The last couple of days have been a bit tricky but enlightenment is approaching, mainly thanks to a call from the neurosurging dude yesterday. I'm not going to go into forensic detail but suffice to say that my mind is fully committed to coming out of decompressive spinal surgery at some stage in the future. In fact, so long as having Lyme disease doesn't preclude having an op, that future is just around the corner: I'll be under the knife in mid-December. If all goes well I might even catch a wave or two at Sennen in the summer, though I'm happy to wait for the year or so that I'm told recovery will take. Basically I'll do whatever it takes to get better and be surfing again.
Despite the pain, which gets worse each day (although the wonky left leg seems to have stabilised at a level of going-downhill-or-downstairs-only wonkiness), I enjoyed filming Harry and a couple local legends at a secret spot yesterday. Initially, it was a torment, looking at a peeling head high wave that I knew was within my capability and watching them having a blast riding it. So too was getting used to the camera, for words, not gadgets, have always been my thing. But in the end it was enjoyable. It was a way of remaining involved in surfing. I understood why surfers who, for various reasons, can no longer surf become snappers.
So, with that in mind, I'm going to settle down to watch the latest DVD from the good folk at the Discovery Surf School. Their first film, 110% Surfing, was one of the best instructional surf videos I've seen. Very few ever explain why you might be digging a rail on turns, still less how to stop doing it, but 100% Surfing was a pleasing exception. I'll let you know what the second film (cunningly titled Volume 2) is like, and, speaking personally, will absorb its lessons on the basis that one day they will help me come good with, for example, a really smooth roundhouse cutback, probably my favourite move but one that, in my case, has thus far been more of a square-shed lean-back, if such an image conveys anything meaningful, which is highly doubtful.
Dreams remain free, and positive thinking can go a long way. And talking of which: Harry has managed to get himself on Surf Solutions' Portugal surf trip in a week or so. He's stoked, and I should think I will be when I see how far his surfing has come on when he gets back. Adios for now.
Image of Tas Knight on a Surf Solutions' Portugal trip courtesy of Greg Martin.
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