soccer and surfing

this morning, i surfed with nick, an old soccer buddy from highschool. he surfed a lot in college and today we went surfing for the first time together. nice waves, barely anybody in the water at punta roquitas and good vibes. on the last wave, i dropped in next to him and hooted like a madman. i never thought 18 years ago that we'd be surfing together in lima. certainly not at 6 a.m. more to come this weekend. when we got out of the water, i ran into a friend of mine, who told me that a friend of his, g., who i've met once, had just had surgery to put a metal plate in below his cheekbone. he wiped out a few days ago at caballeros and the tip of the board hit him in the face, breaking the tip and hurting him badly. freak, nasty accidents happen to even the best surfers. and g is top notch. here's to a quick recovery for g., a quality guy.

redondo

yesterday after work i surfed redondo, which sits just to the left of the rosa nautica pier in lima. it's a tempermental left, with waves that tend to look fat and then close out quickly. still, it was working well. strangely, everybody was getting caught inside except for me. the only explanation i can think of is that maybe goofyfooters have an easier time reading lefts? who knows. maybe i've finally learned from my mistakes after getting pummeled so many times. happily, the other people in the water were nice, which isn't always the case, and the paddle was short, which allowed me to conserve my energy and catch lots of waves. the last one ended with me jumping off just as the last piece of the wave crashed onto the pebbles of the beach. when i woke up this morning i realized that, on an earlier wave, i blew a chance to do what in skateboarding we used to call a fakke, or rock-n-roll. so that's the next goal: forcing myself to do more gutsy turns and switchbacks.