I took the day off and went surfing on Monday. We stayed at an Airbnb style party house with a bunch of family on Sunday in Yilan, and then while most of them caravaned home together, stopping at places along the coast, we went surfing.
It was only my third time surfing, and first doing it by myself, without lessons. For the 8 year old, it was his second time, and first without lessons—but I held the board for him and told him what I remembered from our last time.
I’ve always known I’d like surfing. Even when I was a kid growing up in Minnesota with no natural waves within 1000 miles to try it, I knew I’d like it. Often when you build up things in your mind, there’s this letdown when you finally experience it. We’ve all had that.
But I grew up on the water. Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes, is not exactly accurate. It’s more like 19,000, but land of almost 20k lakes doesn’t have that ring on a license plate.
And though we don’t have natural waves for surfing in the Midwest, we pull tubes behind boats or go wakeboarding or waterskiing or kneeboarding—although only a masochist goes kneeboarding.
Just kneeling on one, on dry ground, your mind is overcome with images of rubber bands stretching until you see little ripples and tears and then you keep stretching until both sides snap back into your hands. Ow.
That’s kneeboarding. And that’s before you start skipping across a lake.
Anyway, I was mainly a tubing person, because my family didn’t have a speedboat and wakeboards are personal and people rarely like to share their own, not to mention the boots are sized for the person’s feet. But tubes are for guests, so that’s what I grew up doing behind a boat.
We had many friends with speedboats and tubes. Every summer was filled with it.
And then one day, I became friends with a German foreign exchange student. We’re still friends. Good guy. And his host family had a cabin bigger than my house, I think.
The dad liked to have fun.
He pulled us behind the boat for eight, nine hours a day—three tubes at a time, sometimes up to nine people, though the boat can lag with that much weight—while we jumped between tubes and battled it out for who could stay on the longest. At times the waves were 8 feet high or bigger. And when they weren’t, we were skipping across the water, kicking each other’s tubes away, trying to get someone to the outside of a turn where the g-force could catch them and flip their tube.
Or we’d directly jump onto someone else’s tube and try to yank them off, everyone battling as we zoomed over the lake. It was all about strategy. If you started in the middle, you had an easier time by staying in the wake more often. But you had people gunning for you on both sides. If you started on one of the sides, there were the turns and the g-force to deal with.
Shift your weight. Move with the turns. There’s six handles on the big tubes, use them all. Spread your body out and keep the tube flat so it doesn’t flip. Skip skip skip across the water.
Out of the turn, back to battling. If you see someone jumping, kick away so they miss your tube.
If the battle went on too long and everyone’s grip held, the host dad made waves. Up to 8 feet high. At that height, there’s no reprieve inside the wake. You fly.
Tubes launched off the waves. Not everyone held on. I did.
Once all the others were floating, you could relax. Flip yourself off the tube. Your reward is a cool dip.
Tubing and surfing both require you to read waves. But the waves from boat tubing are usually manufactured. I did get to read natural waves once, for an afternoon, while windsurfing on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington with my cousin and his wife. It was good, but.
So Monday was my first chance to read them myself. No coach, no lessons. Just myself on a rented surfboard and figuring it out as I went. And then trying to remind the 8 year old of those same things when it was his turn.
Obviously I’m no surfing pro—and I don’t know the intricacies of it yet like I do boat tubing—but the only way to learn and get better is not from a screen or anything inside, but just from being out on the beach and in the water, watching other people, watching the waves, and doing it myself.
And that’s pretty cool. Because I like being in the water.
PS. If you want the stats from Monday, I got up five times, and caught waves on three of them. The 8 year old got up a few times and caught waves, but I lost track of the numbers. The main thing is, he got over a bit of fear that cropped up once we were out there because last time the waves were bigger and at the end of the day he got trapped under the board for a split second. Didn’t feel like a split second to him. But he got over his fear this time. That’s a win.