“So, do you actually go in the water, or do you just prance around on the beach trying to look cool?”
That my friend Heather has even asked this question is a depressing reminder of just how old we both are. If I were ten kilos lighter and 15 years younger, maybe, just maybe, trying to squeeze into a black, neoprene, urine-stained wetsuit with the grace of an elephant, trying to eat spaghetti through a straw, might look cool.
It doesn’t. I just look old, and a bit like an aging relative could have sent me the wetsuit for some unspecified celebratory occasion and now I’m obliged to clamber into it every time we skype – quickly dousing my hair in drain water and rolling around in the backyard dirt seconds before the camera window pops up.
Admittedly I understand the confusion over my motivations. I do live in Bondi. I do, sporadically, wear sweatpants, repurposed as pyjamas, for the coffee dash to the hipster café with tiny furniture and overpriced mini pastries. I also constantly threaten to buy a skateboard. Hell I even made aquabumps (I’m the one furthest away from the water, the one that actually looks like they’re trying to escape but have been chained to an oversized blue log).
That I am a teenage boy trapped in a 36-year-old woman’s body is not in question, but cool – no.
Earlier efforts to master the ancient art of wave-riding had started with the purchase of a surfboard, using money I no longer needed to spend on a recent ex’s birthday present. It stalled at knee high water, foam and the sudden advent of winter. I have no photos of me on a board in the water but I did find a fairly accurate representation of what I look like, courtesy of our new Prime Minister.
Surfing, I quickly discovered, was about confidence as much as it was about practice, and periodically attempting to paddle into a wave with less speed than a starfish on a Segway was about as successful as three machine gun toting soldiers battling a gang of angry emus.
So with every bulge on display and a large, foam, boat-like board tucked under my arm I finally made the ultimate commitment to the water.
I decided to get some lessons.
I may be older, slower and fatter than I used to be, but I have a lot more money so if I can painlessly pay somebody else for a –advice and b – a good shove onto the face of the wave then I’ll do it. And so at the start of 2013 I signed up for a recurring six week course.
Nine months, 2 boards, a pod of dolphins and one very small shark later and I am hooked. There is little to compare to the sheer joy of gliding along the glassy surface of a peeling left. It is a sport, which on the surface appears to offer little reward, with hours in the water resulting in a just a couple of minutes of wave riding. My mother, observing the brooding mass of black shadows patiently bobbing out the back of Whale beach, likened it to a cult. Perhaps she is right; it’s a sport that inspires a certain zealotry. Why else would anyone choose to consistently get up before dawn, in single digit temperatures and willingly submerge themselves in the freezing conditions.
For me it has become a great passion and the reason I want to share my experiences is quite simple; I want to write about what I love. Given my girlfriend has told me anything involving her is well and truly off the table, I’m left with the water.
THE MIlK BAR 