Day 190 of an attempt to surf 366 days in a row began with a critiquing session with my surf coach Mike Siordia. As soon as we met on the beach, I set up my comfiest-in-the-world camp chair as a throne for the longboard king, and it was game on — I hit the water with a bunch of familiar Hermosa Pier faces, intent on doing my best.
With shoulders aching from a five hour session yesterday, I paddled vigorously for every wave that I could, and the less than perfect South Bay waves proved to be difficult and challenging. I found myself a tad frustrated, knowing that about 20 minutes into my session I wasn’t performing well and at that point was just hoping not to embarrass myself. I took a breath and realized that I was taking it too seriously and I just needed to surf, like I do every day.
I calmed down, chilled out, and stopped paddling for every single wave, and enjoyed it. As soon as I let go of the stress, I started connecting and doing a bit better.
Burritos at Brothers and a long nap after called for an amazing afternoon surf. 26th street in Manhattan Beach was the spot, and the strange wave in front of a break that was producing almost as big of backwash as the surf proved to be entertaining. I caught a few along with Shane Jones on the outside, who was riding his brand new Cooperfish longboard, then we trickled to the inside and caught a few backwash waves, laughing and launching our boards up into the air when another wave would collide with the one we were on — Shane getting so much air that he was doing flips on the way back down to a splash.
The end to another long day of surf came with a gift from mother nature. She waved goodbye to us with pink, red, and black, and lit the sky on fire with her magical paintbrush. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sunset.
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