"Look at something on the beach!"

Those are the words I had in my head all week, the oft-repeated mantra from Marcy, my surf instructor. Marcy is a sun beaten Kiwi who lives in a bungalow behind Blue Ocean. I started taking lessons with him about 6 weeks ago, as soon as the rainy season looked to be in definitive retreat. We’ve had about 6 lessons now, and I am making slow steady progress. I can consistently get up on the board, though I still have the tendency to look down at the board when I am jumping up from time to time. This causes me to fall off. Thus, Marcy’s continual mantra, “Don’t look down, keep your head up, keep looking at something on the beach.” Despite my good progress, my last lesson was bloody horrible. Y. and I wanted to squeeze in one last lesson while he was here, and the only time we could make it was in the afternoon when the tide was going out. The poor conditions caused me to regress terribly, and I could barely get up at all that day. Meanwhile, Y. was doing pretty well. (Grrrrr) I heard, “You looked down that time again” way too many times that lesson.

Today is a national holiday in Indonesia, so I took advantage of the mid-week day off and scheduled a lesson for 8am. Since it was my first day in the surf since the terrible performance of last week, my goal was nothing more than to build back my confidence. And that I did. Today the waves were small and unintimidating, so it was easy for me to catch them and ride into the shore. Up until today, Marcy or his assistant Yudi had always pushed me and my board into the waves. Today was the first time that I was able to catch some waves on my own. Ok, so I was still under the command of sergeant Marcy who kept yelling “Paddle, paddle, PADDLE, PADDLE HARDER” in order that I could gain enough momentum to catch the wave myself. And when I did, I would hear an encouraging “That a girl!!” from my rugged taskmaster.



A few times he encouraged me to go out further on my own. I actually find it quite scary paddling myself over the big waves when they are close to breaking. My fear-fueled heart starts to pound against my chest when I confront these fast approaching mountains (ok, hills). At least once I got totally munched by the wave and lost my board. But getting comfortable with big waves is part of the deal, so I know I need to overcome this fear if I am ever to be a real surfer.

I felt good about today’s lesson. I got a pat on the back from Marcy. I can tell you that baptism by pounding surf is one of the very best ways to start the day. I toasted my progress with a mixed fruit juice at Blue Ocean and felt on top of the world.