplicably, while duckdiving an outside set, a surfer paddling through the wave behind me surfaced below me, and the nose of his board went straight into the bottom of my Surf Prescriptions G Money II step up. No worries, I thought to myself, my shortboard is in my car. I paddled in, switched fins into my favorite shortboard, a 6’0″ Vernor Chef, re-waxed, and got back out there.
A couple of incredible rides later I found myself on the inside, almost all the way on shore. One more? I thought to myself. Why not? Well, as I was paddling back out through the inside bar, one wave caught up to another and suddenly a double up reared its head in front of me, in chest-deep water no less. I ditched my board, and dove through, but something didn’t feel quite right. In my head, I somehow knew my leash had wrapped around my board. I was right. Upon surfacing, my poor Chef was snapped cleanly in half. I was (and still am) devastated.
Lessons learned? Maybe “one more wave” isn’t always worth it. But then again, it often is. So maybe the lesson is just sometimes lady luck is a pain in the f***ing ass. At least it wasn’t my neck that snapped.
