"True love is selfless. It is prepared to sacrifice." -Sadhu Vaswani
Swell has finally arrived in greater San Diego after the region suffered through the worst summer on record. The Ocean Pacific vacillating between flat and flatter. Hope flickered in local surfer hearts after the calendar flipped to September. Fall, here, is generally dreamy with water still warm and juicy pulses arriving from points west, but early autumn continued summer’s horrors. Flatter and flattest.
Until today.
Oh how good it felt to wade into the brine, 3-4 peaks hither and yon, excitement bubbling even though every person with a surfboard was floating in the way. I paddled out feeling the giddiness of a junior high high crush and felt it even more so on that first wave.
Butterflies fluttering.
I almost forgot how to surf a wave without the entire effort being put into generating speed but oh how fun it was. My first was a right, shoulder high and fast. My second was a right, head high and faster. My third was a left, fun for a left, and then it was time to go take daughter to ballet.
The wife, who had three better waves than me, caught a solid one to the beach. I caught a little one but only felt that glorious full-body euphoria that you, too, understand.
Only a surfer knows the feeling.
We stood up on the rocks, for a minute, appreciating what was, looking forward to our evening session and was to be, as the swell was building, when she pointed it out.
A leash-less surfboard careening toward the boulders.
Now, I have stood up on the rocks appreciating leash-less surfboards getting whooped by granite, mostly leash-less longboards, but this was no longboard. This was a shortboard the exact same shape with almost the exact same spray as Derek Rielly’s cherished Lost…
“Oh no!” I shouted and started jumping down the slippery stones as quickly as I could. Mentally I knew that it was not, in fact, Derek Rielly’s surfboard, as he is currently in Bondi, but my heart, oh my heart, only saw the man that I love’s property being damaged.
I jumped and jumped and then wedged my lower leg right between two slippery rocks and instantly felt that flash of “something not right.” The flash you, too, understand.
Only a surfer, or I suppose anyone who participates in any form of physical activity, knows the feeling.
Still, Rielly’s board had not been saved so I lunged onto the sand and held it tightly. Some vacant-eye’d TikTok kid eventually came up and said, “Uhhhhh my leash snapped…
I handed it over, crawled back up the crags knowing that I would not be surfing this evening or maybe ever again.
But I would do it all over.
Love is a wild thing.