Later in the afternoon, red headed and dead tired, I sat down next to her. A brown sofa offered that much of a comfort, I could have felt asleep in seconds. But she did, leaning her head to mine, holding me tight, like I did with my surf board hours ago.

As we ran into the water, twenty more or less of us, we were all very excited. Board ahead, against the first wave, then again and again. Nobody showed us how to get passed them, and we tried all different techniques to move ourselves and our surfboards out of this zone of continuous splash and wash machine mechanics.

For someone looking at us, for a pro or experienced surfer, we seemed to be not the pretty smart surfer type. Someone tried to dive through (like he saw in a cool surf video), but was washed away and lost dozens of meters. Others tried to stand and to jump up holding the board slightly with one hand. Headaches from direct surf board hits resulted promptly. And there were others, they just fought one way and back, exhausting themselves in two minutes.

I learned later, that the diving technique is not so easy with long soft top surfboards, but during the afternoon hours, no one told us. We tried diving nose ahead, or roll at our back, or jump full speed over the top of the wave. Frustrating. My ears filled quickly with water, they hurt, and I was about to leave the water, as I knew, it would only get worse and worse. But no one managed yet to stand a wave, and I wasn’t paying these guys to leave the field as soon.

Again and again we moved ahead, tried to catch a wave, were to late, were to early, were to slow. Aaah! Damn smart surfer we’ re! As I paddled back toward better waves, I saw her, and she was riding a small wave. Hey! How’s that? I laughed. She’s smart, she’s a smart surfer: to start with the small ones, get some confidence, not wasting their power fighting against but with the waves.

I turned my body and paddled back to her, catched a wave and stood for the first time.

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