To Ride Mavericks, First I'll Ride Sliding Ass 'till I have Buns of Liquid Steel

Hello All,

So, it's back to basics for me. Back to my finless longboard. And riding Sliding Ass. Back to flexibility training and sensory awareness training. Back to  wave study and bottom awareness. I so want to ride big waves. But, with no teacher nor mentor, all I can do is contemplate perhaps how it could be done. So this is but one way.

I'll focus my training for a time on flexibility and sensory development. I want to use my Chi Gung to more than feel the waves, I want to predict how the wave will feel before it happens. In a pretersensory sort of way. I want to learn to be at the right time in the right way doing the right thing, but more so, to feel that before it happens.

Flexibility training will help wonders in this. A very specialized form of flexibility training, actually. I'm very much looking forward to it.


And, sensory training, to absolute peak perfection. In a casual, laid-back sort of way. For the two, oddly enough, go directly hand in hand. The calmer one is under pressure, the more aware one is, and as such, the more one can feel, both internally, and, externally.

Take the simple act of riding Sliding Ass. Now the usual way to turn, of course, is with the foot, and you simply stick your foot in and more or less leave it to that. But, that's just the barest and most crude of beginnings. How little of the foot can enter the water to still turn? And, how soft can the foot be? Oh the experimenting here, what thrills, yes?

One of the keys, as I see it from my limited framework and perspective, in learning more about Riding Sliding Ass in order to ride big waves like Mavericks, is to, once again, return once more to our surfing language. For it is in words that we can find visions of expressions, and, interestingly enough, softness, the very softness needed in order to develop the kind of muscular flexibility I seek and sensory awareness I ask of myself for my training.

Thus, my training will consist, for the time being, in language studies, soft, graceful, flowing style finless longboard riding, muscular flexibility (along with tendons and ligaments, of course), and sensory awareness of minute aspects of wave and swell study as well as wind, bottom structures, tides, water temperature, water depth, currents, moon and star patterns, and so on.

Thus, as I see it, to ride big, one needs to be small. Internally and externally, in a manner of speaking. And thus, my quest continues. Seeking softness, yin, for, one day, the ultimate experience and expression of hardness and yang in big wave riding.

I feel, alone. I wish I knew some of you big wave riders out there. One day, I so hope that I will. But for now, I have, merely, this. The path I am on. For it is all I currently know. So, for the moment, I'll ride Sliding Ass, in preparation for adding my new Santa brought bright red Brian Anderson single box fin to my longboard. That is the fin I hope to use on my board for riding Mavericks. The right fin? Maybe, maybe not, I have no idea, but the right fin for me, totally. First, it's cute. And second, it's red. And third, it has Christmas magic about it, so what more could a girl hope for in a fin? A triple winged high-performance double swayback twisted rake hybrid? Nah. I'll stick with my magic fin. It, makes me smile. And I think that maybe that's the secret to Mavericks. .Smiling the ride forever

Bodaciously Stoked,

Lily of the Valley