big waves and thick crowds

okay, i admit it. i was feeling sorry for myself for a cut i suffered on my cheek on saturday at puerto viejo, where the waves were up to 10 feet and the line-up was so crowded that twice i dropped in on waves only to look up and see someone at the bottom of the wave waiting to get runover. there were accidents that happened, and others waiting to happen all over the place. handling a drop on a big wave is much tougher than on a small wave and when there are a bazillion people in front of you it's that much tougher. on the one good wave i caught, i waited to pop up until i had steered left of about five people. but the other times i wasn't as lucky and one time my cheek hit someone's fin. another time my nose hit someone in the shoulder. the big lesson here, for me, is that it's a waste of time and dangerous to go out when it's super crowded, even when the waves are great. and saturday was the most crowded i've ever seen it here. so, i was moping around for the last two days until i read this... ed over at quality peoples, which you can check out here, had a downright awful experience the other day. as his tale shows, surfing is the only sport i've encountered where you can have a purely blissful, almost cosmic experience one day, only to find yourself screaming in agony and feeling like a torture victim the next... (by the way, i'd say it was a stingray that got him. i got stung once and an old fisherman's wife put my foot in a bucket of cold water, rubbed tree sap on it, and then told her 10-year-old grandson light up a cigarette and blow the smoke on it. she also said the poison goes straight to your boobs if you are a woman, and straight to your balls if you're a man).