We’re a few days into our vacation now and this place is an absolute paradise.  We’ve been playing tennis, catching up on summer reading, and of course surfing every chance we get.

Each morning before breakfast, we check out the surf and plan our day accordingly.  As we venture back and forth to the coast, we take this small sandy trail through a pine forest that ends at the beach.  There’s nothing like being able to just walk our boards down to the gulf rather than have to load up the car and drive.  Our new way feels so…surf camp-ish.

Unfortunately, the waves have gotten worse since we arrived.  The winds have been steadily blowing out of the southwest, which continues to chop up the waves, and the rip current gets stronger by the day.

Yesterday morning as I paddled out, Ted and Maddy stayed on the shore and watched as I pointed straight out but got so pushed by the winds that I made a diagonal path through the water.   By the time I made it to the outside, I was 300 yards down the beach.

And that’s another thing – there really is no “outside” right now since the surf is so chopped up.  So even though I was sitting outside the area where most of the waves were breaking, the occasional one would break right on top of my sad little head.  This of course agitated me considerably, particularly the times that the waves actually picked me up and flipped me over – board and all – before washing me back to shore…where I had to start my paddle out all over again.

Not.  Happy.

But like most good Irish women, I can get a little bull-headed, even when I know it makes WAY more sense to give up.  I really wanted to start catching my own waves, so I talked myself into believing that if I just paddled hard enough, I would be successful.

So the session was essentially a repeat of the first morning: paddle-paddle-paddle, pop up, nada.  I’m left there standing on the board.

Ted offered to help a couple of times but I felt like that contradicted what I was trying to do: be able to surf independently.  But he still stayed out with me (I think he was worried I was going to exhaust myself to the point of drowning) and decided to snap these telling photographs.

Two words:

Epic

Fail