At the insistances of my Wife

My wife called me in the office on a Tuesday afternoon.

"So." she asked. "Are you going surfing tomorrow?"

"I don't know. The rain was on Saturday. It might still be kind of smelly."

"You should go.” she said.

".and I’ve got the frickin' head cold."

"You should go."

"I can't even breathe through my nose right now, I’m so congested."

"You'll be ok. You should go."

At that point, I knew that something had to be wrong. I’d never been urged to go surfing before by my wife. She’s urged me NOT to go surfing. She's begged me to stay home on weekend mornings. She's manipulatively pleaded how my daughter never gets to see her daddy in the morning, and would love to see me upon awakening. (This is actually true; the kid has an excited reaction to seeing me walk into her room in the morning that is priceless.) But, urging me to go surfing, while sick, after the rains.... this was a first.

"What's with you?" I asked suspiciously.

"Rebecca and I were talking." She admitted. "We've decided that you and Brett need to go surfing. You're both much happier when you surf."

I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped. My mind slowed down. Hey... it told me. Don't argue. Don't screw this up. No need to be defensive... just go along with it.

"OK." I told her. "He sent me an email earlier. I'll call back him right now. Bye."

I opened up my web browser and looked at the reports while Brett and I briefly spoke. The outlook was not only slightly promising. There was some legitimate southwest swell in the water, mixed with a lot of short period wind chop from the recent local storm systems. However, morning and evening conditions were reported as windless and glass. I put together a modicum of hope, and agreed to meet at Seventeenth Street for dawn patrol at 6:00 a.m.

The morning was gray with twilight when I arrived. I dressed in my truck, leaving the heater on until the last possible minute. My sinuses were stuffed with cotton. My ears throbbed. The morning air was a baptism of cool reality, welcoming me back from my life in heated cars and buildings. In the sky, a giant arc of clear atmosphere opened between two curved cloud edges. To the east the storm clouds that had rained on San Diego marched slowly inland.

I cringed only slightly entering the cold water. I welcomed the cold. A wave crashed on my back, and my head ducked under the water, wetting my hair and face. When it surfaced, my sinus cavity burned sharply like the pain of eating too much ice cream too fast.

The waves were better than I had expected. The two swells, the still air and the dropping tide conspired to create a random pattern of peaking waves. I paddled out and caught two waves on consecutive sets before pausing to chat with Brett.

"You catching any over there?" I asked.

"Yea. They’re slow on the take off. You defiantly need that extra paddle."

"And, hey -" I added. "It’s just the two of us."

There were no other surfers as far as the eye could see to the north, and only a few dots to the south towards the pier. For all practical purposes, we had the whole stretch of beach to ourselves.

Brett nodded. "What’s not to like about that?" he asked.

I laughed. "Well. You just keep going left over there." We had positioned ourselves on either side of a consistent peak in the wave pattern. Brett was positioned to go left, and I to go right. Either way, we’d have the best waves to ourselves.

Brett caught the wave of the day two sets later. I was paddling out and saw him lining up for take off. The wave behind him was bigger than most of the waves our there, and a large peak had shaped to his other side. I hollered "Go Right! Go Right!" at him, but my directions were unnecessary. Brett could see the line to the right and dropped down into it perfectly, gleaning a mounting speed from the push of the liquid wall. The wave passed me and I duct through the crest.

At a certian termainal velocity, the adrenolin must have kicked in. As I emerged on the back side, I heard Brett hollering like a kid in a candy shop.

"Wheeeeeeehooooooooo - " he said.

Or something similar.