D and had I checked Davenport a lot of times before, but always ended up driving farther north for better surf. It was becoming a bit of a joke that we would never get to surf there together, especially now since D is moving to LA at the end of the month. But finally today conditions looked pretty good, so we suited up and walked south on the beach a ways before paddling out to the reef break, which we had to ourselves. It was bigger than it looked from the beach, over my head. D was getting some decent rides but for a while I sat too far out not catching anything, till he talked me closer inside near him. Just as I paddled near enough to explain that, with my pitiful duck-diving skills (or rather, lack thereof), I was afraid of getting pounded by the occassional big outside sets that were coming though - you guessed it, here comes one of those big waves ready to break on me. The results were sadly predictable, right down to again smacking my lip on the Xanadu, so I surfaced with a bruised lip and a little blood in my mouth.
Still, in some perverse way, I get a thrill, a rush of
dopamine to the brain, from getting tossed and rolled like so much flotsam by the ocean. One thing I love about the sea, even just looking at its vastness, is how small and insignificant it makes me feel - not diminished but that my problems are not so big as they might seem. I also love that surfing forces me to live in the moment, because the ocean demands constant attention; if I fail to focus on the here and now, it will remind me, often by whacking me upside the head with a wave.
