# Different Beaches

The last weeks haven't been very productive when it comes to this writing project, as I was mostly busy enjoying the last stretch of my South Africa trip that started at the end of 2020. Now I'm back in Berlin and under quarantine so in theory that should create lots of space to write.

Anyways, I've been learning to surf. The last time I tried to surf was in Dulan (Taiwan) a couple of years ago. In retrospect the waves then now seem surprisingly tiny to learn how to surf but as it turns out some of the technique still felt familiar when I got back into it in Muizenberg. For the first couple of days we were in South Africa the beaches were still open. Most of January they were closed as part of South Africa's COVID measures.

I took one or two lessons during these couple of days to get back into it and had a great coach, Jaydon. After refreshing my pop-up (surfer speak for the moment when you switch from laying on the board to standing) I got into the water and — with some helpful pushes — was able to catch some waves after only a few tries.

Maybe a dozen sessions later I'm slowly feeling an urge to surf elsewhere, try different waves. I think at first I mostly thought about it in terms of "bigger", probably because that was the only dimension I understood at that time.

Eventually I ended up surfing another bigger beach break at Plettenberg Bay and a reef break at Buffels Bay. I think I didn't surf a single wave at Plettenberg. The waves were just too high and too steep compared to anything I've surfed before and so I just got wrecked by most of the waves. I still had a great time though. Even if I didn't really succeed, I felt challenged and the prospect of succeeding made me paddle back out again and again.

The dolphins that came by just as the sun began to set really put a cherry on top of that whole afternoon. Quite the magical sight.

A few weeks later I listened to some podcast about speaking and one of the points being made was that your ability to speak freely is very contextual and being able to speak freely in a professional setting does not imply you're able to do the same when hanging out with your partner's friends or similar. They also drew a comparison to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and how competing is just such a different context that it requires equal exposure, familiarity and practice as just training in a gym.

Listening to this made me realize that surfing in different places, different "breaks" will also make a huge difference to my surfing abilities. I don't want to become a surfer or anything but who doesn't enjoy the feeling of improving and eventually being reasonably good at something. It certainly maps to my bouldering experience.

Cheers to Jaydon for showing me this stuff again. In particular during our last lesson — after having surfed a in a few more places — I understood a lot more about how my position affects things. If a wave isn't very strong shifting your body more to the front will make you go faster and will make it easier to catch the wave. If a wave is fast and strong being further back is important to avoid the nose-dive (of which I did plenty). And sometimes it makes sense to shift the weight around a bit even while you're on the wave.

Anyways, let me know if you wanna surf some time! 😁

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