SURFING - Surfing Alone: Friends are a Nuisance - Try not to make any! :)

Hello everybody on Hive and especially the SurfHive community! It's Jasper the surfing-musician Dad from Cape Town in South Africa!

So, yesterday was a National Public Holiday in South Africa: Human rights Day - of course that meant I wanted to exercise my Human Right to exercise in the ocean's rights (or lefts - it doesn't really matter!)

Then I did something stupid... I made a plan to meet a friend at the beach! Why was this stupid? Well, friends are for talking about surfing with... not actually surfing with at the time! Why not?

• Instant crowd of people who want to sit close to you and chat when you want all the waves to yourself...
• They either want to surf a scarier spot... or a more boring spot... than you do!
• You always land up waiting for them to arrive...

Well, the last one was my fault. I told this friend we would meet at the reef we both like to check, knowing that it would probably be too small... and we'd change our mind and go elsewhere.

I arrived. It was laughably small. I looked at my phone - 1% battery left! I message my friend to meet me at the carpark because my phone might soon die.. and then it promptly did die immediately after that! I waited another half an hour while the waves seemed to get even smaller!

Now I was unsure what to do. The traffic was bad, and maybe he'd still arrive? If I went somewhere else he'd definitely never find me as my phone was now dead so I would have no way to let him know where I'd gone...

My best chance was to start surfing the laughably small reef, and hope that he'd arrive... and see me... and join in!

So...
Figuring I had promised @riverflows that I would practice my mini-malibu skills for the day I become a fully fledged longboard surfer-dad, I waxed up my orange 7'6 mini-mal... This had nothing to do with the fact that the waves were so ridiculously small that no other board would have been able to catch them!

Matchy-matchy

Then I applied a liberal helping of orange zinc to my face because:

• it matches my board and I want to look cool :)
• It is late summer in Cape Town and I have a slightly ginger complexion!
• I figured my friend might recognize me out in the ocean better if I had a glowing orange nose, lips and cheeks!
• I had already just decided in the parking lot that I have had enough of trying to be friends with other surfers for all the reasons described above, and figured looking like a freak would help me not make any more surfer buddies by accident!

Oh well, here comes a 1ft set, breaking to the left as per usual with this spot!

I look behind me to see the wave fading away completely behind me - this has never happened at this spot before? Too small?

Oh well, guess I'll turn and go right instead and see how close to the beach I can get before I must pull off! Hey, this is actually quite fun!

Here comes the set of the day! All 1.25ft of it!

Surely an actual left this time?

Nope, the wave is fading away behind me again...

Guess I will turn right and get even closer to the beach this time! Hey this is fun!

Well, my friend never joined me. I learned later that he took one look at the puny reef, laughed, and drove across the entire Cape Peninsula to find something bigger, but then battled with currents, crowds and close-outs when he did...

So what did I learn yesterday?

• Friends are a nuisance - try not to make any! Hahaha!
• Fun is what you make of it, and the best surfer is the one having the most fun...
• Apparently you CAN pump a mini-mal/longboard if you find a wave small enough... Hahaha!

Until next time! Hopefully bigger!

THE END