SURFING MOVES OF THE DAY 3

Aloha Tribe,

I'm not sure what today will bring yet, we have Double Overhead out at the Straits. But for tomorrow, the waves will be down to around Waist High by late afternoon/early evening and I'm looking forward to some refinement training. TAKE OFF, ANGLING, BOTTOM TURN, PULL OUT.

A seemingly simple set of moves.Yet, even in the simple, one can find true art. I want to focus on my lines on the waves, specifically, my angles. My goal is to have a small of an Angling angle as I can befoe my bottom turn, then, as small of an angle for my Pull Out. This should give me the longest ride possible.

For this, I'll use my Brian Anderson fin, an old style skeg looking kind of very large fin, sort of shaped like half of an oval. It'll offer a nice smooth, slow, gentle, graceful, beautiful set of lines to my angling. Personally, I love this fin for this kind of training focus. It's totally old-school longboarding.

I chose the Pull Out, as opposed to the Kick Out, for this set of moves because it seems to be more in harmony. In the Kick Out, you stomp down or kick down with your back foot, in my case my left foot since I'm goofy foot, and spin or flip the front of your board up and over the lip of the wave as you exit the ride. But, in the Pull Out, it's much more yin and soft, graceful, and beautiful, you simply, carve a line up to the lip and flow over the top.  The Pull Out keeps the lines in a nice arc for this set of moves, instead of ending with sort of a quick fishhook kind of move at the end which, while loads of fun, Kick Out  is much more appropriate for a more dramatic and yang kind of artistic expression.

Once I find the perfect maximum distance I can go for this set of moves, I want to then really hone in to a razors edge various increments of angles on each ride, keeping the angles as tight as possible, and as close together as possible. Perhaps something like 5 degrees, 7 degrees, 10 degrees, and 15 degrees, then, reverse the sequence back progressively working on getting the angles small again.  It'll lead to some really fun experimentation.

My SURFING MOVES OF THE DAY training, is precision training, focused on truly learning specific skills and extreme details to play with and just find joy in. While, the training is structured, it offers a spontaneous in-the-moment pure sense of self-experimentation, based on what the wave is doing at the moment of course, while keeping the structure within a framework, not at all unlike creating poetry with my surfing. I create my own sense of rules, such as a haiku in poetry, then, stick and play within those rules for artistic expression.

A beautiful small wave like what we'll have tomorrow around 4 to 5 PM in the Straits will be perfect for this particular focus. And, it gives a truly beautiful yin expression to the extreme yang we've been having with our 17 to 23 1/2 footers lately.

Today, we're hitting Double Overhead, about 11 foot. And then we'll drop for some yin art tomorrow, then back up to Triple Overhead or a bit over 17 foot by Monday. Way wow you have to love the Pacific Northwest.  You know. It's, virile.  And more so, vigorous. Things a girl can truly embrace on her wild side.

Gerry Lopez had it right, The Waves are Where you Find Them. That's a great book of his, and, a truly beautiful philosophy. No matter what it's like out there, there's ways to find art and beauty in your surfing, even, on a glassy flat day where all you can do is practice speed paddling until you reach muscle failure, then, just sit on the calm water and feel the yin of it all, embracing the flow of the chi as it at first races through your body, then, slowly, over time, slows down in fractional increments, blending each flow of chi harmoneously through your body, until your body and the still water your board floats on become one. It's like the calm after wild screwing. Pure, frenzied fucking, and then just feeling, that's what it's like. You truly learn a lot about yourself in such moments of deep internal awareness and self reflection.

Bodaciouly Stoked,

Lily of the Valley

Bodaciously Stoked,

Lily of the Valley