Last week, Sarah and I hopped on a bus from Brisbane to Byron Bay, a backpacking, beach bum surfer’s paradise. If you have a trust fund back home and plenty of time to chill, this is the place to spend it all.
As we walked down the street, travel companies made it rain with pamphlets on surf camps, sky diving, hang gliding, white water rafting, and tons of other exhilarating and pricey activities. In a town made up of hostels, bars, tie-dye clothing stores and gelato shops, the population mostly consisted of beach babes and bros cruising main street, happy, dirty and barefooted. Sarah and I tried our best to do as the locals do: get our daily dose of gelato and beach time.
Despite the shark attack that happened on our second day (don’t worry he was fine), we bravely signed up through one of the travel agencies for our first ever surf lesson.
We were psyched and ready to shred hard. At about 8:30 a.m. we were on the beach. We began by practicing the steps from paddling to jumping up on our boards into the surfing stance.
If only that was all there was to it, I would be carving mad rip like a pro. But unfortunately, it’s much less chill than those long blonde-haired dude’s make it seem. The biggest struggle of the lesson was dealing with your board in the water. I now understand the source of those toned, cut surfer bods. The current relentlessly pushed us back to shore as we maneuvered our heavy, oblong hunks of plastic forward to the “white water” (the baby aftermath of the righteous, curling waves that real surfer’s can handle).
If your board was horizontal to the wave (which always happened, because the current pulled it that way), our instructor warned, it could flip up and smash you in the face. This happened to more than one person in our group.
Despite that, it was a successful lesson. I’m proud to say I got up once or twice on my own and more with the help of the instructors pushing me along with the wave. After the brief glide along the water and the eventual, inevitable topple over, I would always surface to look back and see the instructor out in the waves, shaka hand up, hollering a big “Yyyyeaaaaahoooooo!” of approval.
The lesson seemed too short. After our first taste, Sarah and I hungered for gnarly rips long after it was over. We were wiped out the rest of the afternoon, and our arms were sore and bruised the next day but I would definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone.
The ocean is big and beautiful but also powerful and dangerous, so remember, my righteous fellow waxheads, “when in doubt, paddle out.”