Mayday Meltdown - August 20, 2011

Sooo….today wasn’t so good.  I just think the stars were aligned…against me, and I maybe should have stayed home.

I was already having a tough time walking because I cut my foot on a shell a few days ago when I jumped off my board (I know, I know, I really shouldn’t do that – I should fall off instead).  Got it.  In spite of my aggressive cleaning regimen of hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin, it has still managed to get infected.  So I was already battling that delightful reality when we walked over the dunes to the beach and saw the seriously dumpy waves.

Maybe it’s the hurricane in the Yucatan, but whatever it is, the waves are big and dumpy right now.  For me, this usually translates to getting pearled (a lot), and you know how I don’t like that.  The only thing more frustrating than face planting into a wave is doing it over and over again, regardless of how far back on the board you think you’ve moved.

To add to the inherent delight of pearling, the surf hat (that I now have to wear to hold down the pterygium growth) is shoved back by the water when I face plant, which causes the bill to stick straight up on my head.  Because that looks cool.  And with the chin strap (I know), I can’t just pull the hat back down; I have to undo the strap, reposition the hat, and re-clasp the strap – which isn’t as easy as you’d think.  So that got old, real fast.

In addition, there was an incredible amount of algae in the water, which was getting everywhere – even in my eyelashes.  This of course made me nervous because, I mean, if dust is bad for pterygiums, algae can’t be good.  It must have also been an irritant because after just a few minutes in the water, my throat began to burn.

About midway through our time on the water, my leash got wrapped around my arm.  As I was trying to untangle it, a big wave crashed on top of me and tried to rip my board away…only it was affixed to my arm, via the leash.  It felt like a tourniquet that someone new to the medical field had tied with unnecessary gusto.  The bruise from that is deepening by the minute.  It’s a real beaut.

This was the last straw (well, second-to-last, really) and Mad Mo ended up coming out.  I unfortunately got way too sassy with Ted when he was only trying to help by suggesting I move back on my board.  Lucky for me, he doesn’t take it personally when I get petulant from surfing poorly.  I really need to rein that in.

By this point, all the algae in the water was seriously beginning to irritate my throat and it started to feel like I had strep.  I could really go for some water…maybe I need a camel pack.  Yep, that would seal the deal – long sleeve rash guard; long, boyish board shorts, surf hat (with chin strap, mind you), sunglasses, and now a camel pack.  I’m so “special needs.”

The final kicker came when I was riding probably the best wave of the whole day and I lost my balance.  The Civil Corps of Engineers had recently finished a dredging project, which pushed in the sand bars quite a bit, and it just so happened that when I fell off the board I landed in about 12 inches of water with very packed sand below that.   I fell on my side so my shoulder took the fall…hard.  It didn’t feel good and it still doesn’t feel good, so needless to say, I’m currently icing it.

 

 

So that was it.  I unlodged my shoulder from the bar (don’t worry, it wasn’t lodged – I’m being dramatic), grabbed my board, and huffed into shore. 

D.O.N.E.