No Idea

Manly, Surfing

It’s been a while since I last posted so I will endeavour to give a summary of the highlights of the past two weeks.

First, I moved into a flat in Manly, for those who are less informed Manly is small suburb North of Sydney. I share this flat with the charming sister of one of my very good friends, so far I am being tolerated, I can only hope this continues.

The flat is exactly 4 minutes walk to Manly beach and 10 minutes walk to Shelly beach. Numerous other beaches are an easy drive away should I get bored of the ones on my doorstep.

I was a handy-man for a day. My flatmate owns an apartment in the city, she decided to rent it out for the summer so she could be by the beach. Rather a progressive attitude, one I very much admire. My task was to replace some bulbs and what-not at her apartment. Also part of the handy-man mission was the task of driving her Suzuki Sierra jeep to the city. The jeep is in a rather interesting state of repair and really should not be driven any faster than 60Kph. It is an active driving experience, at no point do you feel completely in control of the vehicle so you constantly have to “drive” it. I have grown somewhat fond of the jeep.

My major fear is the spare tyre that is attached to the rear door will eventually rip the door off. At the moment the weight of the door combined with the lack of suspension and rather poor road conditions has lead to the door fatiguing through one hinge and partially through the actual sheet metal of the door itself. Like I said, the jeep is in an interesting state of repair.

Since being here I have vomited once. This I have reasoned was due to too much sun and too much rich food. The food was a rather nice reward for being a handy-man for the day, it was such a shame to see it come back up later in the evening.

I grew a beard. The beard got sort of gross so I cut it back.

And now on to the main thrust of this post. I took my first surfing lesson at 9am Saturday 24th Novemeber. The first thing I learnt about surfing is that you should not really do it hungover. Even if the hangover is moderate you will not get the best out of the lesson in that state. I first realised that a mild hangover was going to impede my experience when the very light warm up which consisted of some stretches and a short 30 metre jog made me feel like I was going to hurl.

We were all given massive long boards made of foam, they looked the complete opposite of cool but we were assured they would be much safer and easier to use than the real boards that can take your head off or slash an artery if not used correctly.

The surf school is one end of the beach and the most suitable surf was the other. My hangover was once again a hindrance when we had to march our oversized foam ironing boards down to the other end of the beach. I struggled and winced and tried to keep up with my flatmate who was feeling much more awake and healthy than me.

When we got to the perfect location we were allowed to sit down, they then gave us very brief instruction and told us we had to move even further down the beach. My body somehow tapped into a reserve of energy it had probably previously been saving for getting through being lost in the outback. We moved on.

We were given another short set of instructions and to my surprise told to get in the sea without even being shown how to “pop up”. I had assumed that all surf lessons begin on the beach with the very minimum instruction of being shown how to pop up. Wearily I got into the sea, to my surprise I felt better. Then a wave hit me and I felt worse.

What happened for the next 20 mins was I would walk out into the sea and be pounded by what appeared to be multiple rouge waves. I constantly looked to instructors who were also in the surf and was expecting them to call everyone out of this unusually violent and dangerous water. Instead of the concerned signal to get out I received a beaming face which rapidly turned into a “get on the board mate”. This in turn progressed to being shoved down an almighty mountain of water which was obviously going to wash my lifeless body up on the shore.

Somehow I survived. Soon they beached us all again and after another rather concise instruction where we were, to my relief, shown the key pop up maneuver we were put back in the water. Many people were already standing up on their boards, I was not one of them, my flatmate was. There was talk about some of the good ones being taken out the back, this is where the waves begin, much deeper water, large swells, it sounded frightening. I remained in the white water being thrown around as usual. Then an instructor found me, told me to hop on my board and soon informed me he was going to swim me out to the back. I was frightened. He insisted it would all be ok and remarked how calm it was, I asked if he was kidding (the waves were huge, honestly) and he looked back at me confused.

Once I was out the back I got shoved down an almighty wave, one which Poseidon himself had angrily crafted, this time I had no doubt that I was a gonner. They would find me eventually, me limp in my unflattering wetsuit, puny arms, tubby tummy, and I my story would become a lesson to all surf instructors. In future they would screen candidates and make sure they can at least run 30 metres without feeling like their heart will explode through the mouth. However, by some miracle I once again survived. Not only that, I very nearly stood up.

The lesson went on and I went down a couple more big waves, never successfully standing up. I did however get to appreciate the beauty of sitting on a foam board a couple of hundred metres out to sea. It was kind of a rainy misty morning and it looked beautiful and felt amazing. I was exhausted but totally hooked.

On Sunday I did a British thing and got sunburnt.

November 27th, 2007 

Labels: Tags: australia, manly, surfing