What, Me Surf?

I stepped off the pier into Lahaina, Maui at about ten in the morning. Lahaina strikes me as something of a tourist trap, but hey – this occasion finds me a vacationing tourist in dire need of a break, and I’m more than willing to be captive here for a while. The day starts with a little shopping, a little bumbling amateur photography (I do hope something halfway tolerable comes out; I’ve been busy trying to burn the images of this place into my mind’s eye as a permanent memory). I took one picture of a shipwrecked sailboat perhaps four hundred feet off shore… the previous day, a guide pointed it out and said, “if you’re wondering what the deal is with that eyesore of an old boat, here’s the story: this past Halloween, a local went out on his boat, partied, got very drunk, and wrecked it in the shallows. He didn’t have the money to have it removed or dismantled, so he left it there… and the county of Maui has been fining him $5000 per day since then.” I wonder whose inertia is going to win out on this issue. Either way, it’s a bit of a shame to leave such an ugly wreck out in such a beautiful location.

I took lunch at the Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant along Front Street. Not a bad cheeseburger, too – a tad pricey, at $7.95, but add a slice of roasted pineapple and a glass of cold guava juice, mix in the shorefront view and there you have it: a recipe for sigh-inducing happiness. A few hours to digest, and then it’s off to my first (and only) surfing lesson.

Surfing. A sport that, at least stereotypically, lends itself to two kinds of practitioners: vacuous stoners and slackers who really have nothing better to do with their lives, and bronzed, ripped, beautiful islanders who induce instant urges of infidelity in the hearts of vacationing spouses.

Neither of which includes me. I’m so far removed from either extreme that I feel decidedly uncomfortable with the idea of undertaking it myself – discomfort that’s only magnified by my squirming insecurity over my native klutziness and my academic paleness. I’m not fair-skinned amongst my usual crowd, but I feel conspicuously… uh, “albino” on this warm sunlit beach. I’m much relieved when the instructional staff hands us wetsuit tops to keep us from getting sunburnt. The sight of me with my shirt off isn’t anything that anyone, least of all me, wants to be seeing.

A few minutes (!) of instruction and friendly admonitions on land and then it’s off into the water we go. The water is a little chillier than I had expected here in bright, warm Maui, but things start out okay. Surfing’s at once slightly easier and slightly harder than you’d think. For instance, paddling on the surfboard isn’t as tiring as it seems; you actually move pretty well across the water without putting in as much effort as swimming. (Must be the board’s low drag coefficient – that, and you’re not trying to propel an awkwardly-shaped, wildly-thrashing, hilariously non-aerodynamic human body through the water) Even standing on the board and keeping your balance isn’t too taxing.

The hard part is the timing. In nine attempts, I managed to catch maybe three waves somewhat decently. Wiped out twice. The other four times, I took too long to stand up on the board, and by the time I managed it, the wave had passed beneath me completely, leaving me standing out in the middle of nice, calm water standing on top of a becalmed surfboard and looking like a complete idiot. Note to self: if you’re ever going to try this in the future, do your best to get up on that surfboard as soon as the wave reaches you; if you don’t start riding it, you don’t catch it.

Oh – and watch out for traffic. Getting rammed by another surfboarder is not fun. Took one in the left leg, and never did get a good look at whoever it was that steered that nine-foot-long torpedo-shaped raft directly into my left thigh. Ow. And not so much as a shouted apology. I need to give that guy a serious talking to. With my right foot.

There was also the matter of those dry heaves. The bobbing of my surfboard, combined with the bright tropical sun, had given me a headache and quite possibly my first real case of seasickness. My fellow computer science classmates and I used to joke about contracting vampirism through chronic sun deprivation, but this time the light sensitivity seemed very real, and I was squinting through almost the entire three-hour lesson. The taste of seawater really didn’t help either. It’s one thing to harbor philosophical, ideological, or metaphysical laments about an ivory tower existence; it’s another to be given physiological symptoms for it. Between the squinting, the salt, and the swaying of the surf, I developed a big headache, some queasiness, and then – about three times (or was it four?) – I had to throw up. Fortunately, they were just dry heaves – I know enough about exercise to know better than to eat directly before doing something strenuous, and I was very glad that I had given myself sufficient time to digest lunch before coming out here. Didn’t particularly want to be donating my Cheeseburger back into Paradise, not because it would have been embarrassing (which it certainly would have been), but moreso because of the thought that it would have been horribly sacrilegious to puke into Maui’s lovely waters. Tsk Tsk. For shame.

But all told, it was quite fun, and entertainment value aside, it was very worth it: I made myself go out and do this for the express purpose of doing something contrary to my habits and nature. Nothing ventured, nothing gained; if I don’t like who I am or the way that my life has been going, I pretty much have to change it myself, after all.