When I was a kid, I got interested in surfing because my friend Jim Riedel had a second surfboard and was willing to teach me how. Although the surfboard was way too big for me I stuck with it because:
1. My parents would let me go to the beach with Jim.
2. That's all there was to do down there.
3. Aqueous nose plants from constantly "going over the falls" face first cured my Sinusitis.
4. It really sounded cool to say that that's what I had been doing.
The problem with surfing is that it is that the weirdest personality traits come out of the participants. In this case it was teenage macho cool in it's most glorious hour. I loathed this part about surfing. Anxiety from old feelings of insecurity is triggered to this day when I'm in the line up with a bunch of others waiting for a set to come in.
Back then, I thought that in order to become a real surfer, should you choose to accept this mission as I did, you have to begin your serious training session by laboring long and hard through the many sand bar breaks (where kids joyously played and frolicked like dolphins in the small two foot surf) to get all the way out where the really big sets (three foot) were breaking.
Albeit, the waves were more organized, they came in sets of of say five or six waves. You had to be perfectly positioned to catch one and that meant (if you were a slow paddler like me) that you had to be in exactly the right spot, which would inevitabily be scarfed up by some selfish bastard who had the ability to slither right by me and drop in as though I wasn't even there...I hated that! It seems that all I did for 10 hours was paddle around and wait. If I caught five waves in a day, I was really happy! I became really self conscious because of this hierarchical dynamic combined with the fact that I don't possess a very competitive nature.
Paddle and wait, paddle some more and wait....It seems that was the social mantra of my formative years.
In retrospect I can see those kids in my mind, playing in the small waves and having so much fun. That's what I should have been doing had I had my wits about me...
So that's basically my conclusion here. And the moral to this story is two fold.
1. Turn your headlights inward and be true to yourself.
2. You can't make a plant grow by pulling on it's leaves.
The end.
Today, my show is called: 11+11 (Eleven songs + eleven works) 11-11 is very significant for many reasons, primarily because of Jeff Ragsdale and finally because it's the day that Patti & I got married in Bhutan (which just happened to be the king's birthday).
11+11 = 22 so the show will be March 22.
THIS IS ME HAVING A BLAST SURFING "THE INSIDE" ON A HUGE 2X OVERHEAD DAY - PUERTO ESCONDIDO, MEXICO
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